The three excellent speeches that were given at our recent meeting to mark the 94th anniversary of the 1917 October Revolution are now available to view online.
Voice of the youth
Red Youth’s Comrade Jamie opened the meeting with an eloquent explanation of why October offers hope to young people in Britain, making particular reference to the experience of the August youth uprisings.
Voice of experience
Comrade Harpal of the CPGB-ML delivered the keynote speech, in which he explained the historical significance of the October Revolution, the achievements of Soviet socialism, and its ongoing relevance to workers in Britain.
Giving a detailed explanation of modern imperialism, its wars and its global capitalist economic overproduction crisis, he showed how the analysis given by Marx and Lenin not only explains these, the major problems that humanity – and in particular the working and toiling masses – are facing, but shows us the way forward to their solution.
Capitalism cannot be reformed, regulated, moderated or otherwise made to serve the interests of working people. It must be overthrown! We must discard all those parties who pretend otherwise, particularly the social-democratic Labour party, and its revisionist and Trotskyite hangers-on, who act as agents of imperialism (misguided or malicious) in the working-class movement. In this as in so many regards, October shows us the way!
Our job, Harpal emphasised, is to make this Marxist-Leninist analysis truly popular, well known and understood, and to inject the spontaneous protest and resistance movements with clear scientific analysis that can sustain them and help them to direct their blows.
The October revolution has shown that working people, when united and organised around a correct understanding and a disciplined party, and when guided by such an analysis, are really able to achieve unity of action; to become an army of millions and tens of millions, which no capitalist power can resist.
Voice of the oppressed
Comrade Asari of the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party delivered a thought-provoking speech.
He talked about the many national-liberation fighters and socialist leaders who have led their people in successful struggle against imperialism – and the murderous assassination squads that have been imperialism’s answer to their message of truth, uplift and humanity.
We must be revolutionary in our outlook and methods of struggle, says comrade Asari, for reforms cannot abolish the fundamental contradiction between capital and labour that lies at the heart of our problems, and at the heart of capitalism.
Comrade Stalin in Red Square, 1941
The meeting watched a film of the inspiring and historic speech given to the Soviet people by Comrade Stalin on the 24th anniversary of October, during a parade held while the Nazi invaders were at the very gates of Moscow.
A poem for liberation
Comrade Godfrey recited his poem on the relevance of Indian revolutionaries Udham Singh and Bhagat Singh to British workers.
A Poem for October
By Ella Rule
Hail th’October Revolution
Great step forward for the working man
All our lives are now much better
Before we couldn’t but now we can!
Ne’er more need woman be dependent
On her husband’s every whim
Soviet women blazed the pathway
To equality of her and him
At one time the dark skinned people
Had to call the white man “bass”
But the achievements of October
Have shown that all this racism’s crass.
The example of October
Brought freedom to China and DPRK,
Cuba, Vietnam and other countries
Who stand up with pride today
Until the Russian proletariat
Fought and seized the hour and day
Workers had no health or safety
Their fate was blindly to obey
Although in the hard struggle against reaction
The Soviet Union’s temporarily lost
Workers have seen from her example
How servility in the bin was tossed
And when capital was rent with crisis
And its workers starved and froze
Socialism grew ever stronger
And overcame the Nazi foes
As we yearn for liberation
To escape the capitalist mess
October shall be our inspiration
Because it promises us success
October greetings from an Australian comrade
I am sending you revolutionary greetings on this great occasion of the 94th anniversary of the glorious Great October Socialist Revolution! It is a time to celebrate not only that greatest of days 94 years ago, but also our continuing struggle against the wild beast of imperialism, in our home land and abroad, and to express our solidarity with the revolutionary patriots inflicting death blows on imperialism as we speak, from Palestine to Libya, to Iraq and Afghanistan, and elsewhere.
This year we commemorate Great October with our hearts still heavy over the martyrdom of our heroic anti-imperialist brother, Colonel Gaddafi. Let us dedicate our struggles in the coming year to brother Gaddafi, and let us follow his example of never surrendering, never bowing, even in the face of imminent death, to the mad dogs of imperialism. We celebrate imperialism’s impending downfall, as it will drown in the blood of all anti-imperialist martyrs, whose bodies may be destroyed, but whose revolutionary spirit will forever guide us to victory!
Enjoy your night of celebrations comrades! Raise a toast to the immortal spirit of the Soviet Union, and to our great teachers, Comrades Lenin and Stalin, who first showed the proletariat and the oppressed, that a world without poverty, war, hunger, racism and exploitation was not a utopian dream, but in the reach of us all, guided by revolutionary theory.
Comrades, I would like to finish with the never-to-be-forgotten words of Comrade Lenin, which in light of the temporary success of reaction in Libya, ring even louder. “Only the proletarian socialist revolution can lead humanity out of the deadlock created by imperialism and imperialist wars. No matter what difficulties the revolution may encounter, and in spite of temporary setbacks or waves of counter-revolution, the final victory of the proletariat is inevitable.”
LONG LIVE THE GREAT OCTOBER SOCIALIST REVOLUTION!
VICTORY TO THE ANTI-IMPERIALIST LIBERATION STRUGGLES!
DEATH TO IMPERIALISM!
VICTORY TO THE PROLETARIAT!
FORWARD TO COMMUNISM!
MW, Australia
