 Hello Comrades and welcome back to Marxist Voice, the podcast of The Communist. My name is Jack Tai Wilson and I'll be your host for this episode. And welcome back to part three of our new podcast series towards the Revolutionary Communist Party. If you haven't listened to previous episodes then we definitely recommend jumping in from the start. We've got an episode on how to build the party and an episode on how to build the Communist press. But for this week's episode we're going to be discussing a question that we received from a listener on the topic of whether the RCP is going to be running in this year's general election. And just as a general reminder, if our listeners want to send in questions or reports about party building then please do send them in and we'll try and include them on the podcast. Just head to communist.red forward slash submit to get in touch with us. So for this week's episode we're joined once again by Banglunetsky who's the National Secretary and a member of the Executive Committee of the soon to be Revolutionary Communist Party. Hey Ben, how's it going? You've been away for a few weeks haven't you? Yeah, that's right Jack. Yeah, that's it. I missed a couple of weeks, missed a recording of the podcast. I was up in Scotland visiting the Comrades, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Newcastle. So I stopped by on the way back. Yeah, that's right. It was good to see everybody, see what's going on up there. Comrades are doing very well. And you capped it off with the Central Committee meeting last weekend, is that right? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I was back in time for a really good CC down in London. And what was discussed at the Central Committee meeting? It was a range of things. We've discussed the situation in Britain and also discussed the situation in the Middle East quite a lot. And then also some of the tasks that flow from that political situation, what it is that the communists need to do. And I think the main thing, to be honest, that came out of the CC meeting was there's a lot of discussion about what all these events both in Britain and across the world, what impact are they having on people's consciousness? How is it causing people to think about the world? And to what extent is it causing them to look for alternatives, look for explanations? Obviously that's where we come in. That's a good thing from our point of view. People should be questioning what's going on in the world. And when we have something to say about that we have answers. There's a lot of discussion about that. It wasn't just a list of events, you know, just a kind of summary of what you can read in the news. It was, yeah, and what impact is that having on working-class people, young people, students, and how can we connect with those people? That was really the main content of the CC. Yeah, and the CC meeting took place, I think, the day after George Galloway's victory, this thumping majority that he gained in the by-election in their Rothschilds. I think that was mentioned quite a bit in the session on the British perspectives. And yeah, what is the communist analysis, if you will, of this quite, I would say quite a seismic event in British politics? Yeah, it is. And it was discussed a lot for exactly this reason. Because this is a symptom of all that questioning that there is, all that anger that there is, especially obviously around Gaza and the Middle East. The symptom, the result of that is Galloway's victory. I really think that that by-election is a bit of a peek into the future, because you had ex-Labor MPs, one on the right and one on the left. The Labour Party collapsing. And the Tories, obviously, absolutely nowhere. And just lots of anger, chaos, confusion. That is, yeah, that is British politics. That is the British politics of the future. And so, and yet, like you say, a massive seismic event, for sure. And I think the main significance of it, because also it wasn't just the election, it was Sunak's speech afterwards. Yes, so he came out of 10 Downing Street onto his big podium and gave this really kind of worried speech, I would say. That was the tone that came from it, saying, you know, our democracy is under attack, all of these different things. And of course, you know, his solution is therefore to curtail democracy even further by coming down on her. And what a mad, what a mad thing to say, like what a mad thing you would think, anyway, it looks on the surface. How on earth is one little by-election that, yeah, admittedly, for the establishment was a complete, was chaotic, was a real kick in the face for the establishment. But how is one little by-election suddenly a big threat to democracy? Yeah, but what you realise is that Galloway, this whole, he is a kind of lightning rod for all this anger that exists, especially around Gaza. It's been this conspiracy of silence in the establishment and the media. They've got blood on their hands, these people. They have literally been getting away with murder for months, for years. And here's a man who all of a sudden is just, it's like the Emperor's new clothes, it's just pointing to them and he's exposing them. He's saying, you're murderous, you're supporting genocide. And yeah, it is a threat to their whole system, to their whole setup that they've got this establishment. He's threatening to lift the veil, basically. He's going to lift the veil. He's going to go into Parliament. He's going to make these big speeches that he makes. He's going to go all over social media. Yeah, he's going to be a bit of a lie. And so the entire establishment is now, in the same way they did with Corbyn, they're going to mobilise, try and destroy this guy and bring him down. They're going to use every possible argument they can from the left, from the right, anything they can find to chip away at this guy. And this is going to be their policy now because they are scared of him. And so it's quite a significant, it's a tremor, obviously on its own. It's not a revolution starting or anything like this, Galaba is not going to do that. But it is a significant thing, I think, a bit of a tremor of much bigger things to come. And do you think potentially it could have further ramifications, like a knock-on effect, if you will, and kind of lift the sights of people campaigning in other constituencies where the Labour MP, for example, voted against the ceasefire and there's a lot of anger. For example, I work around Tower Hamlets and there was an MP there, Rishnar Ali, who I think is very hated because of the inaction of what she's done. Do you think that Galloway's victory could catalyse something else perhaps in the future, or is it a bit too hard to tell, would you say? It is hard to tell. I mean, for sure, like you say, like in East London, in Birmingham, there are these, already before Galloway, there was this talk of challenging some of the more right-wing MPs, specifically over the question of Gaza. And so that was happening anyway. Yeah, for sure, Galloway will have galvanized those people and showing that it's possible basically. There's even a challenge in Kirsten's own constituency against him from the left as well. But whether that will coalesce into any kind of coherent campaign, a united group, I don't know. I think it's pretty unlikely to be honest myself, but you can't rule it out. Anything can happen. We've got to keep an eye on stuff like that. It's certainly possible for things like that to happen and we'll have to pay close attention. And certainly if there are sizable meetings, gatherings, rallies or anything like that going on, the communists should be there putting forward a communist program, right? That's right. Yeah, for sure. We'll definitely be there for that sort of thing. And like I said, we are paying close attention to these things. We've got tabs and all this stuff and we'll get stuck in where we can. I guess that brings us nicely onto a question that we've received from a listener to the podcast series actually. A listener from Ronda Sinontaf, I believe. I think that's how it's pronounced. Apologies if my Welsh pronunciation isn't very good. I'm from up north. We don't have any Welsh town names at birth. But the question is, is the Revolutionary Communist Party, which we're founding in May, is it going to run in this year's general election? I think that's a very interesting question. Ben, what do you think about that? Yeah, it is an interesting question. We know, I think, that the Revolutionary Communist Party is not a party like any other political party. It's not designed to be like that. What we want to do is overthrow capitalism and put the working class in power in Britain. And via that means establish socialism as a stepping stone to communism. It's a total turning the world upside down. That's our aim. That's our goal. That goes far beyond winning this or that election and getting an MP here or there or anything like this. Our aims are far exceed that. Now, obviously, we are not in a position to achieve that right now. We're very small in the grand scheme of things, very small organization, very small party. So our main overwhelming priority is getting bigger, numerically developing our knowledge, our reputation, our experience in the class struggle. This is the main task of communists at this stage. So, when you think about the election, what is electoral tactics and electoral strategizing? It is a valid tactic for communists to use even if that's not our end goal and actually our goals far exceed getting a few MPs elected to parliament. Yeah, it's a valid tactic and it can be used under certain circumstances and whatever else. I'll come on to whether that's like, exactly if we are right to be doing that right now. I can come on to that in a minute, but it is a valid thing, but we've got to think a little bit bigger as well. We've got to think beyond, like, okay, general election coming up, fine. We all know what the outcome of that election is going to be. Everybody knows there's going to be a right-wing labor government, like a Starmer labor government. And probably it's going to be a landslide as well. Yeah, probably will be a landslide. Probably will be a majority government. And that, we also know what kind of policies that government is going to carry out. Tory policies basically will attack workers. It will attack the welfare state, undermine the healthcare education, everything else. It'll be a continuation of the exact same policies we have now. So what is our main job is to prepare for that situation is to prepare for that right-wing labor government, which is going to be attacking workers and all the rest of it. What's going to happen is we're going to need the unions are going to need to struggle to defend workers' rights, workers' interests, workers' standards of living and so on. There's going to be a potentially massive eruptions of the class struggle in that period under that government. I'm thinking about examples from the 70s, right-wing labor government. It's the same thing. Communists need to get ready to get stuck into those movements. That's the main thing. That's what we have to prepare for right now. That's the RCP's main task is to prepare for that. And the point is we aren't big enough yet. We don't have the roots in the class that we need. We need to get educated, develop our reputation and knowledge, as I say, and get stuck in basically now to the class struggle as it exists. So that, I think, I mean, I'll come on in a moment. Well, where does electoral politics fit in in general to these things? But right now that is our main task. And that is what we're doing. That is what the RCP is up to at the moment. I mean, we talked a lot throughout the party lately. It was on the front cover of the second issue of the communist newspaper about Port Talbot. That's an example. Massive cuts being proposed to... They've started even... The redundancy notices are on their way out, I think, in Port Talbot. They're going to be massive cuts to the steelworks there. The communists have been getting stuck in. We haven't just been sat on the sidelines with that. We've been going door to door. We've been putting on meetings, attending the rallies, giving speeches, trying to agitate for the occupation of the steelworks for a proper fight back. We've been in discussion with the trade unionists and so on. So we're getting stuck into the class struggle. We're developing party amongst the working class in Port Talbot. And you can see, we're trying the same thing all over the country at the minute. In Birmingham, the council has gone bankrupt and now they're imposing the biggest cuts ever in the history of council cuts. £300 million in cuts that they're going to be carrying out on top of selling off, I think, like £700 or £750 million worth in assets. Public buildings, public assets and so on. That's right. I think they're sacking 700 workers or something like this. Cutting all culture funding. Bin collections are going to be halved. Even the street lights are going to be dimmed or something like that as well. It gives a real picture, I think, of a society in decay. I think that's the effect on consciousness that it'll have in Birmingham. That's it. And it is a catastrophic situation. And obviously there's a lot of anger around that. And so what are the comrades in Birmingham doing? They're not just writing articles about it, although they are, but they're going to the meetings. They're going to the demonstrations. They're giving speeches in the town centres on the recruitment stores that we're having and so on. And they're trying to connect with that anger. They're getting stuck into the struggle. That's the point. In fact, we can actually play a clip from one of those speeches right now for our listeners. They're taking away our services, but more importantly, they're taking away our communities. They're taking away our sense of, you know, relationship with one another. But we have the opportunity to leave the struggle, to show the way forward on how we can actually fight back and turn this from just a city-level struggle to a more national one. The way in which we inspire hope, the way in which we inspire more people to get out there is if we have clear demands, I think it's been pointed out that strike action is very much a show, a force, a way in which we show that we have the power. No to paying the debts. No to the cuts. We need to kick out these commissioners, kick out Max the Axon and his lackeys and make the bosses pay for this crisis, reverse the austerity through the profit of the big multi-nationals, of the banks who have squeezed this city for two months. They're squeezing for blood now, and they'll squeeze further. Thank you very much. And elsewhere, actually, talking of voting, it's certainly not a general election, but in Sheffield, the RCP comrades have been running in a student union election campaign. They ran for president. Fairly small campaign, just a few days long. They linked the question of Gaza, the question of a proper struggle, the whole Christy establishment, everything into this campaign. It's quite a broad thing. It wasn't on narrow student issues. It was a broad political campaign. And they did very, very well, and they got a real big echo among people. They're getting stuck in. They're connecting our ideas. Look, we study the ideas of Marxism. That's fundamental to what the RCP does. It's the reading groups. It's the theoretical study and discussion. It's also about taking those ideas into the class struggle and among students like they are in Sheffield and putting them in the form of campaigns and stuff like this. In Cardiff, the comrades have been linking up the struggle of doctors, the BMA. We have a comrade who's in the BMA in Cardiff. And he's been linking up with the Unite members who are running the bin strike in Cardiff. And they've had joint meetings. They've coordinated action. This is all on the initiative of the RCP in Cardiff. And it's getting results. In Cambridge, there's delivery riders that are agitating basically. There's a lot of anger around that. The comrades, again, they've been getting stuck here. They've been talking to people, interviewing them, linking them up, pushing the struggle forward constantly. In Newcastle, there's a lot of video games industry. There are massive layoffs in the video game industry at the moment. In Newcastle, we're getting stuck into that. We're putting on meetings. We're getting the workers together to discuss how we can fight back what can be done, how the struggle can actually be taken forward. Even things like they might not seem like a kind of proletarian section of society, but in Wales, the farmers are taking action. And there've been demonstrations, rallies and stuff in Wales. And again, the RCP's been going along, getting stuck in putting our ideas out there. And we've been surprised, to be honest, at how good the reception has been to communist ideas. So this is the work of the RCP at the minute. It's building support for our ideas by connecting with the class struggle, gaining members, gaining experience, building ourselves up basically on that basis. This is how you vote for the RCP, if you like. It's not putting a cross on a bit of paper and that's it, this kind of passive thing. It's get stuck in with us in this work in the class struggle. I think what runs through all of these examples that you've given is that we're turning towards the working class movement with an openly communist program, with open communist demands. Like for example, in the Sheffield Student Union elections, what was on our program? It was abolishing rent, getting rid of rent payments and giving free accommodation to all the students. It was raising demands like having staff and students control over the universities as a means to cut the university off from the arms companies and the imperialists and so on. And similarly, with the farmers movement that we intervened in as well, we were putting forward demands like make the billionaires pay, nationalize the banks and the billionaires and these kinds of demands, they're really shining through. They're really getting an echo, I would say. But I guess that leads us on to another part of this question then is that if we're not participating in elections right now, for the reasons that you've outlined, when would we consider doing something like that? Is that something that's on the horizon? Is it something that we can expect any time soon? What do you think about that? It's a tactical question. This is the thing about elections. We're not principally in a principled way for or against running in elections even if they are to a kind of bourgeois parliament at the end of the day, as we know, that parliament with a couple of revolutionary communist MPs that is not going to be the vehicle for revolution in Britain. We want something totally different. We want a working class in power. But nevertheless, you may well use an election campaign for parliament as a platform to get our ideas out to a wider area of people and so on. Now, you could imagine, hypothetically, for example, the situation in Port Talbot. Now, as it is the union leadership, you know, it's not doing too badly, but community, for example, this year, they're doing absolutely nothing. They're dampening down that struggle there. In fact, communities even refusing to ballot for action. They're completely dampening the struggle. It's a pretty bad situation facing the workers there. The union leaders, for whatever reason, decided to put up a fight. And the movement became quite big. And there was an occupation, the steelworks. And perhaps it would link up with those Welsh farmers, for example. And the struggle actually began to spread across Wales and over the border into England as well. And you saw the steelworks in Scunthorpe, for example, also coming out in solidarity. And then it's spreading to other industries and a movement really beginning to take place. Well, then you would start to think, how can we develop this movement forward? How can we link this movement to political questions and political demands? And you might look at the local MP for Port Talbot, who is, I think, Stephen Kinnick, a very right-wing Labour MP. And the son of Neil Kinnick. Neil Kinnick, yeah, that's right. And you might say, look, here is an opportunity. As part of this mass movement, here is an opportunity for the Revolutionary Communist Party to stand a candidate in an election against this guy and put forward our programme and our idea, linked entirely to that movement, basically. And it wouldn't be an election that is kind of facing towards Westminster and thinking that we can, if only we can get that MP seat, then we can change everything from Westminster. That's not the way we look at it. We would look at that campaign as part of this mass movement in the workplaces on the streets that we could kind of connect with some political demands, basically, and use it as a platform to raise our ideas. And you could imagine that in any of these situations, in Birmingham, for example, or in Cardiff or Cambridge or whatever, if these things actually became mass struggles, then you could see the potential for us, the kind of movement giving us the potential to stand a candidate in an election as part of that. The other requirement, though, is our own size and strength. We've got to be realistic about it. It's not a small undertaking to run in, for example, a general election financially and also in terms of organisation and campaigning and so on. We don't want to half-ass these things. We're going to do it properly. And for that, we've got to be bigger than what we are right now. So I think this is the main way. These are the two things to think about, basically, when it comes to running an election. So as it is with this upcoming general election, right now, we're making no plans. It doesn't look likely that we will be running any candidates. Obviously, things can change very quickly. We could all of a sudden become a really big organisation if lots of people hit this podcast and think, yeah, I'm going to join that. But that's possible. Can't rule it out for sure. And then you might get big mass movements bringing up somewhere where we happen to be very strong. In that case, we would get stuck in on that basis. But as it stands, that's not looking likely. But look, in the future, we'll get bigger. The movement's going to pick up. There'll be by-elections and the RCP will be there. Actually, all of this reminds me of an article that we put out recently in the Communist and also on our website of our comrades about 80 years ago in the original Revolutionary Communist Party, led by Ted Grant and Jock Hastin and their followers and so on, who, yeah, in a similar sort of situation to what you're describing, unofficial strikes of thousands of Welsh miners and so on, they decided to run in a by-election in actually Neath, which is right next to Patalbeth. And they mobilized hundreds of their members across the country. They all went into this little mining village. And they really electrified this town. They gave speeches outside of the mines. They helped meet things in the big town hall and so on. Debates with the Communist Party, who at the time were obviously a Stalinist. And they went door-to-door selling their newspaper, which at the time was called Socialist Appeal, and putting forward a communist program just like we would do today. So yeah, if comrades would like to read more about that, I'd highly recommend reading the article, which is available in the link in the show notes of this podcast. I think it's a very shining example of how Bolsheviks operate and how we can use things like this to build our organization. So yeah, you mentioned if someone wants to vote for us, and actually I think the reason why that question was sent in initially was because one of the comrades had a conversation with someone who said, oh, I haven't got enough time to join right now, but how can I vote for you guys? Well, you said that if you want to vote, then you need to vote with your time, with your money. So yeah, just to our listeners at home, people who maybe aren't members yet, how can they quote-unquote vote for the RCP today? Yeah, well, that's it. There's different things that you can do. The main thing that we need, the main thing that the RCP needs, is for people to get involved, to join us basically. We are not yet a mass party, a mass organization or anything else. What we are building here is a party filled with people who are willing to put the time in to educate themselves about politics, about Marxism, about communist ideas, and train themselves and be trained. That's what we do. We train people. We educate them in those ideas and we train them in how to connect those ideas to the class struggle. What we want, what we need is people who are able to stand up in front of a crowd of people and make the case and make the case for communism or for a socialist point of view or for a particular policy to link up, as they are in cards, to link up the bin workers' strike with the doctor's strike, for example. Make that case. Make those arguments. Give that speech. And all of it is founded on those ideas. And that obviously requires time. But what else are you spending your time on? We're talking about changing the world here. What are you spending your time on is more important than that. That's the main thing we need. That's the most important thing when it comes to being a member of the RCP. And if you've got the time or you can make the time, then that's what we want. And we want you to join and we need to spend your time on that. Obviously, not everybody does have the time and there are other things that it's possible to do. We have our newspaper and you can subscribe to the newspaper and you can get your ideas. That way you can hear about what we're up to, subscribe to the newspaper. You can get the subscription for yourself. You can get a bulk subscription and you can sell a few to a few other people as well. That also is a little bit of an investment of time, but it's not that much. And that would help us get the ideas out to a wider layer of people. So you can do that too. And then of course, we do need money. We do need people who donate to us. We don't have any big donors and so we need all the financial support we can get. So if you don't have a lot of time, but you have a little bit of money that you think you could be able to free up and to send our way, then obviously you can make yourself a regular donation or make a one-off donation. And that would be a big help too. But yeah, the main thing is is that we want people to join the RCP and not just join yourself but bring other people in, whether that's meet people you meet by selling our newspaper, for example, putting up some posters and some stickers, by having a big recruitment drive at the moment, join your party, join the RCP, but it's found in Congress coming up in May. That's what this is all about. We're building towards that. So join yourself, bring others in. If you're in a part of the country where we don't have anything at the moment, set up a cell, set up your own thing. There are a lot of people, thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions of people who are at least interested in the ideas of communism and you can have a discussion with them. You can sell them a copy of the communist newspaper and you can talk to them and you can try and get them involved and you can build a cell of this organization wherever you are, if it's in your school or your workplace or your local area, it can be done and we can send you the material that you need to do that, papers, posters and so on. So this is all the stuff that you can do. Yeah, it's more than checking a box and voting, but this is how we will build the foundation with which we can then have a party that can properly get our program out in general elections, participating in these mass movements in this way. So really everything needs to be focused on the question of recruitment, of building the RCP into a strong organization and I've been hearing some incredible success stories from across the international actually in the past week or so even. I think things are going very, very quickly at the moment. I mean, for example, in the U.S., our comrades have launched this new party just as we are called the Revolutionary Communists of America. They had their sort of meeting, their all-members meeting where they decided to do this and immediately afterwards in New York City, the comrades marched through Brooklyn with a big banner, loads of red flags with hammers and sickles on them and so on. And it was recorded and it was posted online and this got picked up. It went viral actually. It got shared by people on the left, people on the right. Jordan Peterson, I think, shared it. But I think more importantly, it got shared across the world in places like Russia, in China. 220 million people viewed this video. Just a video of the comrades marching and chanting and so on. It really sort of caught the imagination of people. That's it. It shows there's an appetite out there. People want to see this kind of stuff and the result has been extremely good. The comrades have had hundreds and hundreds of applications to join just off the back of that one video. And another success story that I heard was in Sweden, in fact. There was a young comrade, I think, who's just joined. I just got involved with our organization in Sweden. It's also called the RCPO, the RKP, I guess. And yeah, they immediately took a stack of newspapers and they went to a factory near where they live. I'm not sure what kind of factory it was, but yeah, they just stood outside. In fact, they walked straight through the gates and just started trying to sell this paper, chanting communist slogans and so on. And the security guard came up and tried to stop them, at which point the workers then intervened and wanted to hear what this young comrade had to say. And on the back of that, they managed to get 10 contact details and they're setting up a meeting right now of factory workers who are interested in getting organized in the Revolutionary Communist Party. There's no reason why we can't be using these exact methods right here in Britain. There's factories, there's workplaces everywhere, schools, colleges. What's stopping us? That's right. It shows what is possible. One of those examples that I gave, these places where we're getting stuck into the class struggle, the aim of every single one, Port Talbot, Cardiff, Cambridge, Newcastle, the aim should be to create a cell of delivery riders in Cambridge or a couple of cells of anyone actually, because this Port Talbot business, anyone in Port Talbot because this closure of the factory, of these job losses of the factory actually will affect the whole town. Or video game workers in Newcastle. Anywhere we get stuck in like that, with the aim of building a cell basically of workers in that particular industry or people involved in that particular struggle who can go beyond just the specifics of that struggle and actually fight for communism in general, build a cell of the Revolutionary Communist Party. That's the aim. That reminds me as well actually that the issue of the paper, issue four of the communists which is coming out today, in fact I think it's arriving right now as we speak, is going to have a special party building pull out which will have essentially an instruction manual step by step on how you at home can build a communist cell, a communist branch of the Revolutionary Communist Party. So if you want to get your hands on that paper, which also includes in fact our draft British perspectives document which will be discussed at the founding congress of the RCP which Ben mentioned earlier. If you want to subscribe to that paper, get your hands on it and head to communist.red forward slash subscribe or head to the link in the show notes of this podcast. So yeah, I think that brings us really to the end of this week's episode. Is there anything else that you'd like to say Ben? I know, I think that's covered it. And what are we going to discuss next week? Do you think anything in mind? Yeah, I think next week we should have a little chat about revolutionary finance, about the need to finance the party, how we do it and how it's different to how other political organizations finance themselves and some ideas, some good examples of how we can get the best out of the work of the comrades from the point of view of raising money. All right, well thanks very much for your time Ben. It's been a pleasure having you on the podcast and thanks to our listeners once again for tuning in to Marxist Voice, the podcast of the Communist and make sure you stay tuned for future episodes covering Marxist theory, revolutionary history, current events and party building brought to you by the international Marxist tendency. Have a good week.