AROUND 20 years ago, our party said we — the communists, the left, the forces of anti-imperialism — must make Palestine the “anti-apartheid cause of the 21st century.”

In other words, we should give at least the same priority, solidarity and effort to struggle for an independent, sovereign Palestinian state as we had to the struggle for a democratic, non-racial South Africa. That struggle against 20th century apartheid was led by the “revolutionary alliance” of the African National Congress, Cosatu (the Congress of South African Trades Unions) and the South African Communist Party.

Communists played a heroic role in that titanic struggle inside the country and across the world. We emphasised the need for unity around the one overriding aim: to abolish the apartheid system in South Africa. 

In that process, we helped build the working-class movement, not least through Sactu (the ANC’s trade union affiliate) and then Cosatu, and the then illegal South African Communist Party. Around these were formed broad popular mass movements. Communists staffed the leadership of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the ANC. 

The first secretary of the Communist Party of South Africa and the editor of its journal The International was a Welsh-speaking exile from Aberystwyth, David Ivon Jones, buried with honours in Moscow after serving there with the Comintern as an associate of Lenin, Bukharin, Trotsky and Zinvoviev. 

In June, to mark the centenary of his death, communists are organising a festival in his home town, together with local Labour Party and Welsh Language Society members, trade unionists, supporters of Cuba Solidarity, town councillors and his native non-conformist chapel.

We will be joined by SACP representatives and among the films we hope to show is London Recruits, telling the story of those courageous young comrades from Britain who carried out clandestine work in Africa for the ANC in the 1960s and ’70s.

Nelson Mandela paid tribute not only to the part played by David Ivon Jones in the fight against racism and apartheid, but also to the many forms of solidarity provided by the Anti-Apartheid Movement in Britain, and by Cuba, the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries.

Mandela himself was a member of the central committee of the SACP when arrested in 1962.

The people of South Africa liberated themselves from apartheid, but they have never forgotten those who assisted them in their decades of need. These included many Jews in South Africa and around the world, but not the state of Israel, which lent financial and military support to the apartheid regime over a crucial 20-year period.

That is why the South African government stands in solidarity with the Palestinian people today and at the International Court of Justice at the Hague is charging the state and government of Israel with committing war crimes in Gaza. 

The magnitude of those crimes is beyond dispute for anyone with a television. The pictures more than outweigh the partial and selective coverage provided by most of the broadcasting media.

Just think of some of the most infamous massacres of defenceless women, men and children in modern history: Drogheda, Glencoe, Wounded Knee, Jallianwaga Bhag (or Amritsar), Guernica, Oradour sur Glane, Lidice, My Lai, Sharpeville … Count up the dead bodies. Then multiply that number by four. Now you have the scale of the mass murder of innocent civilians in Gaza in the three months since the Hamas attack last October.

Israel is punishing the whole Palestinian population for the criminal actions of Hamas on October 7, which themselves cannot be condemned without condemning the criminal record of Israeli governments when it comes to international law, human rights, the illegal occupation of Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese territory, the imprisonment with trial of thousands of Palestinian civilians and the forced exclusion of millions of Palestinian refugees from their homeland.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu heads a criminal regime that should be condemned and confronted as much of the world once confronted South African apartheid. Instead, it is supported, armed and financed by the US, British and other Western governments, states and corporations.

We send warships to the Middle East not to rescue the Palestinian people from slaughter, disease and starvation, but to ensure safe passage for Israel’s shipping trade!

With logistical and surveillance support from British military bases in Cyprus, the US and Israeli bombing of targets in Lebanon, Syria and Iran threaten to spread bloodshed across the region.

Of course, the peoples of these countries — like the Palestinians — have the right to defend themselves against imperialist intervention, although the likely consequences of retaliating must also be taken into account, especially the consequences for civilian populations facing a genocidal enemy.

For our part, as communists and part of the left, we have to intensify our work in solidarity with Palestine, including in support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign, inspired by the historic victory over apartheid.

In particular, we have to expose the moral bankruptcy not only of Britain’s Conservative government, but also his majesty’s loyal opposition — loyal, that is, to the interests of big business and its state apparatus, to capitalist market forces, to United States foreign policy, Nato and Britain’s stockpile of nuclear weapons of mass destruction.

This year will almost certainly see a general election. Clearly, while millions of people face a new round of energy price rises as the British economy stagnates, there needs to be the mass rejection of the Tory government. 

But there also needs to be a rejection of its neoliberal, anti-democratic, anti-working class and racist policies on every front.

Labour’s current prospectus offers no such change. The same spivs, crooks and profiteers are to be left in charge of our energy, banking, transport, housing and armaments sectors.

The reliance of Keir Starmer and shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves on economic growth to fund investment in economic infrastructure, technology and a green transition to zero net carbon is transparently disingenuous. 

The OECD, the IMF, the Office for Budget Responsibility and other bodies all forecast an economic slowdown over the coming 12 months in Britain, the EU and the US to growth of 1.5 per cent or less. In China, most estimates forecast growth of 4.5 to 5 per cent. No doubt, though, we will continue to hear every week that the Chinese economy is on the brink of a crisis, while its economy — based on economic planning and public ownership of its key sectors — continues to grow at three times the rate of the most advanced capitalist ones.

Progressive taxation and increased government borrowing are the two most appropriate sources of financial investment for any progressive Labour government. Labour’s rejection of both sends the required signal to monopoly capitalism that its profits and wealth will not be threatened by a Labour government. 

Nonetheless, the Communist Party’s general election policy is clear: a Labour victory will raise working-class and people’s morale and demands. Building a united front and a mass movement, going on the offensive from the left against a right-wing Labour government, is preferable to fighting another five years of defensive battles against an even more right-wing Conservative government.

That means voting Labour in a clear majority of parliamentary constituencies. But there will be seats where the worst, most reactionary Labour candidates will be challenged by left candidates — including communists — who stand for public ownership and investment, wealth redistribution, nuclear disarmament and peace instead of imperialist war. 

In consultation with our branches and district and national committees, the new Communist Party executive will decide where we will campaign for the alternatives to right-wing Labour.

In the meantime, we will maximise the number of communist candidates in the English local elections on May 9.

We will also mark 2024 — the centenary year of Lenin’s death — with a series of events to promote his analysis of imperialism, the state, alliances, socialist revolution, the national question and the revolutionary party. 

The Leninist contribution to Marxism has much to teach today, in a world where monopoly capital and its use of state power use their enormous productive power for the benefit of a few at the expense of the billions.

Later this year, too, the Communist Party of Britain and our friends and allies will be celebrating the historic achievements of the People’s Republic of China, proclaimed by Mao Zedong on October 1 1949. After 75 years, the east is still red!