THE two years since our 57th Party congress have seen events and developments that could determine the shape of the future for two decades and more.

In July 2024, Keir Starmer was propelled into 10 Downing Street to lead a Labour government with one of the biggest majorities of MPs in British history — and one of the smallest shares of the popular vote of any majority government.

I want to highlight six critical events and developments since then that could determine the direction of our society.

Firstly, the election of Donald Trump and the Republican Party to office on November 5 2024. On that same day in 1605, Guy Fawkes and his confederates tried to blow up the Westminster Parliament. Four centuries later, President Trump and his rabid regime are taking a wrecking ball to the US constitution and its Bill of rights, to international agreements on human rights, arms control, trade and — as though symbolically — even to the White House.

The United States is dismantling the old world order and marginalising its institutions and treaties — the United Nations, Unesco, the World Trade Organisation, the Paris Climate Accords — by economic and military brute force. The constraints placed upon rampant Western imperialism by the Soviet Union and the socialist states of eastern Europe no longer exist. Even the pretence of “military intervention with a human face,” deployed by Tony Blair, Clinton and Bush, has been discarded.

Second, the perpetration of genocide in Gaza, live-streamed into our homes daily despite Israeli efforts to assassinate Palestinian journalists and prevent all media access to the scenes of the crimes. We cannot see the thousands of dead civilians lying beneath the rubble, but we can see the rubble itself, and the corpses of those scores of thousands of defenceless Palestinian women, children and men destroyed by the Israeli mass murder machine.

Third, militarism has been revived to spread like a cancer through the US, Britain and the European Union (with the notable exceptions of the Irish Republic and — until recently — Spain). Driven by Trump and Nato, countries are ramping up their military spending, much of it to the profit of Trump’s backers in the US military-inustrial complex.

Meanwhile politicians, mass media, think tanks and institutes whip up war-fever, aimed not only at Russia but ultimately at China. They claim to be defending so-called “Western values,” democracy and human rights. Tell that to Palestinian victims of Israeli genocide!

The same champions of Western imperialism have long failed the test of upholding human rights in Africa. The current genocide in Sudan is the product of Western and Middle East intervention to back local anti-democratic and sectarian forces in order to promote their own economic, geopolitical or ostensibly religious interests.
We salute the communists and their allies in Sudan who continue their courageous fight for human and democratic rights, for unity and for popular sovereignty.

The rash of Western military bases across the central belt of Africa — from French and US bases in Senegal, Burkina Faso, Niger and Gabon in the west to mostly US bases in Congo, Uganda and Kenya in the east — are not there by accident or tradition. They are there to challenge China in the competition for vital mineral resources and to restrict South Africa’s progress as a regional power.

Where Chinese transnational corporations — most of them in public ownership by the way — build roads, railways, schools and clinics in developing countries, the Western powers build military bases.

Where developing countries produce their own governments determined to pursue their own path of people-centred development, US-led imperialism organises trade embargoes, subversion, sabotage and military coups.

Just two days ago, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced the start of “Operation Southern Spear,” a major escalation of military action to remove what he and Trump call “narco-terrorism” from the western hemisphere, which — Hesgeth informs us — is in fact “America’s neighbourhood.”

It used to be called “America’s back-yard” and comprises North, Central and South America and the Caribbean, including the Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal — all territories Trump has threatened to annex. But we should be under no misapprehension about what the so-called “war on narco- terrorism” is really about. It’s much more than the illegal obliteration of small fishing vessels off the coasts of Venezuela, Colombia or Nicaragua.

The real aim of Operation Southern Spear is the overthrow of anti-imperialist governments in Latin America, beginning with President Maduro’s government in oil- rich Venezuela, no doubt cheered on by Maria Machado, this year’s war-mongering winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Comrades and friends, let me make one thing clear. The Communist Party of Britain condemns the attempts to deprive the Venezuelan Communist Party of its legal identity, assets and its rights as an electoral party. We have expressed our solidarity with the Venezuelan communists in words and actions. But we also recognise the place of the Maduro regime as an ally of Cuba, oil-rich Brazil, Chile and other left and progressive governments in the struggle against US domination, and for human dignity, self-determination and social justice. That’s why we say: Viva Cuba! Viva Venezuela!

Fourth, with the “new imperialism” of the post-Soviet “New World Order” — remember that? — has gone not only a resurgence of militarism in place of the short-lived “peace dividend.” Drawing upon the legacy of older imperialisms, we are witnessing also the resurgence of racism and national chauvinism in societies built not only on labour exploitation at home, but also on the slave trade, slavery and colonial plunder: Britain, France, the United States, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Italy … I could go on.

In these countries, parties of the “new right,” the far right and the self-styled “post-fascist” right are on the march, their ranks swollen in Europe by millions of working-class people who see no hope of a better life in the promises of professional politicians. In particular, the promises of the old social-democratic and labour parties have turned to ashes in the mouth as these parties embraced neoliberal policies of austerity, privatisation, deregulation and marketisation.

But instead of attacking these policies at their source — capitalism and its desperation to reverse the long-term decline in the corporate rate of profit since the early 1950s — millions of electors have turned to the far right, influenced by anti-socialist political and media interests to blame immigrants, asylum-seekers and refugees for low wages, poor housing, rising crime and shrinking social services.

The sixth feature to highlight is the inability or refusal of the major capitalist powers and the giant corporate polluters to accelerate — or even maintain — the drive to curb carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions. Much of the cost of developing green energy alternatives has been dumped on working-class customers and consumers, as the conservative, new right and far-right parties remind them. Forgotten is the motivation for this very approach: namely, the desire to protect company profits instead of making the polluters pay.

Added to this is the well-funded propaganda campaign to deny the reality of global warming and its specific effects today and tomorrow, beginning with the dire impact of climate change and weather chaos on some of the world’s poorest and most defenceless communities.

So why is all this happening now: the turn towards the far right in major capitalist countries, the tariff wars, the resource wars, the militarism, the resurgence of racism, the failure to combat climate change? The Communist Party’s main congress resolution explains how these are all aspects of capitalism’s general crisis. They arise from the need of monopoly capital and its state power to halt and reverse the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. This can be done in various ways, but their effects are temporary and will in time restore that tendency with a vengeance, until a calamitous war or a deep economic depression destroys capital and labour values on a massive scale.

But such outcomes are not inevitable. The forces exist, with the working-class and labour movement at their core, that can be organised, mobilised and politicised to resist and fight back. And not only that, but they could — armed with a strategy, a programme, a clear line of march — open the road to the overthrow of capitalism and the construction of a new, socialist society.

Here in Britain, in today’s conditions as they actually are and free from wishful thinking, we need to understand at least the following realities — and help win millions more people to that same understanding:

Firstly, this current Labour government has forfeited any right to expect the loyalty or support of the working class and progressive-minded people. It has betrayed those who voted for it 16 months ago. Not because this is a weak or cowardly government, but because it is politically and ideologically committed to the interests of big business and the City of London, to the Nato alliance of imperialist powers led by the US (and whoever is its president), to massive conventional and nuclear rearmament.

These come first for the Labour leadership, and this explains why we have seen the partial withdrawal of the winter fuel allowance for pensioners; the refusal to lift the two-child benefit cap; the attack on disability claimants; the deep cut to overseas development aid; the reliance on “military Keynesianism” to boost industry (shovelling yet more public money into Britain’s corrupt and wasteful military-industrial complex); the capitulation to US demands to buy US weapons and participate militarily in Israel’s war of extermination; and its surrender to right-wing media and Reform UK demands to demonise, exclude and deport refugees.

How can we ask anybody to support such a grotesque parody of a Labour government? Can the Labour Party be reclaimed, even if only as a social democratic party? The immediate prospects are remote, although we should never say “never” for as long as the trade union link survives. But any cosmetic change of government policy now or in Chancellor Reeves’s forthcoming Budget cannot be regarded as anything other than sham opportunism.

That does not mean that we stop supporting those Labour MPs and candidates who share many of our own party’s aspirations and policies. What about the Green Party under its new leader Zack Polanski? One new star does not a constellation make. His own party has not fought to defend the sex-based identity, status, rights and separate facilities for women. Its turn to Nato undermines its support for unilateral British and multilateral nuclear disarmament and its support for re-entry to the EU means support for “free market” big business capitalism and for the EU’s extensive militarisation in tandem with Nato. Again, there may still be dissident Green candidates that would strengthen the voice of the left in the Scottish, Welsh or Westminster parliaments.

What of the new left party, whose name cannot yet be spoken?
Many socialists will join it, despite the chaos attending its recruitment and financial arrangements so far. But what will its position be on Nato, the EU and nuclear weapons, and on the question of women’s rights? How will it deal with the ultra-leftist and disruptive activities of sectarian groups and factions? This is not to say, once more, that some or many “new left party” candidates cannot be supported at election time. The same is true of other candidates standing for Plaid Cymru, the SNP and smaller left-wing parties. Tactical voting might prevent Reform UK victories at the polls, although it is difficult to imagine how an anti-left Lib Dem, Labour or Welsh or Scottish nationalist MP would do anything other than let down the electors and drive even more of them into the arms of Reform UK.

In any event, a deeper and wider offensive is needed which exposes the class character of that party’s multimillionaire leadership and its pro-big business, pro-City of London, pro-privatisation and anti-trade union, anti-workers’ rights and anti- Scottish and Welsh devolution policies.

Building a united front of trade union, working-class and progressive movements and parties is the only solid basis on which a sustainable alternative to both Reform UK and this Labour government can be built. And that will require a much stronger, better-organised Communist Party, armed with its Marxist-Leninist perspectives and its revolutionary programme for peace, progress and socialism.

Comrades and friends, this is my last speech to a Communist Party congress as the party’s general secretary. After 27 years, I will be standing down at the first meeting of the new EC which you will elect tomorrow. That’s long enough, although my commitment to this party and the cause of communism is as strong as ever. I want to thank you for allowing me the honour to serve what Nikolai Ostrovsky called the “finest cause in all the world — the fight for the liberation of humanity.”

In particular, I must express my gratitude to those comrades who have chaired the Communist Party while putting up with me as general secretary: the late Richard Maybin, Anita Halpin, Bill Greenshields, Liz Payne and Ruth Styles. During that time, through your efforts and those of several thousand other comrades, the Communist Party of Britain has grown stronger, more influential and — believe it or not — better organised. Central to our advance has been the growth in influence of the Morning Star, a vital asset whose growth is intimately aligned with the future growth of our party. The Communist Party of Britain is firmly part of an international movement that the planet and its peoples need as much if not more than ever.

That’s why I end my speech with these slogans: Long live the Communist Party of Britain! Long live the international communist movement! On to socialism and communism!