Last weekend, the eight branches of the North West region of the Revolutionary Communist Party gathered for a regional aggregate meeting and cadre school.
With our biggest ever attendance for a regional meeting, and a high level of political understanding and inspiration, the event was a huge success in every respect, and marked a qualitative step for the region.
Political training
Last Saturday saw 17 of the current and prospective leading comrades in the North West region or the RCP meet together in Manchester to discuss Marxist ideas, world perspectives, and our heritage as a party.
The first talk, ‘Can we know the truth?’ detailed how Marxist philosophy sheds light on the question of knowledge and how we come to achieve it
The talk, given by leading Manchester RCP member Leah Harthill, laid out that it is our duty to put this philosophy into practice by fighting to change the world.
This not only helps us gain deeper insight into the underlying processes around us, but it allows us to defend ourselves from the poisonous ideas of the ruling class, who deny the very idea of objective truth in order to uphold their dying, irrational system.
View this post on Instagram
For the second session of the day, leading Liverpool RCP member Tom Wood gave a talk on ‘The decline of US imperialism’ which followed the US through its journey to becoming the largest, most dominant imperial power ever seen, through to its current relative decline.
The crisis of capitalism is serving to weaken the US’ hegemony, with economic and geopolitical fault lines deepening, and other countries, such as China and Russia, beginning to threaten Washington’s global economic position.
On the back of this talk, a number of copies of Wellred’s latest title Colossus: The Rise and Decline of US Imperialism flew off of our book stall!
Finally, RCP Central Committee member Sarah Vedrovitch led off on ‘The emergence of Trotskyism’, detailing the rise of the Stalinist bureaucracy in the USSR, how Trotsky analysed this rebuilt the forces of international communism, and the indispensable role played by Ted Grant in re-knotting the broken thread of Trotskyism in Britain.
The learning didn’t stop there, however, as comrades continued the discussions at an evening social, with home-made food and drinks. The evening even included some communist sing-a-longs to show off comrades’ impressive (and not so impressive) vocals.
Preparing for Congress
On Sunday, 45 comrades from Lancashire to Merseyside arrived bright and (reasonably) early in Withington, South Manchester for another day of engaging discussion.
We kicked off the day with a talk on ‘British perspectives’, given by Central Committee member Jack Tye Wilson, in preparation for the RCP’s upcoming Second Congress.
The talk covered the turmoil of the global capitalist system, which Britain is caught in the middle of, and the deep economic malaise in the UK’s economy.
It also focused on how the absence of a genuine left leadership has made way for Farage’s Reform UK to take advantage of the anti-establishment mood brewing amongst ordinary people.
Only a mass revolutionary party, capable of addressing the problems workers face on a class basis, can cut across the fog of right-wing demagogy. That is the force we are striving to build.
Comrades were incredibly inspired by the discussion, leading to eight extra tickets to our National Congress being sold in the break.
In the second session covering the RCP’s tasks and methods, the report given by leading Lancaster RCP member Adam Baguley focussed upon the importance of developing Marxist cadres, as it is only with a strong theoretical foundation that we can recruit and grow.
The discussion also focussed heavily on the importance of our work on university campuses, with lessons provided from budding student branches. There was also a striking number of contributions on how to use our party newspaper, The Communist.
With an understanding of how to carry out our tasks, the region voted unanimously to achieve the following targets before our national Congress in May:
- Recruit ten people (i.e. 20 percent growth of active membership)
- Increase subs income by £500 overall, without letting the average sub drop below £55
- Raise £9,000 in fighting fund
We then voted on the slate for our incoming Regional Committee, bringing onto the body a leading comrade in Preston, whose hard work since September has led to the creation of a lively, youthful branch in Preston.
Finally, leading Manchester RCP member Alex Palmer led a discussion on ‘How Marxists are formed’.
He recounted how pioneers of our movement like Marx, Engels, Plekhanov, and Lenin not only produced outstanding achievements in the realm of theory, but carried them out in practice by building their respective parties and leading the working class in struggle.
Dedication
An inspiring finance report finished off the day, resulting in comrades raising their overall membership subs income by £193 per month across the region – a great step towards our target!
Comrades additionally came up with several creative ideas to raise our goal of £9,000 in fighting fund, including film nights and communist merchandise.
What’s more, even before fundraising had begun, a whopping £6,000 was personally pledged by party members present.
The spirit in the room was like an auction house, as comrades competed over who could pledge the most money. Outstandingly, two worker comrades personally pledging £1,000 each!
On top of this, books, magazines, and pamphlets were flying off the stall, with £250 of material being bought over the weekend. This will contribute towards our new regional fund which we will use to invest in more literature and material.
One new comrade summed up the mood in the room, saying that they had never felt more encouraged to learn and understand the world!
For many comrades, including myself, this was the first regional event we attended. The weekend certainly left an impression, showing just a fraction of the revolutionary potential across the region.
Already since the event, two new comrades have been recruited – only eight more to go until May!
