Revolution Festival 2025 was phenomenal. This was the largest communist event in Britain in decades.
Youthful energy, a burning desire to study Marxism, revolutionary optimism, and unmatched theoretical clarity were all on display at last weekend’s ‘School of Communism’.
The numbers speak for themselves: 1,188 tickets were sold, leading to packed-out rooms in all 33 sessions, and a record-breaking £365,000 was raised for the Revolutionary Communist Party’s fighting fund.
What’s more, it was announced at Saturday’s rally that the RCP has now surpassed 1,300 members in Britain – our highest membership figure to date.
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As Bristol RCP member Ash remarked, “even being 10 or 15 minutes early to a session would risk you not getting a seat, because the room was already full of early people eager to secure a spot!”
First-time attendee Esther from Reading, meanwhile, described the weekend as “one of those events I know will mark me for life.”
“I think I underestimated how great of a feeling it would be to be in a room filled with a thousand other comrades, seeing and meeting so many people that want to fight for the same cause as you.”
Alongside attendees from the length and breadth of Britain, we welcomed delegations from 19 other sections and groups of the Revolutionary Communist International: from former Yugoslavia, the Spanish state, Canada, Ireland, Denmark, Brazil, and elsewhere.
Opening the Festival on Friday evening, Alan Woods commented on how far we have come as an International:
“I joined this organisation in 1960… but most of that time we were fighting against the stream. Most of the time we could do nothing right, and the capitalists could do nothing wrong.
“For the first time in history that I can remember, the tide of history is turning in our direction.”
The entire weekend was a testament to this.
“You wouldn’t find this anywhere else”
Across 33 sessions, this year’s Revolution Festival covered everything from the fundamentals of Marxist theory; to the role of figures like Malcolm X, Mao Zedong, and Fidel Castro; to historical subjects like the Reformation, the Spanish Civil War, and the history of the Palestinian resistance.
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In each of these sessions, the aim of the discussions was not just to recount details of the past, but to understand the processes behind them – and what lessons these hold for us today.
Tasha from Cambridge was blown away: “The level of analysis, the depth of education you get – I was sat there and I was like, ‘you wouldn’t find this anywhere else’.”
The sheer range of topics on offer was noted by many attendees this year. Some on the left try and reduce Marxism down to ‘bread-and-butter’ issues. But this is alien to the spirit of Marxism, which regards all aspects of society as deserving study – including the arts and sciences.
Our sessions on surrealist art, the pioneering work of Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich, as well as the crisis in cosmology, were all extremely well attended. It was a thorough rebuke to the idea that Marxism is a dry class-reductionist dogma.
While introducing the session on surrealism, Central Committee member Will Collins quoted American surrealist Franklin Rosemont:
“Are we to presume that the workers do not dream, do not love, do not imagine, do not go mad? And must these problems fall outside the sphere of Marxist interest?”
In his summary, Will reflected on the bourgeois revolutions, which led to an explosion of art, just by liberating one percent of the population:
“Imagine what we will be able to do by liberating the other 99 percent. We could have Einsteins, Trotskys, and Andre Brettons on every street corner. That is what we are fighting for.”
These artistic and creative talents of RCP members were also on display in the merchandise on offer, which included an oil painting of Ted Grant, a handmade amigurumi Karl Marx, crocheted RCP hats and balaclavas, Lenin candles, and handmade ceramic plates – to name but a few!.
Alongside this, the Saturday night social included two amazing performances by our in-house rock bands, Apes and The Vanguard.
Desire to learn
Revolution Festival was far from an internal party school. Over 100 attendees were new to the RCP, and a number of them came along after having seen posters on the street. This includes a university student, Millie, who told us:
“I’ve been interested in getting more active and getting more involved, so that’s what initially drew me here. My experience with the event has been really, really good. I found that with other parties, they are internationalists in name only – they don’t really go into depth. For example, we just had a discussion here on Ibrahaim Traoré, and it really illustrated the living aspect of Marxist theory.”
The burning desire to learn, to know, to get active and involved was also remarked upon in Fiona Lali’s talk about the life of Malcolm X, who said of himself that “reading awoke a long dormant craving to be mentally alive.”
This same sentiment was evident in the pages of notes that attendees made, the scramble to buy books and magazines after each session, and the hubbub of excited conversation and debates in the corridors and courtyards.
“I came away from Revolution Festival with an intense desire to just read,” shared Katie from Lancaster. “Less than half an hour after I got off the train, I was already pulling out an article that had been gathering dust in my desk drawer for a few weeks. And I have a clear plan for my own education over the coming months now.”
“I thought I knew about Marxism,” another attendee from Leeds told us, “but now I realise there’s a whole other level that I’m not even close to. I feel like I’m in a race against time. I need to dedicate the rest of my life to understanding these ideas.”
This energy and seriousness was certainly matched in literature sales, with hundreds of books, pamphlets, and copies of The Communist being sold over the weekend – leading to a record £9,000 of revenue for Wellred Books – Britain’s Marxist bookshop.
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Recruit, recruit, recruit!
On Sunday evening, Fiona Lali summed up the incredible weekend, and hit on what really separates us as Marxists from everything else out there on the left. She explained:
“Sometimes what you can find in the youth is a kind of petty-bourgeois culture that promotes cynicism. It’s very embarrassing or very uncool if you try hard at things. We have to combat that. Very much so.
“In fact, when you join the RCP… we will be very honest and very blunt: we are going to ask you to try hard for the rest of your life. And we won’t apologise for that either, because what we are trying hard for is the most important task in history.”
This was also impressed upon attendees by political secretary of the RCP, Rob Sewell, at Saturday night’s rally. In response to Zarah Sultana, who recently admitted that the troubled ‘Your Party’ might be a “40-year project”, Rob declared:
“The working class hasn’t got 40 years. Workers are hanging on by the skin of their teeth. They need solutions now. Our task is to offer a revolutionary programme to abolish the dictatorship of the banks and the capitalists.”
The palpable sense of determination, this unapologetic call to urgently rise up to the tasks posed by history, was not just empty phraseology.
Our confidence and audacity is not baseless by any means. It’s grounded in our clear understanding of Marxist theory, perspectives, and the history of our movement.
History is moving in our direction. Young people are burning with anger at this dead-end system, and many are looking for a revolutionary alternative. We have everything we need to make leaps and bounds in the coming period.
The immediate task posed to all the branches of the RCP was to ride this wave of enthusiasm in order to build the party, as an urgent and necessary task.
As Fiona pointed out, if every branch recruits just one person who shares our desire to change the world, this would lead to 1,400 RCP members in Britain, laying the foundation for reaching 2,000 comrades in the coming year.
The final words of the Fiona’s closing speech summed the task at hand:
“If we have that conviction, then we can go much, much more beyond that. What we are talking about is the building of a Revolutionary Communist Party in Britain, a Revolutionary Communist International across the world, and the victory of the world socialist revolution!”
