A red salute to departed comrades
Towards the end of 2008, we had the sad duty of saying farewell to three
outstanding comrades, who had served the proletarian revolutionary cause with
great distinction for many decades. At the same time we draw renewed determination
and inspiration from the example of their life and work for the cause of
communism.
CATHIE MAJID
Comrade Cathie Majid passed away in late November at the age
of 80. She was a founder member of the Stalin Society and served as its first
secretary from 1991-1996. Cathie made an immense contribution to the Stalin
Society’s work of setting the record straight on the achievements of Soviet
socialism, defending Stalin and his work on the basis of fact and refuting
capitalist, revisionist, opportunist and Trotskyist propaganda directed against
him
A lifelong communist, Cathie was born and grew up in a
Scottish mining town and both her parents were members of the Communist Party
of Great Britain (CPGB). In the early 1950s, she married Kamal Majid, an Iraqi
communist, and moved with him to Baghdad. It was a time of great revolutionary
upheaval in that country and Cathie plunged herself into the work of the Iraqi
Communist Party, which at that time had massive popular support. She edited the
party’s English language publication, Iraqi Review. Such was her
commitment to the Iraqi people and their revolution that, after her death, an
old friend wrote from Baghdad, describing her as a staunch Iraqi patriot as
well as an internationalist fighter for communism.
Cathie was bitterly disappointed by the failure of the Iraqi
revolution as the party’s leaders subordinated the people’s struggle to
Khrushchev’s dirty deals with US imperialism. This experience led her to become
a resolute opponent of revisionism for
the rest of her political life. Returning to Britain, she actively supported
the anti-revisionist positions put forward by the Communist Party of China and
opposed the revisionist CPGB leadership’s attacks on Stalin and the Chinese
comrades. Inevitably, she was one of the many genuine communists expelled from
the CPGB at that time. She became a founder of Friends of China and served as
its National Secretary for a time.
Cathie impressed all comrades who knew her, both by her strong
revolutionary spirit as well as her great personal kindness and warmth. The
Stalin Society held a memorial meeting in her honour on 14 December, with
speakers including Comrades Kamal Majid, Harpal Brar, Iris Cremer, Keith
Bennett and Stewart Macdonald.
MARIE SHAPIRO
Comrade Marie Shapiro passed away just a couple of days before
what would have been her 95th birthday. Marie was born in London on 11 December
1913 and her parents moved back to Poland in 1914. At the age of 15, she joined
the Polish Young Communist League and soon after the Communist Party of Poland.
Poland was then under the fascist rule of Pilsudski and the communist party
was working underground in conditions of illegality. As a teenager, Marie
served a prison sentence of nine months for distributing the party’s May Day
leaflets. After her release, her parents were
able to obtain a British passport for her and she was deported from Poland.
Arriving in Britain, Marie joined the Communist Party of Great
Britain and got work as a seamstress in the tailors’ shops in London’s east end. She never
stayed in one job for very long as everywhere she went she recruited young
women workers to the Taylor and Garment Workers Trade Union and also to the
communist movement. Equally, she never held back from taking on the officials
of her trade union, when she felt that they were looking after their own
interests rather than those of the young women workers. In 1933, one year after her arrival in
London, Marie met Jack Shapiro, in a communist bookshop in London. They were
soon married and were the closest comrades and best friends until Marie’s dying
day.
Marie Shapiro was active in many of the key struggles of the
British working class, including the anti-fascist struggle at Cable Street and the work to support Republican Spain. With the founding of the People’s
Republic of Poland after the Second World War, she went to work in the Polish
Embassy in London, helping to reunite and support families who had been divided
and decimated by the ravages of fascism and war.
In 1949, Marie’s brother-in-law, Michael Shapiro, then a
communist councillor in Stepney, moved to Beijing to help the Xinhua News
Agency at the request of the Chinese Communist Party. Already a staunch
supporter of the Chinese revolution, Marie’s own political and personal life
was henceforth deeply bound up with the People’s Republic, in whose defence she
never wavered. She visited China ten times and taught Chinese comrades, from
the embassy, Xinhua, the state-owned banks and elsewhere, both English language
and much about British society to assist them in their work. Days before her
death, her nephew visited her from Beijing and, in some of her last spoken
words, Marie said that she looked forward to visiting China again.
Like her husband Jack, Marie also fought for the rights of
people with disabilities, particularly the deaf and those suffering from
tinnitus. Both their names are given to an annual award for tinnitus research.
She herself battled near blindness for many years.
On 19 January 2008, Marie Shapiro accepted honorary membership
of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist). Jack received her
party card on her behalf and told of how delighted she was to once again be in
the ranks of a Marxist-Leninist party. Marie was a staunch fighter against
revisionism and was overjoyed to see the birth and development of the CPGB(ML).
She said to Jack that they had waited so long to see the rebirth of a decent
communist party in Britain after the CPGB had been undermined and destroyed by
revisionism, and that she was heartened to see the emergence of such a party
before she died.
A delegation from the CPGB(ML) attended Comrade Marie’s
funeral on 12 December.
TEJA SINGH SAHOTA
Comrade Teja Singh Sahota passed away at his family home in Leamington Spa
on 11 December following a battle with pancreatic cancer. On 31 December he
would have celebrated his 83rd birthday.
Teja was a communist militant in India and played a leading role in the
communist and progressive movements in Britain, as an active trade unionist and
shop steward, a leader of the Indian workers and an ardent anti-revisionist. He
was born in a peasant family in Punjab and was a student at the time of
partition. As throughout his life, he was a resolute opponent of communalism
and he was actively involved in saving numerous Muslim families from chauvinist
mobs.
Having been a member of the Communist Party of India, he joined the
Communist Party of Great Britain on his arrival in 1953. He settled in the Coventry area, and then in Leamington Spa, working in mines and factories over the years.
For more than five decades, he played a leading role in the Indian Workers’
Association (IWA GB). In particular, he was the President of its Leamington Spa
and Warwick branch from 1954 until he drew his last breath. He was elected as
Vice President of the national IWA in 1959 and served as its President from
1967-1991, continuing in leading posts thereafter.
Cde Teja was a proud supporter of JV Stalin and Mao Zedong and a strong
opponent of revisionism. In India, he successively gave his support to the
Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Communist Party of India
(Marxist-Leninist). In Britain, he rejected the revisionism of the CPGB and in
1966, he became a founder member of the Association of Indian Communists in Britain (AIC) and was elected to its Central Committee and Secretariat. In 1967, he was
elected as the General Secretary of the AIC. He visited China as a member of AIC delegations invited by the Chinese Communist Party.
As a prominent leader of the AIC and the IWA(GB), Teja worked to defend
the rights of Indian workers in Britain against racist oppression and class
exploitation, to defend all communities victimised by racism, to support the
class struggle of the British proletariat, to defeat revisionism and rebuild a
Marxist-Leninist party in Britain, and to support the revolution in India and
throughout the world.
Comrade Harpal Brar, Editor of Lalkar, and a delegation of the
CPGB(ML) attended Comrade Teja’s funeral on 23 December.
CONCLUSION
Comrades Cathie Majid, Marie Shapiro and Teja Singh Sahota were three
outstanding comrades who did not waver in the defence of Marxism-Leninism.
Lalkar is proud to have known them as comrades and friends. Although
no longer with us, their legacy will continue to inspire us, along with future
generations. Their steadfast rejection of revisionism and their resolute
opposition to imperialism are as relevant today as ever.
They gave their lives to the finest cause on earth, the
liberation of mankind. We shall always remember them.