Founding anniversary of Korean party marked
The Friends of Korea organised a meeting in the
John Buckle Centre, south London, on 9 October to celebrate the 63rd founding
anniversary of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK), which fell the next day.
Chaired by Comrade Harpal Brar, the main speech was
given by Comrade Keith Bennett, a leading member of the Friends of Korea who is
also the Secretary General of the International Kim Il Sung Foundation. Comrade
Keith had just returned from a visit to the Democratic People’s Republic of
Korea (DPRK), where he had been an invited guest at the celebrations of the
DPRK’s 60th founding anniversary the previous month. In the course of his
visit, Comrade Keith also met with Comrade Kim Yong Nam, President of the
Presidium of the DPRK’s Supreme People’s Assembly and received a personal gift
from Comrade Kim Jong Il on the occasion of his 50th birthday.
Comrade Keith gave a vivid account both of the
official celebrations as well as the daily life of the people in Pyongyang over the holiday period. It was noteworthy, he said, that the military parade,
rather than being composed of the regular armed forces, consisted entirely of
the militia forces made up of ordinary workers, farmers, students and
intellectuals, women and men, and the weapons displayed had all been purely of
a defensive character. After the formal parade, the citizens of Pyongyang had turned out in their tens, indeed hundreds of thousands to give a rousing
reception to their armed defenders, who are drawn from their own families,
workplaces and communities. These scenes, Comrade Keith noted, provided a
striking illustration of the deep and profound difference between a workers’
state and a bourgeois state. In the latter, the armed forces are organs of
suppression at home and aggression abroad whereas in the former the armed
forces are the armed working people themselves, mobilised to defend their
socialist system and the independence of the country from class enemies within
and without.
Comrade Keith spoke about the ongoing work to
spruce up Pyongyang including the refurbishment of housing and public
buildings, the repaving of roads and pavements and the modernisation of the
tram network, all designed to make life more pleasant and convenient for
working people. Despite the heightened tension with the US imperialists, who
had brazenly reneged on their commitment to remove the DPRK from the State
Department’s list of so-called “terrorist states” (subsequently, thanks to the
DPRK’s firm stance, the US was forced to back down), the atmosphere in
Pyongyang was calm and relaxed with families enjoying a well-earned break. At
the same time, the Korean comrades were unanimous in their resolve not to give
in to imperialist pressures and threats but rather to defend their dignity,
independence and socialist system no matter what the cost. In a word, the
speaker emphasised, the atmosphere in Pyongyang was completely at variance with
the lurid picture painted by the bourgeois mass media.
Following Comrade Keith’s presentation, statements
of solidarity with the WPK on its 63rd birthday were made by Comrade Harpal
Brar for the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) (CPGB-ML),
Comrade Chris Coleman for the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain
(Marxist-Leninist) and Comrade Andy Brooks for the New Communist Party. The
statement from Comrade Harpal read as follows:
I extend my warmest,
militant and fraternal red salute on the occasion of the 63rd anniversary of
the founding of the great Workers’ Party of Korea by the great leader of the
Korean people and outstanding Marxist-Leninist Comrade Kim Il Sung.
The Workers’ Party
of Korea (WPK) is not only the vanguard of the Korean proletariat and people
but also an outstanding detachment of the international communist movement. For
more than six decades, under the great and wise leadership of Comrade Kim Il
Sung and of Esteemed Comrade Kim Jong Il, the WPK has led the Korean working
class and people in a life-and-death confrontation with US imperialism and all
manner of class enemies in order to safeguard the independence of the country
and to build a socialist state.
At the same time,
the Workers’ Party of Korea has set an example of active proletarian
internationalism. The great cause of the anti-imperialist national liberation
movements in Asia, Africa, Latin America and elsewhere, and the building of
prosperous new societies, is indelibly associated with the selfless solidarity
and practical assistance consistently rendered by the WPK. In the international
communist movement, the WPK took a bold stand in condemnation of modern
revisionism and in defence of Marxism-Leninism. Furthermore, at the time when
the degeneracy of modern revisionism finally brought down the once great and
glorious USSR, the WPK rallied the communist forces, formulating the historic
Pyongyang Declaration, ‘Let Us Defend and Advance the Cause of Socialism’, to
which our Party is very proud to be a signatory.
Indeed, our Party
greatly values our excellent and intimate fraternal relations with the Workers’
Party of Korea and we stand wholeheartedly and unreservedly with it in its
struggle to oppose US imperialism and other reactionary forces, to defend the
sovereignty of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and to build a great,
prosperous and powerful socialist nation on Korean soil.
We will continue to
spare no effort to widely introduce and build support for the Party and people
of Korea, under the wise and correct leadership of Esteemed Comrade Kim Jong
Il, among the British working class and in the anti-war and other progressive
movements of our country.
Availing myself of this auspicious occasion, I
also wish Esteemed Comrade Kim Jong Il a long life in good health.
Following these presentations a lively discussion
took place, which focused on what we in the working-class movement in Britain can learn from our Korean comrades in the building of a revolutionary working-class
party in the midst of a deepening capitalist crisis. Comrade Jang Song Chol,
Third Secretary of the Korean Embassy in London, who attended the meeting as a
guest, took an active part in these discussions.
Concluding the formal part of the proceedings,
Comrade Michael Chant, Secretary of Friends of Korea, read out a letter of
greetings to Comrade Kim Jong Il, which was adopted unanimously. The CPGB-ML
also sent a letter to Comrade Kim Jong Il marking the anniversary.
Following the formal part of the proceedings,
comrades stayed behind to carry on the discussions in a friendly atmosphere.