Party News: Recent Socialist Activities

A hundred people attended the Socialist Party meeting in Conway Hall, Central London. on 3 September on recent events in the Soviet Union at which the speakers exposed the twin lies that “the socialist countries” had been socialist and “the free world” free. The Socialist Party had been the one organisation in this country’ which had consistently opposed the view that Russia had had anything to do with socialism; capitalism had never been abolished in Russia but had been developed there under the Bolshevik dictators Lenin and Stalin in the form of a state-run capitalism; this state capitalism was now giving way to a more market-directed type of capitalism, and now everyone could see that Russia was capitalist; our position had been completely vindicated.

Opposition came from a group of Leninists who distributed a leaflet headed “Stalinism was the Gravedigger of the October Revolution” which spoke of “the shining example of workers’ revolution which 1917 still represents” when, allegedly, the working class took power “under the political leadership of its class party”. This whitewash of Lenin and defence of the Bolshevik coup was not well received by the assembled workers.

The first meeting in the new series of Central London Sunday afternoon meetings got off to a good start on 8 September when over 30 people filled the meeting room in Dick Sheppard House, Euston, to hear the opening talk on “Why We Need to Change Society”. Details of this month’s subjects can be found on the Meetings Page of this issue.