The following is a brief report written by a Red Youth activist of the recent TUSC demonstration organised in Leeds. Pictures courtesy of Leeds CPGB-ML.
On 25 February there was a rally/march held in Leeds city centre starting at Woodhouse Moore (outside of Leeds university) and ending at Leeds city square outside of the Queen’s Hotel.
The march was called because a local government meeting was being held by the Conservative party on “the next round of savage cuts”. Eric Pickles, MP for Bradford City Central and Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, was chairing the meeting at the Queen’s Hotel. The march/rally was organised by the Trade Unionists and Socialist Coalition who have organised and are organising protests around the country. Speeches were made by various trade-union leaders, social democrats and, of course, Trotskyites – who, despite revolutionary rhetoric, mentioned no tangible alternative to the capitalist system but instead talked at length about utopian ways of trying to make capitalism more pleasant and fixable!
As a Red Youth and CPGB-ML member carrying a USSR flag I was asked questions from various Trots such as “Why am I so deluded into supporting the brutal, ‘Stalinist’, ‘murderous’ regime of the DPRK?” Me and a few comrades explained how north Korea is a great sovereign and independent state, which is proudly socialist and upholds the work of Stalin for his leadership of the Soviet Union, especially during socialist construction and the fight against Nazism.
After about 15 minutes of talking to this young, misguided Trot, and nothing left for him to argue his pro-bourgeois propaganda position, he ran off crying. Typical. This was probably the best thing that happened all day, but also the saddest – some young people have been trained by Trotskyists to treat socialism as a religion; they are incapable of debating and it’s nearly impossible for them to alter their positions.
My dad summed the argument up to a ‘t’ by saying to the Trot, “You thought you could come over here, rip us apart with your reactionary lies and think we will be a soft touch and won’t be able to argue.” Of course though, we argued and defended the heroic efforts of millions of communists to build independent, prosperous and strong socialist nations!
As we marched through Leeds we leafleted thosepedestrians who weren’t marching but stood and watched the demonstration go by. The party must have handed out about 500 leaflets and we sold a few papers too.
Overall, the day was a good experience for me as a young party member, seeing the working class being infiltrated by tonnes of Trotskyist parties and the strangling of the working-class resistance by them and their social-democratic mates in the Labour party. But we stood our ground and we were untouchable – just like a strong revolutionary vanguard party should be.
The Yorkshire Branch is growing, comrades, and soon we hope to lead the workers in a proper direction – towards socialism!
SC