IF I might hasten a Marxist view in regards to Gerry Cohen's articles on the vote for the Communist Party in the Bermondsey by-election (SA 15 April).
It is worth recalling that it was in London that a CP branch in the recent past marched in support of Solidarity in Poland. And the hostility of the British CP to events in recent years in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and Afghanistan.
The opportunism of the CP in the events followed the denunciation of Stalin at the twentieth Congress of the CP of the Soviet Union in 1956. Everything in the Soviet Union from then on was wrong.
This has led to many working class communists being disillusioned.
The rise of the New Communist Party is a case in point. I remember comrade Gerry Cohen when he was area secretary of the CP in Liverpool when I was elected as the first Communist councillor in Birkenhead in 1968.
I am now a member of the Labour Party to add my weight to the struggle of the left.
In taking the headline in the same article 'Influence of the Communist Party is there for all to see' it seems to me that the CP has ceased to exist in regards to the mass media in this country. Ask any member of the public about Militant and they all know.
Politics is not about hiding your light under a bushel. The CP used the argument that we must not attack the right wing for the sake of unity in the Labour movement.
They say this is because it assists the capitalist class if any splits occur.
But the right wing in the Labour Party believes in capitalism. So this is a phony unity which leads to class collaboration.
There is only one real unity, based on the class struggle for the working class to take power and build a socialist system of society.
COLIN LEE, Birkenhead CLP.