CommieCast

| Please note that this podcast features the views of comrades from the Communist Party of Venezuela. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the Communist Party of Britain. | In this CommieCast we talk to Comrade Paul Dobson of Partido Comunista de Venezuela (PCV) about the problems the party is currently experiencing with the Venezuelan government's policies, and how these problems reflect the continuing class struggle in the country.

In this CommieCast, we joined by Phil Katz and Dan Ross to discuss Historical Revisionism. We define this as, broadly, a serious attempt to equate Nazism with Communism, and to equate the actions of the Red Army as it liberated eastern Europe from the Nazis with those of the occupiers. This Revisionism is often combined with Holocaust Denial and fake news in pursuit of a hard-right political agenda. This is an important and growingly influential excrescence across much of Europe. Understanding its power provides a useful prism through which to view current developments on the continent, including the war in Ukraine.

In this CommieCast, we are joined by Kevan Nelson, the International Secretary of the Communist Party of Britain, and Liz Payne, the Convenor of the British Peace Assembly and a member of the Education Committee of Liberation. We discuss the war currently raging in Ukraine, the motivations driving the main players and the prospects of peace. We also talk about the conflict America is currently pursuing against China under the guise of, inter alia, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the threat this poses to peace. We end by talking about what you can do to fight for peace and steer the planet back to sanity.

Long time union organiser Nigel Flanagan – whose career has taken him as union militant, strike leader, full time organiser and activist to diverse corners of the global labour market, brings his experience to bear on the new possibilities that exist for strengthening the trade union movement, and questions the bases for the "new optimism" since the recent wave of strike action. Not simply a reflection on his experience, Flanagan brings to the question of organising a sharp and critical analysis of the problems thrown up in the new world of work. Transatlantic and once fashionable organising theory is subject to a searching analysis and an uncompromising eye is cast over the latest developments in the trade union world. Reading Nigel Flanagan’s words is a bruising experience for some but his starting point is one of fraternal criticism and solidarity.

Long time union organiser Nigel Flanagan – whose career has taken him as union militant, strike leader, full time organiser and activist to diverse corners of the global labour market, brings his experience to bear on the new possibilities that exist for strengthening the trade union movement, and questions the bases for the "new optimism" since the recent wave of strike action.  Not simply a reflection on his experience, Flanagan brings to the question of organising a sharp and critical analysis of the problems thrown up in the new world of work. Transatlantic and once fashionable organising theory is subject to a searching analysis and an uncompromising eye is cast over the latest developments in the trade union world. Reading Nigel Flanagan’s words is a bruising experience for some but his starting point is one of fraternal criticism and solidarity.

We interview Stephanie Martin about the struggle for decent housing and the environment, both squared up against gentrification and corporate greed in a Glasgow estate. As chair of Wyndford Resident’s Union, Stephanie supported the community's fightback against energy price gouging in April 2022, when they forced SSE to enact a price freeze for 10,000 households across Scotland. The struggle continues against the Wheatley Housing Association's attempt to gentrify the area and force the current residents out of their homes.

In this second of our podcasts on public ownership, we talk again with academics John Foster and Robert Wilkinson about the realities of public ownership in a capitalist societies, targeting and innovation, the centrality of public ownership to Britain's Road to Socialism, and how public ownership as the vehicle and expression of a mobilised working class is essential for the achievement of real democracy.

In this episode we talk to academics John Foster and Robert Wilkinson about the real history of publicly-owned entities and Britain, and how that reality differs from the mainstream narratives peddled by the ruling classes and their media. The history was by no means faultless, and we also talk about the lessons that we can learn from study of what actually happened. These lesson form the bases of our next podcast: the importance of public ownership to building a just, sustainable economy, and how the new publicly-owned entities can redirect the priorities of economic activity and transform the experience of working life for our people.

In the 1960s the ANC had been decimated. ANC leader Nelson Mandela and a significant number of those in the freedom movement were serving long life sentences. Others were either dead or in exile. The Apartheid Regime boasted that the ANC were defeated, that their racist regime would last a thousand years. Resistance was futile, they claimed. Oliver Tambo, the new ANC leader, saw that the regime’s propaganda had to be answered. From his base in Tanzania, he summoned a young ANC activist, Ronnie Kasrils. His task would be to go to London and recruit white activists to go into South Africa to carry out agitational work on behalf of the ANC. They wanted white people because they could move around racist South Africa freely. Here we talk to two of those brave Recruits who went to South Africa as very young men in those bleak days, one of whom spent five years in a South African prison as a result. This is a unique insight into an important part of the struggle against racism and imperialism, have a listen.

And the railway workers continue the tradition of moving the working classes forward, and aggravating the ruling classes. In this podcast we are joined by railway workers and union activists, Sarah-Jane McDonough and Rob O'Connell, to discuss the strife in the railways in the context of the wider class struggle, both speaking in a personal capacity.

In this podcast, two postal workers talk about the background to the current dispute, why they deserve a pay rise, why privatisation has been a disaster for the Royal Mail, and how we can help in their struggle with a management determined to extract as much value as they can for their institutional shareholders.

In this episode, to mark the 25th anniversary of the return of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China, Stewart McGill talks to journalist Kenny Coyle about the past, present and future of the territory.

Contrary to the image projected by the western media, Venezuela is not a socialist country. Over 70% of the economy is in private hands and that proportion will increase with the current wave of privatisations initiated by the Maduro government. In this podcast we talk to the International Secretary of the Venezuelan Communist Party, Carolus Wimmer, about developments in the country including the increasing persecution of the Communist Party. We also talk about an important appeal.

In this episode Stewart McGill is joined by Stephanie Martin from the Communist Party of Britain in Glasgow. They discuss what Johnson's Levelling Up agenda really means, and the Communist Party's radical alternatives offering real local, regional and national democracy coupled with greater economic equality.

In this edition of CommieCast editor Stewart McGill discusses Progressive Federalism with Welsh Communist Party secretary David Morgan and Young Communist League general secretary Johnnie Hunter.