Harpal Brar (born 5 October 1939) is an Indian communist, politician, writer and businessman, based in the United Kingdom. He is the founder and former chairman of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist–Leninist), a role from which he stood down in 2018.
Born in Muktsar, Punjab, British India, Brar has lived and worked in Britain since 1962, first as a student, then as a lecturer in law at Harrow College of Higher Education (later merged into the renamed University of Westminster), and later in the textile business. Brar owns buildings in West London which he uses for CPGB-ML party activity, and he part-owns an online shop called "Madeleine Trehearne and Harpal Brar" which sells shawls.
He and his comrades officially dissolved the ACW in 1997 to join Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour Party, a breakaway from the Labour Party after its abandonment of the original version of Clause IV. Brar was the parliamentary candidate in Ealing Southall in 2001,[2] coming eighth with 921 votes.[3] He had previously come fourth in the 1997 general election, with 2107 votes. Brar and his comrades worked to bring what they described as an Anti-RevisionistMarxist-Leninist programme to the SLP, but were eventually expelled seven years later.[4]
Scargill expelled the entire Yorkshire Regional Committee and five members of the National Executive Committee. From this, in July 2004, the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) was formed,[5] and Brar was its chairman.[1]
Adopting positions maintained by Brar and his comrades since the 1960s, the CPGB-ML has been vigorously opposed to all those who work with or in any way endorse the Labour Party since its inception. Its stated aim on formation was to oppose opportunism in the working-class movement, revive the "class against class" programme embodied by the Communist Party of Great Britain during the 1920s, and to work for the establishment of socialism in Britain.[6][7]
The Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist–Leninist) was registered with the Electoral Commission in 2008 under the name "Proletarian", which is the title of the bi-monthly newspaper of the CPBG-ML. The party was registered "to prepare for standing in elections".[8]
At the eighth congress of the CPGB-ML in September 2018, Brar announced that he would step down as chairman of the party, to be replaced by Ella Rule.[9]
Views on China
On 19 July 2008, Harpal Brar was one of the people who founded the Hands off China campaign, dedicated to defending the People's Republic of China and to defending "China's sovereignty and territorial integrity" and "the country's just stance on issues of its vital national interest such as Taiwan and Tibet."[10]
Views on India
Brar strongly disagrees with the popular belief that the Indian independence movement was peaceful and pacifist, and was led entirely by Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian National Congress. In his book Inquilab Zindabad: India's Liberation Struggle he argues that a violent and bloody class struggle involving the masses took place. He accuses Gandhi and Congress of supporting British imperialism, describing the latter as "the most compromising, cowardly and obscurantist representatives of the India bourgeoisie".[11]
For many years, he was on the executive of the Indian Workers Association (GB) and was the editor of that organisation's journal Lalkar. He continues to publish the journal, but the IWA cut its ties with the paper in 1992, when members of the executive committee with affiliations to the Communist Party of India (Marxist) objected to Brar's publishing of an article that was mildly critical of the adoption of market socialism in China.[19]
Since 1992, Brar has self-published fourteen books on various aspects of Marxism, imperialism and revisionism. These works are a combination of original material and articles previously published in Lalkar and have been translated and distributed internationally by a number of sympathetic communist parties around the world.
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Committee to Defeat Revisionism, for Communist Unity was a small British Marxist–Leninist group that left the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1963. CDRCU was led by Michael McCreery, the son of General Sir Richard McCreery. CDRCU was sympathetic towards the Chinese Communist Party and the Party of Labour of Albania, with CDRCU members attending May Day celebrations in Tirana in May 1964. The group began publishing Vanguard in 1963.
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The Indian Workers' Association (IWA) is a political organisation in Great Britain which consists of Indian immigrants to Britain and their descendants. IWA branches are organised in some major cities such as Birmingham and London. As one of the oldest and most active groups of immigrants, the organisation has been working in the fields of politics, race relations, industrial relations and social welfare, as well as many cultural issues. At the forefront of the struggle within trade unions, it has campaigned tirelessly against racism and on civil liberties issues.
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The Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist–Leninist) (RCPB-ML) and Occasionally referred to as RCP is a small British communist political party, previously named the Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist) on formation in 1972 until being reorganised in 1979 after rejecting Maoism and aligning with Albania. The party's thinking is based on the politics of Hardial Bains, who travelled the world founding orthodox (anti-revisionist) communist parties.
Hardial Bains was an Indo-Canadian microbiology lecturer, but was primarily known as the founder of a series of left-wing movements and parties foremost of which was the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist–Leninist). Presenting himself as staunchly anti-revisionist and pro-Stalinist, until his death, Bains acted as the spokesperson and ideological leader of the CPC(M-L) — known in elections as the Marxist–Leninist Party of Canada. During his lifetime, Bains' outlook swung from supporting the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, to Mao Zedong's China, then later to Enver Hoxha's Albania. Shortly before he died, and abandoning his previous sharp criticisms of the country, Bains turned to Fidel Castro's Cuba for inspiration. Spending most of his life in Canada, Bains was also politically active in England, Ireland, United States and India.
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The Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist–Leninist), abbreviated CPGB-ML, is an anti-revisionist Marxist–Leninist communist party in the United Kingdom, active in England, Scotland, and Wales. The CPGB-ML was founded by Harpal Brar after a split from the Socialist Labour Party (SLP) on 3 July 2004. The CPGB-ML publishes the bimonthly newspaper Proletarian, and the Marxist–Leninist journal Lalkar is also closely allied with the party. The party chair is Ella Rule.
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