 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(March 2021) |
Communist League | |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1969 |
| Split from | Communist Party of New Zealand |
| Ideology | Communism Marxism-Leninism |
| Political position | Far-left |
| Colours | Red |
The Communist League is a New Zealand communist party.
The party was founded in 1969 by students from Victoria University of Wellington, and was originally named the Socialist Action League. The new party rejected the more established groups such as the Communist Party as too authoritarian, conservative, and unimaginative, but at the same time, rejected many of the newer communist groups in New Zealand as disorganised and unfocused. It was aligned with the Fourth International (FI), an international grouping of Trotskyist parties. The party achieved a certain amount of public recognition for its role in protests against the Vietnam War, [1] and regularly engaged in protests against adventurist United States foreign policy, South African apartheid, [2] in defence of the pro-choice side of the abortion debate, as well as supporting LGBT rights in New Zealand, during the 1970s and 1980s. [3] During those decades, the SAL maintained a newspaper of its own, Socialist Action. According to the National Library of New Zealand serials catalogue, it ran from 1969 to 1988.
In the 1980s, the Socialist Workers Party in the United States broke away from Trotskyism, and left the FI. A number of other parties in FI also chose to leave, including the Socialist Action League in New Zealand. Those members of the Socialist Action League who did not agree with this departure from Trotskyism and the FI were expelled or resigned. Later, the Socialist Action League renamed itself the Communist League, following the pattern of the other pro-SWP parties that had left the FI. Today, the party is still associated with the Socialist Workers Party's so-called Pathfinder tendency.
The League has held public meetings called Militant Labour Forums. [4] The Militant newspaper and books published by Pathfinder Press have been distributed from the Pathfinder Bookshop in the Auckland suburb of Onehunga. [5]
In every general election between 1990 and 2020, at least two candidates have sought election to parliament under the Communist League name. None have been successful, with each candidate only receiving a few dozen votes each time. [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] Candidates have also stood at multiple city council elections and at least one by-election, also without success. [15] [16] [17] The Communist League did not run any candidates in the 2023 general election. [18]
| Part of a series on |
| Communist parties |
|---|
| Election | candidates | seats won | votes | % of vote |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1990 | 9 | 0 | 210 | 0.01 |
| 1993 | 2 | 0 | 84 | 0.00 |
| 1996 | 2 | 0 | 99 | 0.00 |
| 1999 | 2 | 0 | 89 | 0.00 |
| 2002 | 2 | 0 | 171 | 0.01 |
| 2005 | 2 | 0 | 107 | 0.00 |
| 2008 | 2 | 0 | 74 | 0.00 |
| 2011 | 2 | 0 | 95 | 0.00 |
| 2014 | 2 | 0 | 135 | 0.00 |
| 2017 | 2 | 0 | 109 | 0.00 |
| 2020 | 2 | 0 | 109 [19] [20] | 0.00 |
| Election | Candidate | votes | % of vote | position |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1990 | Peter Bradley | 189 | 0.15 | 20th |
| 1992 | Brigid Rotherham | 310 | 0.36 | 7th |
| 1995 | James Robb | 228 | 0.22 | 11th |
| 1998 | Felicity Coggan | 312 | 0.26 | 13th |
| 2001 | Felicity Coggan | 610 | 0.56 | 9th |
| 2004 | Felicity Coggan | 452 | 0.35 | 7th |
| 2007 | Felicity Coggan | 735 | 0.65 | 10th |
| 2010 | Annalucia Vermunt | 451 | 0.09 | 21st |
| 2013 | Annalucia Vermunt | 856 | 0.25 | 17th |
| 2016 | Patrick Brown | 1,817 | 0.46 | 11th |
| 2019 | Annalucia Vermunt | 1,055 | 19th [21] |
The Communist League did not contest the 2022 Auckland mayoral election.
Socialism in New Zealand had little traction in early colonial New Zealand but developed as a political movement around the beginning of the 20th century. Much of socialism's early growth was found in the labour movement.
The Workers Party of New Zealand was a socialist political party in New Zealand. It published a monthly magazine called "The Spark". In February 2013 the party was transformed from a "mass workers party" to a "fighting propaganda group". The organisation was subsequently renamed Fightback.
The Communist League in Canada was founded as the "Revolutionary Workers League/Ligue Ouvrière Révolutionnaire" (RWL) in 1977 as the result of a merger of the League for Socialist Action (LSA), the Revolutionary Marxist Group (RMG) and the Groupe Marxiste Revolutionaire.
Matthew Peter Robson is a New Zealand politician. He was deputy leader of the Progressive Party, and served in the Parliament from 1996 to 2005, first as a member of the Alliance, then as a Progressive.
Maungakiekie is a New Zealand parliamentary electorate, returning one Member of Parliament to the New Zealand House of Representatives. The current MP for Maungakiekie is Greg Fleming of the National Party. The electorate's name comes from Maungakiekie / One Tree Hill, a large and symbolically important hill at the western end of the seat.
Māngere is a New Zealand parliamentary electorate, returning one member of parliament to the Representatives of New Zealand. The current MP for Māngere is Lemauga Lydia Sosene of the Labour Party. She has held this electorate since 2023.
Manukau East was a New Zealand parliamentary electorate that returned one member of parliament to the House of Representatives. It was first formed for the 1996 election. Between the 2014 election and the 2020 electorate adjustment it was held by Jenny Salesa, a member of the Labour Party, who also won the replacement Panmure-Ōtāhuhu seat in the 2020 election.
Manurewa is a New Zealand parliamentary electorate in southern Auckland. A very safe Labour seat, the seat was created in 1963 and has returned a National MP only once, in 1975. Arena Williams has represented the electorate since the 2020 election.
Mount Roskill is a parliamentary electorate in Auckland, New Zealand, returning one Member of Parliament (MP) to the New Zealand House of Representatives. Phil Goff of the Labour Party held the seat from the 1999 election until he resigned from Parliament on 12 October 2016 after contesting and being elected Mayor of Auckland on 8 October 2016 in the 2016 mayoral election. His resignation necessitated a byelection in this electorate which was won by Michael Wood.
New Lynn is a New Zealand parliamentary electorate, returning one member to the New Zealand House of Representatives. Deborah Russell of the Labour Party represented the electorate from the 2017 general election before being defeated by National's Paulo Garcia in the 2023 election.
Peseta Samuelu Masunu "Sam" Lotu-Iiga is a former member of the New Zealand Parliament for the Maungakiekie electorate, having been elected in the 2008 election. Lotu-Iiga was one of two National Party Pasifika MPs. Lotu-Iiga holds the Samoan high chiefly title of Peseta.
Le-Aufa'amulia Asenati Lole-Taylor is a former New Zealand politician and a member of the House of Representatives. She is a member of the New Zealand First Party.
Denise Adrienne Lee is a New Zealand politician who was the National Party's Member of Parliament for the Maungakiekie electorate from 2017 to 2020. She was previously an Auckland Council local body councillor.
The Workers World Party (WWP) is a Marxist–Leninist communist party founded in 1959 by a group led by Sam Marcy. WWP members are sometimes called Marcyites. Marcy and his followers split from the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in 1958 over a series of long-standing differences, among them their support for Henry A. Wallace's Progressive Party in 1948, their view of People's Republic of China as a workers' state, and their defense of the 1956 Soviet intervention in Hungary, some of which the SWP opposed.
Jennifer Teresia Salesa is a New Zealand politician and member of the Labour Party who has served as a Member of Parliament since 2014. She was first elected as MP for Manukau East, and after its abolition in 2020 won the replacement electorate of Panmure-Ōtāhuhu. She served as a Cabinet Minister in the Sixth Labour Government as Minister for Building and Construction, Minister of Customs and Minister for Ethnic Communities from 2017 until 6 November 2020.
Priyanca Radhakrishnan is a New Zealand politician who has been elected to the New Zealand parliament since the 2017 general election as a representative of the New Zealand Labour Party and was Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector from 2020 to 2023.
The Pathfinder tendency is the unofficial name of a group of historically Trotskyist organizations that cooperate politically and organizationally with the Socialist Workers Party of the United States and support its solidarity with the Cuban Revolution and the Communist Party of Cuba.
The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is a Trotskyist communist party in the United States. The SWP began as a group that was expelled from the Communist Party USA for supporting Leon Trotsky over Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.
Panmure-Ōtāhuhu is an electorate to the New Zealand House of Representatives in south-central Auckland. It was first contested at the 2020 election, and has been held by Jenny Salesa of the Labour Party since its inception.
Ricardo Menéndez March is a New Zealand activist and politician who, since 2020, is a Member of Parliament for the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand in the House of Representatives.
