Veteran revolutionary dies

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In 1926-7 the Chinese Communist Party was misled by Stalin into blind confidence in the middle-class Sr Jay January 15, 11 to 5 60 Acomb St, Manchester at UMIST Student Union, M15 6FQ. waged) from Tony Dale, Organiser BASINGSTOKE Socialist Up to 5 delegates per trade Organiser day school: union body: credentials £2 we to defend jobs and services.

PENG SHU-TSE, a founder of Chinese communism and a Trotskyist since 1927, died of a ployed. heart attack on November 28.

Born into a peasant family in Hunan province in 1895, P'eng joined the first communist organisation in China in 1920 and studied at the University of the Toilers of the East in Moscow from 1921 to 1924.

During the Chinese revolution of 1925-27, P'eng was a member of the Communist Party's Politburo, and chief editor of the party's main newspaper and its theoretical magazine.

After Stalin's policy ot colla*Freeze rent and rates.

boration with Chiang Kai-Shek led to the defeat and slaughter of the Chinese workers and peasants in 1927, P'eng, together with the CCP's founder, Ch'en Tu-hsiu, formed Trotskyist faction in the Chinese workers' defence squads. Communist Party. They were expelled in 1929.

P'eng was forced into exile by the victory of Mao's peasant tabitity, etc.

LABOUR Committee on Treland day school. Saturday Jaruary 28, 10.30 to 5 at County: Hall, London SEI. Send £1 for ticket and papers to LCI, Box 42, 136 Kingswood High Road, and affirm their stand publicly. London E8. Creche should be booked in advance.

MANCHESTER Socialist Organiser day school: 'Questions of Leadership'. fa matter of urgency.

SCOTLAND Edinburgh. and services should be blacked. Contact: Dave, 2294591.

SO is sold at Muirhouse (Sat. 10.30-12.30) and at the First-of-May bookshop, Candlemaker Row.

Glasgow. Contact Stan Crooke, 63 Dixon Ave, erage for the trade G42. Paper sales: Friday lunchtime, Springburn shopping arcade; Saturday morning, Coatbridge shopild - show the i need to establish rational, ping arcade; Tuesday nocratic, humar rol over the economy, to morning, Maryhill unemce the decisive, A of industry social prop- ployment benefit office.

Also West End bookshop. , under worke atrol. The strength of the our movement * the rank and file. Our spective must ing class action to raze the talist system its foundations, and to NORTH WEST a working cla: alternative in its place - Hyndburn. er than havi -presentatives run the Contact: Accrington 395753 tem and waiti mbs from the tables of Liverpool, bankers and t Contact: 733 6663. SO is sold News-fromNowhere, Whitechapel and at Progressive Books, Berry St.

Manchester.

Contact: Tony, 273 5691.

SO is sold at Grass Roots Books, Newton Su PiccaAURRAY dilly. 2 Rochdale. MUST contact: c/o 20 Middle Lane, London N8. GO! Murray Must Go' Stoke: 'Mole Badges' c/o Contact: Barnett, Paul 328198. middle Lane. cop each, 1z for 10. plus 16p post. Stochpart Commar 40 40 Fox St. Fidels Barnes Wallis building. Registration $1.50 (75p unarmies in 1949, because the undemocratic Mao regime repressed the Trotskyist savagely. Symbolically, the new Stalinist regime destroyed the gravestone marking the burial place of Ch'en Tu-hsiu.

P'eng was for long associated with the Socialist Workers' Party of the USA, and for the last two decades was a member of the 'United Secretariat of the Fourth International' He was, however, highly critical of the SWP's and the USFI's uncritical attitude to governments like Cuba.

In a recent document, he wrote: "One can say that the dictatorship in Cuba is less harsh than that in China or Eastern Europe. True, it is possible that the Cuban bureaucrats are less arbitrary and brutal.

'However, the officials are nominated by the government, they are not elected directly by the worker and peasant masses. Castro is the party. There is no democratic centralism in the Cuban Communist Party, because it is copied from the Soviet Union. What Castro says, goes.

"In this respect the Cuban regime is of no different nature than Mao Zedong's in China.

Saturday January 21, 10 to 4.45 at Chute. House.

Registration £t 150p unwaged) from 75 Freemantle Close, Basingstoke.

BROAD Left Organising Committee conference:

Octagon Centre, Western Bank, Sheffield 10, Saturday March 24; from 10am. The only difference is the following: the Cuban regime is younger and more vigilant, the Chinese was more confused and brutal ... Disappointed by the Trotskyist movement in Latin America (the SWP] only wants to consider countries like Cuba, Nicaragua and Grenada. It has no vision or overall project for the countries of Latin America. However, it is conceivable that a strong section built by us in Mexico or Argentina, etc., would be more useful than several Nicaraguan revolutions"

from George Williamson,