Harpal Brar

Harpal Brar (born 5 October 1939) is an Indian-born communist politician, writer and businessman, based in Britain. 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. The party was founded in 2004 as a result of a split in the Arthur Scargill-led Socialist Labour Party. In 1991, Brar founded the Stalin Society, an anti-revisionist group defending Joseph Stalin

Harpal Brar

Quotes

• It is in this context that Trotsky's attack on Stalin must be understood. Trotsky's attack on Stalin was not directed against Stalin as an individual but against someone who during the course of struggle had emerged as the most representative spokesman of the Bolshevik Party which was upholding, defending, and applying Leninism. The main target of Trotsky's attacks, therefore, was not Stalin but the Bolshevik Party. It was revolutionary Bolshevism - Leninism - that was under attack. It was an attack on the methods and forms of organisation of the Bolshevik Party - an attack on the fundamental Leninist policies pursued by the Party.
  • Harpal Brar Trotskyism or Leninism?, p. 90.

• It will be shown during the course of this pamphlet that this slogan [A general Election to kick out the Tories and to elect a Labour Government committed to Socialism] is opportunist and that in this instance there is nothing to choose between the revisionists and the Trotskyites; that they both are opportunists; that they are not Marxists but petty-bourgeois democrats with near-Marxist phraseology; that they both betray the interests of the working class and serve the interests of the bourgeoisie by acting as the conductors of bourgeois influence into the proletariat; and that differences of opinion and battles of words between them are of no more importance than the usual jealousy between two department managers in the same store.
  • Harpal Brar Social democracy - The enemy within (London 1995), pp. 139-40.

• The need, therefore, was for the Communist Parties to be ever-vigilant against opportunism and to weed it out by welding themselves ever more closely with the working class, by enlisting the support of the working class in thoroughly smashing all that remained of the old bourgeois state structure. This could only have been done by getting rid of bourgeois parliamentarism and putting into effect the principles of the Paris Commune; all officials to be fully elected and subject to recall; public service to be discharged at the wage rate of the working class uniting within its hands the legaslative and executive arms of the state; and breaking up the instrument of spiritual oppression, the power of the priests.
  • Harpal Brar Perestroika - The complete collapse of revisionism, pp. 274-75.

About Brar

Listed in chronological order.

• In Britain "several hundred" are expected to turn out for a memorial meeting of the Stalin Society, with several speakers and "possibly a drink" according to chairman Harpal Brar.
• Mr Brar, the SLP's former parliamentary candidate in Ealing Southall, says Stalinism "is a minority sentiment" on the left in the UK, but "before you say it's irrelevant ... get out of Europe. Stalin is extremely popular in the former Soviet Union and with millions of people around the world".
  • Andy McSmith, Severin Carrell "Stalin apologists drink to the memory of Uncle Joe", The Independent (2 March 2003)

• [Following a CPGB-ML statement ending "Long live the memory and legacy of Comrade Kim Jong Il!"] When Kim's death was announced, I set my watch and waited for a statement in just this vein. I knew Brar's mob wouldn't let me down. ... Incidentally, if you're around on Friday [23 December 2011], the CPGB-ML will be holding a "memorial meeting to honour Comrade Kim Jong Il" at 6.30pm in Southall.
  • George Eaton "Communist Party mourns for 'Comrade Kim Jong-il'", New Statesman (20 December 2011)