Harpal Brar

Harpal Brar
Harpal Brar speaks to young communists in Birmingham, on the 70th anniversary of the victory over fascism.
Born	(1939-10-05) 5 October 1939 Muktsar, Punjab, British Raj
Occupation	Former professor at Harrow College of Higher Education (now called University of Westminster ) Businessman

Harpal Brar (born 5 October 1939) is an Indian-born communist politician, writer and businessman based in Britain, who is the Chairman of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist).

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 internet shop called "Madeleine Trehearne and Harpal Brar" which sells shawls.

Political activities

Brar joined the Maoist Revolutionary Marxist-Leninist League but soon left to become a founder member of a small group of anti-revisionists, the Association of Communist Workers, as well as being a member of the Association of Indian Communists.

He and his comrades officially dissolved the ACW in 1997 in order 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 and his comrades worked to bring what they described as an Anti-Revisionist Marxist-Leninist programme to the SLP, but were eventually expelled seven years later.

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, and Brar was elected as its chairman.

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.

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".

Ideology

Brar defends the governments and leaders of the USSR up until 1951, when they contributed to and approved the first draft of The British Road to Socialism. Brar claims that two years before the death of Joseph Stalin, the USSR abandoned the project of socialism. He accuses Stalin of laying the foundations of Krushchevite revisionism. Brar is seen as an unapologetic admirer of Stalin and by some as an anachronism and controversial figure.

He, along with his daughter Joti Brar, is an active member of the Stalin Society, the website of which contains articles denying Soviet wrongdoing in the Katyn Massacre, the Ukrainian Famine (Holodomor), and the Moscow trials which they blame on the Nazis, dismiss as propaganda, or describe as fair process, respectively.

Harpal is noted for his anti-revisionist positions describing the Soviet project of collectivisation and industrialisation under Joseph Stalin as the working class's willingness to "forgo consumption in order to build the mighty Soviet state."

Publications

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.

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.

Works

• "Inquilab Zindabad, India's Liberation Struggle"
• "Revisionism and the demise of the USSR"
• "The 1926 British General Strike"
• "Nato's Predatory War Against Yugoslavia"
• "Imperialism and War"
• "Imperialism – the Eve of the Social Revolution of the Proletariat"
• "Chimurenga! The Liberation Struggle in Zimbabwe"
• "Imperialism – Decadent, Parasitic, Moribund Capitalism"
• "Bourgeois Nationalism or Proletarian Internationalism?"
• "Social Democracy – the Enemy Within"
• "Trotskyism or Leninism?"
• "Perestroika – the Complete Collapse of Revisionism"

Elections contested

UK Parliament elections

Date of election	Constituency	Party	Votes	%
1997	Ealing Southall	SLP	2,107	3.9
2001	Ealing Southall	SLP	921	2.0

European Parliament elections

Year	Region	Party	Votes	%	Result	Notes
1999	London	SLP	19,632	1.7	Not-elected	Multi-member constituency; party list

London Assembly elections (Entire London city)

Date of election	Party	Votes	%	Results	Notes
2000	SLP	17,401	1.0	Not elected	Multi-members party list

External links

• Preface to Brar's book Trotskyism or Leninism?.
• Lalkar website.
• Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) website.
• Brar's business website.