Harpal Brar

{{Primary sources|section|date=July 2021}}

Brar joined the Maoist Revolutionary Marxist-Leninist League but soon left to become a founder member of a small group, the Association of Communist Workers, as well as being a member of the Association of Indian Communists.{{cn|date=July 2021}}

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, coming eighth with 921 votes.{{cite web | title=Ealing Southall 2001 - Parliamentary election results | website=Ealing Council | date=19 August 2011 | url=https://www.ealing.gov.uk/info/201066/election_results/590/parliamentary_election_results/19 | access-date=21 July 2021}} 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-Revisionist Marxist-Leninist programme to the SLP, but were eventually expelled seven years later.{{cite news|url=http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/530/scargill-expels-brar/|title=Scargill expels Brar|newspaper=Weekly Worker|issue= 530|date=26 May 2004|accessdate=1 January 2015}}

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,{{cite web|url=http://www.cpgb-ml.org/index.php?secName=home|title=Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist)|publisher=cpgb-ml.org|accessdate=29 October 2015}} and Brar was 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.[http://www.cpgb-ml.org/index.php?secName=proletarian&subName=display&art=10 Formation of the CPGB-ML], Proletarian, August 2004[http://www.cpgb-ml.org/index.php?secName=proletarian&subName=display&art=784 Celebrating October], Proletarian, November 2011

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".{{cite web|url=http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/62299/SoA-Index.pdf |accessdate=19 August 2009 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20081119212741/http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/62299/SoA-Index.pdf |archivedate=19 November 2008 |title=Index to Statements of Accounts |website=Electoral commission }}

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.{{cite news |title=Comrade Harpal Brar steps down as party chairman after 14 years |url=https://www.cpgb-ml.org/2018/10/24/news/comrade-harpal-brar-steps-down-as-party-chairman-after-14-years/ |accessdate=5 December 2018 |work=Proletarian |date=24 October 2018}}

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."{{cite web|url=http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-07/20/content_8576443.htm|title=Britain's Communist Party launches "Hand-Off-China" campaign|date=20 July 2008|agency=Xinhua News Agency|accessdate=29 October 2015|url-status=dead|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20160114034845/http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-07/20/content_8576443.htm|archivedate=14 January 2016}}

Brar strongly disagreed 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".{{cite book |last=Brar |first=Harpal |date=2014 |title=Inquilab Zindabad: India's Liberation Struggle|location=Great Britain |isbn=978-1-874613-22-0}}

Brar defended the governments and leaders of the USSR until the appearance of Khrushchevite revisionism during the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956.{{cite web|last=Brar|first=Harpal|title=Revisionism and the Demise of the USSR|url=http://cpgb-ml.org/download/publications/RevisionismUSSR.pdf|year=2011|website=Perestroika|accessdate=16 February 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110814011931/http://cpgb-ml.org/download/publications/RevisionismUSSR.pdf|archive-date=14 August 2011|url-status=dead}} Lalkar, the newspaper edited by Brar, criticises The British Road to Socialism (the programme of the original Communist Party of Great Britain) from its earliest version in 1951 as "un-Marxist"{{cite news|title=The British Road to Revisionism|url=http://www.lalkar.org/article/931/the-british-road-to-revisionism|newspaper=Lalkar|date=November 2008|accessdate=16 February 2016}} and regards the claim that Joseph Stalin approved it as a "fiction".{{cite news|title=The revolutionary programmes of British Communism|url=http://www.lalkar.org/article/853/the-revolutionary-programmesof-british-communism|newspaper=Lalkar|date=January 2008|accessdate=16 February 2016}} Brar is seen as an admirer of Stalin and has been attacked as an "anachronism" in the Weekly Worker publication of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Provisional Central Committee), which Brar in turn regarded as Trotskyite propaganda.{{cite web|url=http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/389/stalin-society-v-cpgb/|title=Stalin Society v CPGB|date=20 June 2001|publisher=weeklyworker.co.uk|accessdate=29 October 2015}}

He has chaired and was an active member of the Stalin Society,{{cite web | last=McSmith | first=Andy | title=Stalin apologists drink to the memory of Uncle Joe | website=The Independent | date=28 November 2013 | url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/stalin-apologists-drink-to-the-memory-of-uncle-joe-120991.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220509/https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/stalin-apologists-drink-to-the-memory-of-uncle-joe-120991.html |archive-date=9 May 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live | access-date=21 July 2021}}{{cite news | title=Uncle Joe's hero status survives 'demonising disinformation' | newspaper=The Irish Times | date=21 March 2013 | url=https://www.irishtimes.com/news/uncle-joe-s-hero-status-survives-demonising-disinformation-1.669204 | access-date=21 July 2021}} along with his daughter Joti Brar (deputy leader of the Workers Party of Britain). The Society denies Soviet wrongdoing in the Katyn massacre which they blame on the Nazis,{{cite web|author=Ella Rule|title= The Katyn Massacre|date= 17 February 2016|url=http://stalinsociety.net/?p=103|publisher=Stalin Society|accessdate=17 April 2018}} the Soviet famine of 1932–33 which they blame on foreign sanctions, kulak sabotage and weather patterns,{{cite web|author=John Puntis|title=Ukrainian famine-genocide myth|date=17 February 2016|url=http://stalinsociety.net/?p=114|publisher=Stalin Society|accessdate=17 April 2018}} and the Moscow Trials which they describe as fair process.{{cite web|author=Mario Sousa trans. Ella Rule|title=Lies concerning the history of the Soviet Union|date=14 January 2017|url=http://stalinsociety.net/?p=428|publisher=Stalin Society|accessdate=17 April 2018}}

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 continued to publish the journal, but the IWA cut its ties with the paper in 1992, when members of the executive committee with Communist Party of India (Marxist) affiliations objected to Brar's publishing of an article that was mildly critical of the adoption of market socialism in China.[http://lalkar.org/issues/contents/jan2006/china.php "Socialism with Chinese characteristics"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160815071919/http://lalkar.org/issues/contents/jan2006/china.php |date=15 August 2016 }}, Lalkar

From 1992, Brar himself published 14 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.

Brar died in Mohali, Punjab, India on 25 January 2025, at the age of 85.{{Cite web |title=Harpal Brar Fattanwala, communist leader and writer, passes away at 85 |url=https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/punjab/harpal-brar-fattanwala-communist-leader-and-writer-passes-away-at-85/ |access-date=25 January 2025 |website=The Tribune |language=en}}

• Perestroika: The Complete Collapse of Revisionism, 1992
• Trotskyism or Leninism?, 1993
• Social Democracy: The Enemy Within, 1995
• Imperialism: Decadent, Parasitic, Moribund Capitalism, 1997
• Bourgeois Democracy and Fascism, 2000
• Imperialism in the Middle East: With Specific Reference to the Struggle of the Palestinian People for National Self-Determination, with Ella Rule, 2002
• The Soviet Victory Over Fascism, 2006
• 60th Anniversary of the Victory Over Fascism, 2006
• Imperialism: The Eve of the Social Revolution of the Proletariat, 2007
• Nato's Predatory War Against Yugoslavia, 2009
• The 1926 British General Strike, 2009
• Revisionism and the Demise of the USSR, 2011
• Inquilab Zindabad: India's Liberation Struggle, 2014
• World War One: An Interimperialist War to Redivide the World, with Ella Rule, 2015
• Zionism: A Racist, Antisemitic and Reactionary Tool of Imperialism, 2015
• Socialism with Chinese Characteristics: Marketization of the Chinese Economy, 2020
• Imperialism and War
• Bourgeois Nationalism or Proletarian Internationalism?

• Chimurenga! The Liberation Struggle in Zimbabwe, 2004

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London Assembly elections (Entire London city)

{{reflist|30em}}

{{wikiquote}}

• [http://www.mltranslations.org/Britain/trotvslenin.htm Preface to Brar's book Trotskyism or Leninism?].
• [http://www.trehearneandbrar.com/ Brar's business website].

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Category:1939 births

Category:2025 deaths

Category:Academics of the University of Westminster

Category:Stalinism

Category:Anti-revisionists

Category:British communists

Category:Leaders of political parties in the United Kingdom

Category:People from Sri Muktsar Sahib

Category:Socialist Labour Party (UK) members

Category:Maoists

Category:Indian businesspeople in textiles

Category:Indian expatriates in the United Kingdom

Category:British political party founders

Category:Indian political party founders

Category:British political candidates

Category:Far-left politicians in the United Kingdom