Friday, June 27, 2014

Festa Comunista on London’s South Bank


NCP's Theo Russell with Italian comrades


By New Worker correspondent

ITALIAN, Greek and British comrades came together on London’s South Bank last weekend for the Festa Comunista, organised by members of the Italian Partito Comunista living in Britain. In addition to lively and jovial debates, the comrades discussed the political situation and communist movements in Italy, Europe and Britain, and solidarity work with Democratic Korea.
The British wing of the new Italian communist party that was formed last year is named after Pietro Secchia, a leading Italian communist who was imprisoned by the fascist regime in 1931.
Freed by the partisans in 1943 following the collapse of the Mussolini regime, he became a guerrilla leader in the struggle against the Nazi occupation and the fascist forces still loyal to Mussolini. After the war Secchia entered the Italian parliament while secretly maintaining a group of former partisans who kept their weapons in case of a right-wing coup.
Secchia was increasingly side-lined by the revisionist Italian communist leadership from the 1950s onwards but he continued to support national liberation struggles and upheld the Marxist-Leninist line until his death in 1973.



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