School for Communists

A witty and surprising personal view of communism from Alexei Sayle, whose parents were Communists and took him on holidays to the Eastern bloc during the Cold War. Alexei soon rejected their brand of left wing politics - and became a Maoist. He says, "I'm a Marxist-Leninist survivor!" Alexei meets children's author Michael Rosen, and shares memories of growing up in Jewish Communist homes. He also meets Tom Bell, a former member of the London Recruits, who was sent to apartheid South Africa to work for the ANC and the South African Communist Party. While Nelson Mandela and others were jailed, Tom and others worked under cover, risking arrest and death. The current General Secretary of the Young Communist League, Johnny Hunter, explains why they have returned to the Hammer and Sickle, love pictures of Che Guevara and want the destruction of capitalism. The Young Communist League is a democratic organisation for people under 30, founded in 1921 as the youth wing of the Communist Party of Great Britain. They describe themselves as "Britain's biggest organisation of revolutionary young people - fighting for a society that provides for workers and young people, not big business". They want a revolutionary transformation of society - an end to poverty, unemployment, destruction of the environment, exploitation and division, including oppression based on gender, race and sexual orientation. In the 1930s, many League members volunteered to join the International Brigades and fight for the Spanish Republic against Franco. In the 1960s, the YCL helped establish the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and organised medical aid and hundreds of bicycles to support Vietnam against the United States. A Perfectly Normal production for BBC Radio 4