Harpal Brar

Harpal Brar (born 5 October 1939) is an Indian communist politician, writer and businessman, based in the United Kingdom. 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.

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.

Brar is the editor of a left-wing political newspaper Lalkar, the former journal of the Indian Workers' Association. Brar has written multiple books on subjects such as communism, Indian republicanism, imperialism, anti-Zionism, anti-colonialism, and the British General Strike. He is also a co-founder of the Hands off China campaign.

Views on China

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."

Works

• Inquilab Zindabad, India's Liberation Struggle (2014)
• 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?
• Perestroika: The Complete Collapse of Revisionism (1992)
• Trotskyism or Leninism? (1993)
• Social Democracy: The Enemy Within (1995)