Workers Party of Belgium

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The Belgian Labour Party was also the name of a socialist party that existed prior to World War I, which split following the foundation of the Comintern and gave rise to the Communist Party of Belgium.

The Workers' Party of Belgium (WPB) (Dutch: Partij van de Arbeid van België, French: Parti du Travail de Belgique) is a Belgian communist party. It is one of the few parties that operates as a single Belgian party. Most other Belgian parties are either Flemish or Francophone. The WPB has no seats in the Belgian parliament, having usually won no more than 1% in elections (last time 0.57%, according to broadleft.org).

The WPB hosts the International Communist Seminar, which in recent years has become the one of the main worldwide gatherings of communist parties.

[edit] History

The Workers Party of Belgium originated in the student movement at the end of the 1960s. Radicalized students (organized in the student union SVB - Studenten VakBeweging), mainly from the Catholic University of Leuven, turned towards the working-class movement. They considered the politics of the existing Communist Party of Belgium as being revisionist, i.e. too much turned toward the social-democratic politics (represented in Belgium by the Belgian Socialist Party). They were influenced by the ideas of the Communist Party of China, guerrilla movements in Latin America, the movement against Vietnam War, and the Leuven-Vlaams mouvement, the democratisation of the (then still French-speaking) University of Leuven (in the Flemish-speaking part of Belgium).

Their support and participation in an important strike in the coalmines made their turn towards a political party a definite one. They founded a periodical, AMADA (Alle Macht Aan De Arbeiders - all power to the workers), which became the first name of their party. In 1979 the first congress was held, which adopted a Marxist-Leninist program and changed the name to PVDA-PTB. Ludo Martens became the first president, and is still considered the most important ideologist of the party. A noticed observer at the first congress of the WPB was Laurent Kabila, who later took power in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, naming himself president.

In recent years, the Communist Party of Belgium has virtually disappeared, leaving the Workers' Party of Belgium as the biggest communist party in Belgium. The weekly paper "Solidair / Solidaire" has some influence in the trade-union movement in Belgium.

[edit] RESIST

The party formed an electoral coalition in Flanders with the Arab European League for the 2003 elections, named RESIST, running a campaign that also called for the establishment of Islamic confessional schools for children, which would be financed by the government. After poor results, the AEL left the coalition to found Moslim Democratische Partij.


[edit] External links

Belgian political parties

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Flemish  : Groen! | CD&V | N-VA | SP.a | Spirit | Vlaams Belang | VLD | VLOTT | MDP | Liberaal Appèl
Francophone : CDh | Ecolo | FN | MR | PS
German : CSP | PDB | PFF
Bilingual : Belgische Unie/Union Belge | PVDA-PTB | MAS-LSP | Vivant
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