Nina Temple Obituary, Death – There have been hundreds of thousands of people who have vowed to fight for class equality throughout the history of communism in Britain. For better or worse, our democratically elected leaders are few and far between. We found out about the passing of one of our previous leaders today. Two members of the Communist Party of Great Britain were her parents when Nina Temple was born in London. She passed away at the age of 67.
At thirteen years old, she became a member of the Young Communist League, the young organization of the Party. Temple ascended to the position of YCL General Secretary from 1979 to 1983 after being fully converted to the powerful Eurocommunist group. The group’s shared conviction was that communism in Britain couldn’t get traction as a political movement until it severely weakened its own ideology to make it more like social democratic parties.
Unfortunately, our movement suffered a devastating downturn as a result of their efforts to accomplish this, and we are still reeling from the effects. After she and her allies removed any mention of Marxism-Leninism and democratic centralism from the League’s constitution at its 1979 congress, the youth wing continued to decline under Eurocommunist leadership and was eventually disbanded in 1988. Even while the YCL was disbanding in the 1980s, Temple was rising through the ranks of the CPGB.
At the age of 33, Nina was chosen General Secretary in January 1990 after serving on the Party Political Committee from 1982. In fact, Temple reaffirmed her commitment to a Eurocommunist makeover of the organization, while remaining uncritical towards the poor handling of the League. With the goal of transforming the CPGB into something that was “feminist and green, as well as democratically socialist,” Temple and her group set out to dismantle the Party head-on.
Temple and the Party Executives decided to officially disband the Communist Party of Great Britain by November 1991. Temple established a new think tank called the Democratic Left and kept the Party’s name, money, and assets, which were valued at several million pounds. In the decades that followed, the organization merged multiple times with similar lobbying efforts. Unlock Democracy is the name of the amalgam as it now stands.