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Workers' Party of New Zealand
Workers' Party of New Zealand
Founder	Ray Nunes
Founded	1991
Dissolved	2004 (merged with Revolutionary Workers' League and Anti-Capitalist Alliance)
Preceded by	Communist Party of New Zealand
Succeeded by	Workers' Party of New Zealand (2006)
Headquarters	Auckland
Newspaper	The Spark
Ideology	Communism; Marxism-Leninism; Maoism; Anti-Revisionism
Colours	Red
	Politics of New Zealand; Political parties; Elections;

The Workers' Party of New Zealand was a minor political party in New Zealand.

Formation

Following the turn of the Communist Party of New Zealand to Trotskyism, the Workers' Party was the main organisation in New Zealand to uphold the anti-revisionist, Beijing line of Mao Zedong in opposition to the market reforms of Deng Xiaoping.^[4]^[5]

The party was one of the two founding parties in the Anti-Capitalist Alliance, which was the only communist organisation to field a national slate of candidates in the New Zealand general elections during the 2000s. ^[6]^[7]^[8]

Merger

In 2004, the party merged with a South Island-based Trotskyist group, Revolution,^[9]^[10] to form the Revolutionary Workers' League (RWL).^[11] The RWL became a body within the reformed Workers' Party of New Zealand (2006),^[8]^[12] which was created when the Anti-Capitalist Alliance, a loose electoral alliance, became one of the first unified communist parties in the world formed through an alliance of Marxist-Leninists and Trotskyists.^[13]^[14]

Party publications

The party published a monthly newspaper called The Spark.^[15] They also contributed to Liberation, a magazine produced by the Anti-Capitalist Alliance.^[16]

The Spark was adopted as the triweekly magazine of the Revolutionary Workers' League in 2004,^[11] before becoming the de facto, monthly organ of the unified Workers' Party in 2006.^[17]

The work of Ray Nunes

The party was most notable for its chairman, Ray Nunes, a former representative of the Communist Party of New Zealand Central Committee. A party member for nearly 40 years, Nunes had represented the Communist Party in international meetings for over two decades, in addition to other senior responsibilities, such as serving as Wellington district secretary.^[2]^[18] Nunes represented the CPNZ at the 1960 International Meeting of Communist and Workers Parties, ^[1] siding with China in attacking N. S. Khrushchev for his alleged revisionism, and meeting with Mao Zedong and Kang Sheng as part of a party delegations during 1966–1968.^[19] He would continue to represent the Workers' Party in its relations with communists abroad until his death.^[20]

Nunes wrote many articles about Marxism, many of which were regularly published in The Spark.^[21] His major work, From Marx to Mao – and After (1995), is an introductory course in Marxism-Leninism, which also contains Nunes' analysis of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the market reforms of Deng in China.^[22] In the year of Nunes' death, the party published his essay The Maori in Prehistory and Today (1999), which is believed to be the first Marxist analysis of the Maori national question.^[23]

References

^ ^a ^b People's March. (1999, July–August). Comrade Ray Nunes, Chairman of Workers' Party of New Zealand, passes away. People's March. Retrieved from [1].
^ ^a ^b Whitmore, D. (1999, July). A Marxist-Leninist of extraordinary calibre. The Spark. Retrieved from [2]
^ Workers' Party of New Zealand. (16 August 2000). The Spark. Retrieved from [3].
^ ^a ^b Workers' Party of New Zealand. (1991). Programme of the Workers' Party of New Zealand. Retrieved from [4].
^ Nunes, R. (1998, July). Why workers should reject the Socialist Worker, agent of Trotskyism. The Spark. Retrieved from [5].
^ Workers' Party of New Zealand (3 April 2002). Anti-Capitalist Alliance to stand in general election. The Spark. Retrieved from [6].
^ Workers' Party of New Zealand (24 August 2005). Anti-Capitalists standing in 8 electorates. The Spark. Retrieved from [7].
^ ^a ^b Duncan, P. (19 May 2005). Left unity in NZ. Weekly Worker. Retrieved from [8].
^ Ferguson, P. (1997, April/May). Editorial: Welcome to the revolution. Revolution. Retrieved from [9].
^ Radical Media Collective. Revo subs page. Revolution website. Retrieved 12 July 2013, from [10].
^ ^a ^b Ferguson, P. (15 June 2004). Fusion forms new group – Revolutionary Workers League. The Spark. Retrieved from [11].
^ Workers' Party of New Zealand. (1 February 2006). Anti-Capitalist Alliance becomes the Workers' Party [Media release]. Auckland: Workers' Party of New Zealand. Retrieved from [12].
^ Ferguson, P. & D. Whitmore. (2011). The Truth About Labour. Redline. Retrieved from [13].
^ Maoist Internationalist Movement. (2004). Knowing what's what: Workers Party of New Zealand degenerates in open. Maoist Internationalist Movement website. Retrieved from [14].
^ The Spark. (1999, September). Retrieved from [15].
^ Liberation. (2002, Spring), p.28. Retrieved from [16].
^ Workers' Party of New Zealand. About us. Workers' Party of New Zealand website. Retrieved 12 June 2007 from [17].
^ Barrowman, R. (1991, p. 118). A Popular Vision: The Arts and the Left in New Zealand 1930–1950. Wellington: Victoria University Press.
^ Nunes, R. (1997). Politics and Ideology: Meetings with Kang Sheng 1966-68. Auckland: Workers' Party of New Zealand. Retrieved from [18]
^ Nunes, R. & D. Whitmore. (1999). Armed Struggle and the Third World: The Growth of People's War. In Mao and People's War. Kerala: Vanguard Multi-Media Foundation. Retrieved from [19].
^ Workers' Party of New Zealand. Articles from The Spark by Ray Nunes. Workers' Party of New Zealand website. Retrieved 11 November 1999, from [20].
^ Nunes, R. (1995). From Marx to Mao – and after. Auckland: Workers' Party of New Zealand. Retrieved from [21]
^ Nunes, R. (1999). The Maori in Prehistory and Today. Auckland: Workers' Party of New Zealand. Retrieved from [22].