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On the Life
of Comrade Nat Gould
- Statement
by the Committee of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement
31 July 1992
It is with
the deepest regret that we are announcing the death of Comrade Nat
Gould, founder and leader of the New Zealand Red Flag Group, a participating
organization of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, who
died on 30th March 1992. He was over 80 years old.
Comrade Gould
was a communist who devoted his entire life to the cause of revolution
in New Zealand and around the world. He took part in the struggles
of the Unemployed Workers' Movement in the 1930s, in the worldwide
fight to defend the Soviet Union against fascist invasion during
World War 2, and he carried on the revolutionary struggle in the
difficult years of the Cold War. Later, he was out on the streets
against U.S. imperialism's war on Vietnam, and towards the end of
his life was active in denouncing the imperialist-backed apartheid
regime in South Africa. Everywhere he raised the red flag of Marxism
and proletarian revolution, including, most importantly, through
his staunch support for Mao Tsetung and the Chinese revolutionaries
in their battle against Soviet-led revisionism during the crucial
years of the 1960s and in the Cultural Revolution which followed.
Although the
immediate efforts to build the New Zealand Red Flag Group were not
able to be sustained in the past period, in large part because of
the failing health of Comrade Gould, his efforts helped lay the
basis for a new generation of revolutionaries to pick up and carry
forward his lifelong work. His widow, Comrade Flora Gould, writes
in one of her letters that Nat "was unemployed soon after leaving
school so was very early involved in working class struggle. He
joined the Communist Party New Zealand (CPNZ) in about 1936 and
of course was a member until he was expelled on trumped-up charges
(but basically because like myself and a handful of others he would
not go along with the CP's basic criticism of Mao). After that
he did the main work in writing the content for Red Flag, even hopefully
writing articles during the last few weeks before he died. He had
moved from Wellington to Auckland in 1939 as a member of the staff
of the People's Voice (C.P. weekly) and it was during that period
he was jailed for a month, I think, for 'subversion' when acting
editor.... Of course his main contribution (as mine too) was the
struggle against revisionism first in the CPSU... and finally inside
the CPNZ." Comrade Flora also reports that over 100 people
attended his funeral, at which various speakers recalled his legacy.
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