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Just as People’s
March was going into print, it received the news of the death of Comrade Ray
Nunes, the Chairman of the Workers’ Party of New Zealand on July 1.
It is no exaggeration
to say that Comrade Nunes devoted all his life and all his energy to the cause
of the working class. Ray became a communist in the early part of World War II,
joining the Communist Party of New Zealand of which he was a member for nearly
40 years. For over 20 years he was on the CPNZ’s leading committees and was
active in theoretical and practical work. During this time he gained enormous
experience of the class struggle of the workers and oppressed for socialism,
both in New Zealand and at an international level.
He resigned from the
Communist Party in 1980, when that party became blind followers of Enver Hoxha
of Albania. After doing ground work for over a decade, he founded the Workers’
Party of New Zealand in 1991. What is admirable even at such a late age, Comrade
Nunes ventured to build a new party. He could also be seen quite often in the
streets of Auckland and at workers’ meetings selling the party monthly, The
Spark, with boundless enthusiasm and energy.
Comrade Nunes is
perhaps one of the very few living Marxists who had attended the 81-Party
meeting in Moscow in 1960 and attacked the line of Khrushchov. Ever since then,
he stood firmly against revisionism both in New Zealand and at the international
level.
People’s March pays its humble
revolutionary homage to this veteran communist leader.
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