Who build acopeative communities party called new hermaine?
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Imagine a trade union in a military unit in Pakistan. Yet that was one of the first unions that Abid Hassan Minto formed when he joined the Communist Party in Pakistan in 1949. It was a workers’ association at the Military Engineering Service; the other one was in a multinational oil company at Attock. Such a thing would be unthinkable now, grinned Minto, the president of the Awami Workers Party (AWP), which was formed after a merger of three parties in 2012 (Labour, Awami and Workers’ parties). There was a buzz about the new unity of the Left parties then. This was a renewed attempt to forge a clearly defined Left in Pakistan, said Minto, a sprightly 80 in 2013 when I met him.
The Communist Party was scattered after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, as also due to the resurgence of the global corporate system in the shape of the New World. The disarray of the Left was everywhere, and in Pakistan, the trade union movement was weak and it splintered into many factions. The grouping of parties was based on individuals. For Minto, the key question was what kind of politics the Left had to come up with to deal with new challenges in Pakistan where many things hadn’t changed at all.
An opportunity to meet some leftists came up when the Progressive Writers Association (PWA) organised a meeting with communist ideologue Sajjad Zaheer’s daughter, Noor Zaheer, who had come from New Delhi to speak about her books. The red-brick building with a small hall was the venue for her speech and when I landed there, my spooks, Beard and a new guy, were there too, and during a break I saw them questioning the organisers. They stayed till t