Jeremy Corbyn’s new election campaign chief is the infamous communist and Stop the War chair Andrew Murray. A member of the Communist Party of Britain (pro-Stalin, pro-Soviet faction) until a few months ago, Murray is an apologist for Stalin who has defended the Soviet Union, supported North Korea and downplayed the Paris terrorist attacks. In 1999 Murray wrote an article in the communist Morning Star newspaper arguing that Stalin was preferable to the West:

“Next Tuesday is the 120th anniversary of the birth of Josef Stalin… A socialist system embracing a third of the world and the defeat of Nazi Germany on the one hand. On the other, all accompanied by harsh measures imposed by a one-party regime. Nevertheless, if you believe that the worst crimes visited on humanity this century, from colonialism to Hiroshima and from concentration camps to mass poverty and unemployment have been caused by imperialism, then [Stalin’s birthday] might at least be a moment to ponder why the authors of those crimes and their hack propagandists abominate the name of Stalin beyond all others. It was, after all, Stalin’s best-known critic, Nikita Khrushchev, who remarked in 1956 that ‘against imperialists, we are all Stalinists’.”

In a 2008 Morning Star article Murray wrote about the “successes” of the Soviet Union including its “nationalities policy” for promoting “the cultural, linguistic and educational development of each ethnic group, no matter how small or how historically marginalised“.

In 2003, at the executive committee meeting of the Communist Party of Britain, Murray expressed his support for North Korea:

“We should also be alert to the very real dangers in the Fareast and around Peoples Korea. The clear desire of the USA to effect regime change in its second axis of evil target could well provoke an armed clash there, too. Our Party has already made its basic position of solidarity with Peoples Korea clear.”

In 2015, Murray was introduced by Corbyn at a panel event in which he downplayed the terrorist attacks in Paris. He said:

“The barbarism we condemn in Paris is minute compared to the barbarism wrought by imperialism across the planet in the last 13 years and we must condemn that… It is a sad lesson we have to re-learn from the attacks in Paris, it needs bringing home again and again.”

In 2015, after Corbyn had become Labour leader, Murray told the Guardian he would be staying in the Communist Party because of his commitment to the ideology:

“All my children are in the Labour party. All four. One has been in the Labour party a long time; the other three are all there as a result of Jeremy’s surge. But, no: I’m a member of the Communist party. That’s where I am. Communism still represents, in my view, a society worth working towards – albeit not by the methods of the 20th century, which failed.”

In order to join Labour and start working in its party HQ, Murray has gone back on this commitment and quit the Communist Party. Sellout…