A brief history of the Che-Leila Youth Brigades

By Sukant Chandan, Sons of Malcolm

Che-Leila started off by anti-imperialist students at Sussex University in the English southern coastal city of Brighton in the academic year 2001-2002.

Che-Leila was named after Che Guevara and Palestinian revolutionary Leila Khaled. Che-Leila was a federation of student societies which brought together the Cuba Solidarity Society (formed that year), Marxist-Leninist Study Society (also formed that year) and the Palestine Solidarity Society (formed the previous year).

The activities of the Che-Leila societies and the joint activities under the Che-Leila umbrella conducted some of the most successful student political work that Sussex had seen for a very long time.

In late March 2002 Che-Leila sent six students to Palestine. On their first day in Palestine in Ramallah the Israelis declared a curfew and the Che-Leila activists decided to stay in the city to struggle on a social and political level with the residents of the city. At that time the Al-Aqsa Intifada was raging against the Israeli occupation. People will remember that it was at this time that the late Palestinian President and Arafat was surrounded in his compound.

The Che-Leila students conducted mainly medical work in distributing food and medicine in ambulances in the city.

Recognising the great media exposure that the situation was under in the British press, and the widespread reporting of our delegation in the media, three of the students (the students were living in different parts of the city and communication between them was not easy) decided to formulate a press release declaring the founding of the Che-Leila Youth Brigade (CLYB) whose founding statement can be read below.

CLYB was intended to be a nation-wide movement bringing together youth in the anti-war movement around a program of anti-imperialist internationalism and grassroots strategies.

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Download the PDF of the last issue of Che-Leila magazine here.