Friends of China

The Friends of China (FC) group was founded in 1964 by anti-revisionists who had left the Communist Party of Great Britain. It campaigned for the Communist Party of China. 

By the late 1960s FC had become a front group for the Revolutionary Marxist-Leninist League (RMLL), the Maoist group formed by Abhimanyu Manchanda. From 1971, the FC came under more intense SDS scrutiny as the police targeted Manchanda, deploying officers HN45 ‘Dave Robertson’ and HN348 ‘Sandra Davies’ into the RMLL.

As well as SDS reporting, there is also a reference to the group in a paper submitted to Whitehall’s secret Communism at Home committee Committee on Subversion at Home The Committee on Subversion at Home was a secret Whitehall committee that investigated subversive threats to the United Kingdom and proposed counter-measures. Founded in May 1951, it was known until January 1969 as the Official Committee on Communism (Home) from then on it became the Committee on Subversion at Home. From the late 1960s, the subversive threats the committee examined overlapped with the groups on which the Special Demonstration Squad spied. , suggesting that the organisation was under the influence of the Chinese communist party. MI5 paper ‘Subversion in the United Kingdom – Autumn 1967’ and note from the Secretary of the Official Committee on Communism (Home) (CAB 301-509), 17 Oct 1967, MI5, UCPI0000035236.View Document

Sources:

Anti-Revisionism online. Encyclopaedia of anti-Revisionism On-line (website), Marxists Internet Archive.