  Using one of the deepest datasets available, we determine that the red
sequence of the massive cluster MS1054-0321 at z=0.831 is well populated at all
studied magnitudes, showing no deficit of faint (down to M^*+3.5) red galaxies:
the faint end of the colour-magnitude relation is neither empty nor
underpopulated. The effect is quantified by the computation of the luminosity
function (LF) of red galaxies. We found a flat slope, showing that the
abundance of red galaxies is similar at faint and at intermediate magnitudes.
Comparison with present-day and z~0.4 LFs suggests that the slope of the LF is
not changed, within the errors, between z=0.831 and z=0. Therefore, the
analysis of the LF shows no evidence for a decreasing (with magnitude or
redshift) number of faint red galaxies. The presence of faint red galaxies in
high redshift clusters disfavours scenarios where the evolution of red galaxies
is mass-dependent, because the mass dependency should differentially
depauperate the red sequence, while the MS1054-0321 colour-magnitude relation
is populated as in nearby clusters and as in z~0.4 clusters. The presence of
abundant faint red galaxies in the high redshift cluster MS1054-0321 restricts
the room for allocating descendants of Butcher-Oemler galaxies, because they
should change the faint end slope of the LF of red galaxies, while instead the
same faint end slopes are observed in MS1054-0321, at z~0 and at z~0.4. In the
rich MS1054-0321 cluster, the colour-magnitude relation seems to be fully in
place at z=0.831 and therefore red galaxies of all magnitudes were wholly
assembled at higher redshift.
