The Communist Movement in Ireland, 101 years after its first breath, stands at a crossroads of crisis and potential. In the seven years since 2015 the Communist Movement in Ireland has found additional energy and vitality in the form of a resurgent Connolly Youth Movement, in the context of a decade of heightened class war against the international working class following the 2008 capitalist financial crash. The resurgence of Marxism-Leninism as a force on the Irish left, along with people’s organisations defending working people’s rights, has created significant opportunities for increased class struggle.
Unfortunately, after the 2017 CPI Congress a faction emerged on the National Executive Committee of the Communist Party of Ireland. Following the Congress they engaged in activity which was contrary to Congress policy, the Constitution, and the Programme of the CPI, by intrigue operating secretly, and keeping members outside their faction uninformed. The faction downplayed the necessity for an input from a working class perspective into the debate about the national question.
Their actions culminated in late 2020, early 2021, in the undemocratic expulsions of National Executive Committee members and others without due process, they stripped the members in the North of Ireland of their membership, and they removed the Northern Area organisation from the structure of the Party, contrary to the Party Constitution. Effectively they created an alternative organisation to that which is defined in the CPI Constitution. All of this was preceded by the derecognition of the Connolly Youth Movement as the youth movement of the Communist Party of Ireland. There has been a loss of members throughout Ireland as a consequence.
In short, the faction barred members of the Party’s own youth wing from joining the CPI as part of a general strategy to maintain an in-built factional majority in their favour. They then expelled en masse National Executive Committee members, the Northern Area Committee, and those grass roots members who objected to this unconstitutional action.
The authors of this document, those Party members from across Ireland targeted by the faction, do not welcome the division forced upon the Communist Party. The total refusal of the faction to engage with the process of reconciliation with other members of the Party, and their unconstitutional administrative actions, have damaged the CPI and diminished its status and respect in the Labour movement and beyond.
We owe the working class of Ireland better than this – to work towards an independent socialist united Ireland. Their actions listed above bear a remarkable similarity to those used by the euro-communists who took over the Communist Party of Great Britain, which led to its demise. Through this statement we declare our resolve to rebuild the Communist Party of Ireland and to reconstitute our Party on a new basis that respects democratic centralism and the will of the membership.
In the pursuit of this goal, we will reconstitute the Communist Party in 2022 on a firm, democratic, Marxist-Leninist footing. The Communist Party of Ireland is our Party – the Party of the members – the vanguard Party of the Irish working class. It is not the domain, fiefdom or possession of any individual or faction. It is a tradition that has united and synthesised the struggles of working people across the island of Ireland since its inception.
In 1921 our movement was founded in the wake of the Great October Socialist Revolution, amid the embers of Britain’s failing empire, by revolutionaries who saw in their situation the inchoate kernel of a better world. In 2022 we recommence the process of winning that world. Through our efforts we will reconstitute the Communist Party of Ireland to meet the needs of our society, to establish authentic national sovereignty in opposition to British, EU and US imperialism, through organisation, education and agitation.
We invite any communists who have been alienated by the previous leadership, who have been forced to relinquish their membership on spurious grounds, or who have become disillusioned with the lack of direction and progress, to join us in this effort.
As referenced above the faction undermined and destroyed the relationship with the Connolly Youth Movement, so it will be the earnest desire of the reconstituted Communist Party to mend that relationship, reconcile over differences, and someday seek formal, respectful and equal partnership in re-affiliation.
We rededicate ourselves to building an all-Ireland revolutionary movement in every city and county and working with our comrades in the International Communist Movement.