The CPI defied its own Constitution (Part 4)
In this concluding part we look at some of the issues that have hamstrung the CPI and we propose some measures for the Party to escape its self-imposed shackles.
In a previous post we described the CPI as being on a roundabout that has no exit. The Party is in a state of suspended animation – it can neither go back or go forward because of the self-imposed chains it has shackled itself in.
One escape route is blocked by the sheer lack of ambition, lack of planning, lack of strategy and lack of effective organisation.
Yet another escape is blocked by the ineptitude and the compromised state of the current leadership.
And another escape is blocked by the carnage left in the wake of the destruction of democracy and discipline within the Party.
However, the main obstacle is the inability of the Party to find an effective way to deal with the challenges that the Party has had to face and for which it has failed to respond to in any way other than a monastic observance of silence.
Its impatience with being being constrained by its Constitution as it moved to expels ‘undesireables’ from its ranks caused the leadership to unceremoniously discard or deliberately defy relevent pesky articles prior to an upcoming National Congress. While some articles were indeed amended and others changed completely, the leadership failed to cover all its tracks which again supports our contention that the leadership will bend and shape any article, any standing orders, to suit their particular needs at any particular time.
For instance, the article on re-registration which the leadership had used and abused to expel numerous members remained unchanged in the newly adopted Constitution – Article 30 – “All Party members must re-register every year in order to maintain continuity of membership.”
Article 24 in the Constitution at that time (Article 30 in the newly adopted Constitution and unchanged) provided no legitimate path to expelling a member other than if a member failed to return a completed form. There are no other qualifications, exemptions, if’s or but’s associated with Article 30.
Having abused this provision it then carried on as if nothing happened! But it did happen and the problem is that it has left a legacy that the Party cannot escape – without renouncing the arbitrary and illegitimate actions it engaged in.
It also exposed another major fault line: using a blunt instrument like the re-registration process to find a way to expel members exposed the utter lack of imagination in how such a process might be ‘handled’. That particular method offered the Party no protection and no way to justify the expulsion of members using this route. Those in the leadership who (ill)conceived this travesty of injustice and methodology, and the cowardly committee members who endorsed it, should immediately and permanently disqualify themselves from any leadership positions in the Party and from membership of any democratic-based organisation.
Of course, the legitimate way to secure disciplinary authority and expulsions, if properly deemed necessary, already existed within the Party Constitution and within various existing standing orders. But the leadership decided that it was above all that and went for the shortcut. A shortcut that turned out to be both illegitimate and utterly destructive to the image and principles of the Party.
Consequently, it has unnecessarily and negligently burdened itself with both legal and moral liabilities and quandaries that require real courage and diplomacy to overcome.
However, the 2022 National Congress did present the perfect opportunity to at least try to repair the damage and put into history the illegitimate actions of the outgoing leadership.
Once again, the lack of planning and strategy and the abject failure in leadership skills let the Party down and it commenced its new era with the same skeletons in its closet. It is not as if it had not been warned: Guerrilla Communists had openly and clearly challenged the legitimacy of the actions perpetrated by the outgoing leadership as had others who chose different ways to demonstrate their rejection.
Undeterred, the Party not only failed to repudiate or discard its skeletons, it actually put meat on them by electing into the leadership of the Party some of the very people who were either directly involved in, or directly responsible for, the breaches that had taken place. The very breaches for which the Party was being, and will continue to be, publicly challenged. See CPI in disarray – Guerrilla Communists
What is to be done?
The CPI has a hard road ahead of it. Having failed to take the easy route, it must now travel the rocky road to oblivion and shame or take stark measures to redeem its character. It can try to brave it out just as it has been doing up to this point but that has not exactly been a successful formula. Having itself failed to successfully engage is a single sustained campaign of any form or significance in its recent past, the Party looks like it does not even recognise a campaign that is challenging it directly and which will continue to do so. That is what not being able to lift your head out of the sand looks like.
There really is only one option: the current leadership must resign and allow a less contaminated crew to clean up the mess.
That is all that is left of the Party – a mess that is either cleaned up decisively and with dignity or which continues to infect and utterly destroy any possibility of the CPI ever having any future in class politics.
The most problematic aspect of such a clean-up for the CPI is that it cannot do it alone. Having abandoned the basic principles of fairness, it can only ever even start such a process by first approaching and then hopefully finding a level of cooperation for resolving outstanding issues with those who it has wronged and treated unjustly.
That process would require levels of both trust and diplomacy on the part of a leadership – qualities clearly outside the scope of the current leadership.
Resignation and self-banishment from the Party is the only realistic way for the current leadership to show some actual leadership and character. Only then can the remaining membership start the process of firstly redeeming themselves and then redeeming the reputation of the Party.
It could be done quite quickly and decisively. All it would take is for a handful of communists to behave like communists. For a handful of communists to demonstrate that they have the courage to defend and build the CPI. For a handful of communists to repudiate past and current – let’s call them transgressions – within the Party. For a handful of communists to realise that without a strong, united, vibrant, organised, confident and democratic base the CPI and its members will have no role to play in any class politics in Ireland.
Are there any communists in the Communist Party of Ireland?
The CPI defied its own Constitution (Part 1)
The CPI defied its own Constitution (Part 2)