Without integrity, the CPI has nothing to offer
Everything the CPI stands for and promotes has to be better than the existing order. Otherwise, it has no purpose.
It is now more than three years since a witch-hunt was initiated in the Party that led to a series of consequences never before experienced by the Party leadership. Having got just about everything wrong, the leadership dug in its heels and held on for dear life on its very slippery slide into ignominy.
Despite being offered numerous opportunities to backtrack and correct its position, it declined to budge or engage in any way. The result was that the Party set itself the perfect trap: a trap from which they can never escape until the position is corrected.
A self-perfected trap that has seen them unable to respond to a single accusation levelled against them in public, most notably in the pages of Guerrilla Communists.
What can workers expect from the CPI in the area of social or legal justice if they somehow came to power? Trials where the defendant does not know that he or she is even on trial? Trials where the evidence is not made known to the defendant? Trials where the defendant is forbidden from presenting a defence? Trials with no possibility of appeal?
Or, how about trials where the defendant is presented with a set of charges, is allowed to present a defence but then finds himself or herself convicted of an entirely different and unrelated ‘offence’? Trials where the criteria are secret and unchallengeable? Trials where no criteria or agreed procedures exist within the organisation while refusing to employ suitable available criteria and procedures from established and legal sources? Trials where the defendant is not given any reasons or a copy of the inquiry report? Where again, there is no possibility for an appeal?
This is not an improvement on existing conditions – looks more like anti-social justice. As warped as the laws in this country may be, they do not operate at that level of perversion. The CPI has become almost a perfect fit for the caricature of ‘show’ trials in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The only difference from the caricature is that in the caricature the defendant was allowed to attend the trial and know what the evidence was. The CPI has no time for such niceties!
Eugene McCartan, who was General Secretary at the time knows a little bit about show trials. When challenged about the role of the Party in the deteriorating relationship between the CPI and the Connolly Youth Movement (CYM) at the CYM Ard Fheis in 2020 McCartan exploded that they (the CYM) were subjecting him and the CPI to a show trial! Strange that such a ‘leader’ who objected to being subjected to a show trial, had overseen so many himself and was about to embark of on a feast of show trials over the next few years.
The grossness of their actions is exposed by the fact that the National Executive Committee, instead of expelling members based on an inquiry conducted under the terms of its own constitution, resorted to the entirely illegitimate, deceitful and unconstitutional scam of declining to re-register them at the end of the membership year. No doubt, there were many smug smiles when that little scheme was put forward to solve some of their problems.
In addition to being unconstitutional, this scam ensured that members expelled in such a manner had no recourse to any form of appeal. The utter stupidity of this scam was that the NEC could have expelled any members they wanted to and ensured that their appeals would not be successful while, nominally at least, staying within the constitution.
But, no! That would be too simple! Why not insist that re-registering members be presented with conditions that the NEC knew those members could and would not accept? However, just like so many ‘clever’ schemes and scams before, they did not think this one through.
Members were expelled by entirely illegitimate methods on often entirely illegitimate grounds. The result? A massive split in the Party and members banished – to hell or to Ulster.
Whatever about the feelings of the individual members involved, the real damage was done to the CPI itself. To have acted so stupidly, to have painted themselves as so ignorant of basic concepts and to fail to find a way to resolve matters, exposed them as the rank amateurs that they are. The ignominy of it all is breathtaking.
The problem is that these ‘comrades’, these “most politically advanced members of the working class” (by their own definition), these fearless leaders, are out of their depth. They function within a fantasy land of self-delusion and self-congratulation which, when challenged by anybody inside or outside the party brings out the baseness, the sheer incompetence that marks their whole operation.
This would be of no consequence if all they represented was themselves. However, they put themselves forward as the leaders of the working class, as leaders of the movement towards socialism, as the public face of socialism and they disgrace themselves and everything they touch with their arrogance, ignorance and conceit.
One of their continuing fantasies is that they can continue to resolve problems in the party by expelling the problem along with whatever number of members is necessary and just make it all go away. They still have not learned that all they manage to do is lose control of the problem and leave themselves wide open to deserved attack. As if the CPI does not have enough natural attackers already, they just can’t help creating their own home-grown varieties.
And, is this what CPI democracy looks like? More on that next time when we introduce you to the Communist Party of Ireland (Groucho Marxist).