“What is the Communist Party” (Part 2)
The Gang of Four
When Jimmy Corcoran, CPI General Secretary, challenged his readers to ask a communist if they want to get an understanding of Marxism we thought it reasonable to do just that. Over the next few posts we will ask past and present leaders of the party – Eugene McCartan, Jimmy Corcoran, Jimmy Doran, Ciara Ní Mhaoilfhinn, Gearóid Ó Machail, Aaron Nolan, or anybody else representing the party to tell us all about socialism, all about social justice, all about democracy, all about equality, all about human dignity.
Tell us about all the other integral attributes of socialism. Tell us all about how you would uphold your own rules and procedures. Tell us all about how the mechanisms that you all have approved and applied to deal with various ‘difficulties’ within the party are better than the mechanisms currently used by trade unions/employers or the Irish justice system to manage or resolve similar issues in our current capitalist society.
From the outset, we contend that the disregard for even the most basic standards of democracy and human decency by the leadership and the timidity and disciple-like subservience of the membership led inevitably to actions and positions that directly contradicted the values they themselves declare as fundamental elements of a just society.
We start with the Dublin District Branch Officers (aka the gang of four) and in particular Ciara Ní Mhaoilfhinn, as she went on to be National Chairperson of the CPI.
This gang of four was elected as branch officers at the 2020 branch AGM and went on to abuse any remaining semblance of democracy that existed within the branch.
Furthermore, their influence on the various strata of party leadership was such that they were not only shielded from any possible blowback against their reign of power abuse, but every infringement was endorsed by the then Southern Area Committee (SAC) and by the National Executive Committee (NEC).
We will concentrate on the issues of democracy and accountability and more details of their escapades can be read more here, here and here.
The gang of four inherited a branch that had either discarded branch standing orders or simply ignored them. There is no record anywhere to show that the Dublin branch had democratically suspended standing orders, so it is safe to conclude that they were just ignored. This did not appear to be of any concern to the incoming branch officers. As they always signed correspondence “Dublin District Branch Officers” they must accept collective responsibilities for their actions.
Of course, without any rules or guidelines to operate from, they made error after error and then tied themselves in knots trying to defend some ludicrous positions.
In the end, they lost the run of themselves and submitted secret complaints (secret from the rest of the branch membership) and secret from the selected accused members, to the next level of leadership – the SAC.
During this time, one member had been presenting proposals to branch meetings aimed to promote democratic participation and accountability to branch meeting proceedings. Time after time, the proposals were either not put to branch meetings or if put on the agenda, were aggressively opposed by the gang of four and then the proposals were defeated in a vote of members.
Eventually, it became clear to the then General Secretary, Eugene McCartan that the issues of democracy and standing orders within the branch would not go away and he correctly suggested a review of procedures.
Things now take a sinister turn. The NEC was presented with at least two documents related to standing orders. One was from Ní Mhaoilfhinn and when the issue of such a document was raised at a branch meeting, she stated that she had submitted a personal document. However, there was another secret document and it did not match the description of the Ní Mhaoilfhinn document and she did not make any mention of or any association with the document or declare any knowledge of the existence of another document.
Attempts to get to the source of the second document were met with silence and obstruction by the gang of four and others in the party leadership. Eventually, the continued pursuit of the nature of the second document was met, directly by an accusation of bullying by Ní Mhaoilfhinn against two branch members (among other issues).
The contested document turned out to be a secret presentation from the Dublin District Branch Officers – that is, co-authored by Ní Mhaoilfhinn – here (go to end of post).
This document was a blueprint for a revised set of branch standing orders. It contained proposals that had similar wording and similar intent to those that had been submitted by one of the now accused, and which the authors had resolutely opposed and succeeded in defeating at successive branch meetings. In other words, the gang of four had not only submitted a secret document, but they included clauses that directly contradicted newly adopted branch policies – policies that they themselves just weeks before had forcibly endorsed.
In another secret complaint against a branch member to the Southern Area Committee, Ní Mhaoilfhinn – as co-author under the signature “Dublin District Branch Officers” described herself and her co-conspirators as “custodians of the branch” no less! In fairness, she had a point: the members of the branch had displayed such docility and cowardice that perhaps they did need somebody to protect them as they pursued their revolutionary endeavours.
The issue of secrecy ran so deep with Ní Mhaoilfhinn and the rest of the gang that they refused to share correspondence with the branch members or, if they did, they reserved the right to decide if they would or not and resisted all attempts to change that prerogative.
When the NEC eventually circulated a set of standing orders for branches that included the requirement on branch officers to share correspondence, it was not to the liking of the gang of four – as per their secret submission. As a consequence, the NEC recirculated the document (buried deep in the bowels of a national newsletter) with the offending clause now removed but did not mention that the change had taken place. The result was that the branch officers of any branch are not required to share correspondence with the members of any branch. Such selfless dedication to the welfare of members’ peace of mind is seldom witnessed.
Indeed, this is only the tip of the iceberg as far as Ní Mhaoilfhinn’s activities and accusations are concerned and we will return to some of these in future posts. In the meantime, it would be interesting to hear her take on democracy and democratic centralism not just within the CPI but as a foundation for a socialist democracy in Ireland of which she and the CPI might play a leading or supportive role.
NEXT:
Eugene McCartan and Jimmy Doran will be offered a chance to give their take on how a CPI administration would protect workers’ rights.