Jimmy Corcoran, CPI General Secretary, in a bind
When Jimmy Corcoran (along with Colm Laighneach) allowed himself to become involved in leading an ‘investigation’ into a case of alleged bullying within the CPI in August 2021, he initiated a set of problems and a domino structure of complications which eventually ran out of control and which has stayed out of control to this day.
A small, seemingly simple infringement starts the process. To hide the first infringement, you must continue with bigger and more serious infringements until eventually, the infringements spiral out of control, trapping you in a complex web of your own making.
Welcome to the world of Jimmy Corcoran, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Ireland.
He did not pick his habits up off the ground, he took his orders from a leadership that already had plenty of practice in irregular activities within the party. He did what most other party members did – he toed the line.
But that was the catch – his loyalty was not to the party, not to its constitution, not to the welfare of its members, not even to socialist principles but to a politically corrupt National Executive Committee (NEC) which itself had by then dispensed with any concept of ethical limits.
“Oh, what a tangled web we weave / When first we practice to deceive“
Whatever about the lack of wisdom of him becoming general secretary in 2022 while weighed down with such baggage, there is no excuse for him continuing in the role in 2026. The spotlight is on him and it continues to track him, laying naked his political and structural inadequacies, his involvement in abuse of power against party members and the external constraints that render him hopelessly impotent as a party leader or a political leader.
How can he speak of social justice when the record shows his willing involvement in a stitch-up of members of his own party? How can he speak of principles when he defied the norms of procedures and the constitution of his own party?
How can he speak of political integrity as he leads a party that treated its own members with distain and contempt? How can he speak of the future when he has refused to clean up his own past? Or, the party’s past? How can he speak of anything when every word he says will be subjected to critical analysis and most likely dismissed as cant?
Indeed, it is a measure of the party itself that it elected such hamstrung leaders. It is not that surprising really: a hamstrung party elects a hamstrung leadership and the cult goes on uninterrupted by any considerations outside the space it occupies.
The very least Corcoran could do would be to justify the irregular actions he and the rest of the leadership engaged in rather than maintaining a four-year silence.
No self-respecting leaders of any organisation would allow anybody to publicly and regularly accuse them and their organisation of abuses – claims backed up by plausible evidence – and not make some attempt to defend or clarify or otherwise explain their position.
The silence is also a measure of the level of leadership and its inability to defend the party from criticism by either friend or foe that leaves a shadow of suspicion over the individual leaders and the collective membership.
What are the charges?
Corcoran led an investigation into a case of alleged bullying within the CPI where:
- he started to conduct the investigation by refusing to disclose the terms of reference
- despite the party not having any terms of reference of its own, he refused to use any other established procedures such as the ICTU Guidelines on Prevention of Bullying and Harassment for Trade Union Activists
- he eventually agreed to abide by the ICTU definitions of bullying and harassment only
- having completed his investigation, he did not provide his report to the accused
As a member of the NEC he was complicit in:
- judging that the accused was guilty of “an ongoing and persistent campaign of harassment” despite the fact that the accused was not charged with harassment, nor given any opportunity to defend himself against the charge of harassment
- ordering the accused to desist from such harassment in the future
- ordering the accused to apologise to the Dublin District Branch without specifying what such an apology was for
- refusing (again) to provide a copy of his report
- refusing to engage an independent mediator
- threatening to expel the accused for failing to agree to desist in future from activities he had not engaged in in the past
- expelling the accused by refusing to accept his properly completed re-registration form*
- refusing to allow any appeal to his expulsion despite the accused having such a right under the party constitution
- continuing to uphold all these infringements when he became General Secretary in 2022
- continuing to uphold all these infringements since his re-election in 2026
- refusing to re-examine any of these infringements despite repeated request from the accused
- repeatedly refusing to investigate a fully-documented accusation of bullying against the party
Either these things happened or they did not. Either Corcoran is involved as we point out or he is not.
There is no middle ground here and we can show we have the written evidence to prove that these things did happen and that Corcoran – representing the CPI – was central to those events.
Corcoran and the CPI may contest this outline of events or otherwise clarify their positions and we will publish and/or respond to any such response. Staying silent, as they have done for more than four years, never was and never will be a viable political or organisational option.
*The party constitution states: “All Party members must re-register every year in order to maintain continuity of membership.” That’s it, no qualifications or subsections. However, the NEC, 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 refusing to re-register them at the end of the membership year.
This method was used to pursue a purge of large numbers of members accused of various offences and had the desired effect of depriving the members of recourse to the appeals process. In addition, the NEC did not have to meet the constitutional requirement of informing members of the party that expulsions had taken place and crucially, did not have to give the reasons for the expulsions as required under the constitution.
This seemingly clever ploy ensnared them in an unforeseen trap and has plagued them to this day.