Left Archive: “Differentiate between sham and genuine Marxism-Leninism to unite the revolutionary forces and defeat the enemy, British and Irish ‘Communist’ Organisation – Trotskyite Thugs, Sham Marxist-Leninists and Agents of British Imperialism”, 1977, Communist Party of Ireland (Marxist-Leninist)

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Many thanks to Conor McCabe for forwarding this to the Archive. 

As may be gathered from the sub-heading to this pamphlet, this short twenty page document suggests no meeting of minds between the  British and Irish Communist Organisation and the Communist Party Ireland (Marxist-Leninist). 

A precis at the start of the document states:

“Differentiate between Sham and Genuine Marxism-Leninism to unite the Revolutionary Forces and Defeat the Enemy — British and Irish ‘Communist’ Organisation — Trotskyite [sic] Thugs, Sham Marxist-Leninists and Agents of British Imperialism” is the title of the article published in this pamphlet.

It is the first of a series of theoretical articles and analyses to be published in the Communist Party of Ireland (Marxist-Leninist) Pamphlet Series. In particular this article, which was first published in ’Red Patriot/An Tirghrath ir Dearg1, newsweekly of the Communist Party of Ireland (Marxist-Leninist), Vol. 4, No. 12, July 19th, 1975, is the first in a series of articles to repudiate the antiworking class, anti-national and pro-imperialist theories of the trotskyite organisation, the British and Irish’Communist1 Organisation.

One quotation will suffice from the start of the document to give a sense of the tone of the text:

An organisation, fraudulently calling itself the “British and Irish Communist Organisation”, exists here in Ireland, as well as in Britain, and despite the fact that it opposes Marxism-Leninism on every basic as well as secondary question, and has even gone to the depth of ‘criticising Chairman Mao, and Comrade Lenin’, opposing directly the analysis of Stalin, Marx and Engels, and openly upholding the renegade and dog from the Second International, Kautsky, it parades itself as ‘Communist’ and ‘Stalinist’.

This organisation is nothing but a clique of splitters and disruptors drawn from assorted splits or attempted splits, and headed by Brendan Clifford, a trotskyite. The sole orientation of this clique is opposition to the proletarian revolution in Ireland, as well as in Britain (where they are trying desperately to increase their influence) and throughout the world and its main activity for this end is that of seeking out ‘quotations’ from the Marxist-Leninist classics in order to put a ‘Marxist-Leninist’ front on the activity of counter-revolution and sow maximum confusion in the working class movement. Both in theory and in practice every stand they take sides with British imperialism and the Irish capitalist class (in their case the unionist section in the north) to oppose the workers and small farmers, oppose the revolutionary intellectuals, oppose the struggle for national independence and unification and oppose the struggle of the workers and small farmers against the entire imperialist dominated capitalist system in Ireland. They oppose the trade union movement and oppose the right and necessity for workers to go on strike to maintain their standard of living, they support the British Conservative Party as the most ‘sensible’ force in British politics and Enoch Powell, that arch racist and fascist, as an ‘honest and good intentioned politician’. They support imperialism and oppose the People’s Republicof China and the great, glorious and correct Communist Party of China – just like all trotskyites do – and preach rabid great nation chauvinism in the British working class movement against the peoples of the colonies and neo-colonies. In short they are criminal elements using the name of Marxism-Leninism for the sole purpose of trying to give British imperialist rule in Ireland and the rule of the British monopoly capitalist class in Britain a lease of life from itsdeathbed by trying to mislead the working class movement.

The document gives an account of the formation of the Irish Communist Organisation and further development of the British and Irish Communist Organisation. 

This edition is the second, the first was published in 1975. 

The document concludes on the last page with the text of the Internationale and the exhortations to:

UPHOLD THE TRUE SPIRIT OF THE IRISH REVOLUTION! UPHOLD GREAT MARXISM-LENINISM-MAO TSE TUNG THOUGHT!

PEOPLE OF IRELAND AND PEOPLE OF THE WORLD TOGETHER!

DEATH TO BRITISH IMPERALISM!

DEATH TO THE TWO SUPERPOWERS – U.S. IMPERIALISM AND SOVIET SOCIAL IMPERIALISM!

LONG LIVE THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF IRELAND (MARXIST-LENINIST)!