The Cedar Lounge Revolution

Left Archive: Connolly Youth Movement, Manifesto and Policies, [Communist Party of Ireland] 1970 May 7, 2012

To download the above document please click on the following link: CYM1970

This document from 1970 provides an overview of the position of the Connolly Youth Movement, youth movement of the Communist Party of Ireland at a pivotal time in its existence. The recent union of the CPNI and the CPI also saw a merger of the respective youth movements of each party. The document argues that:

The programme of the United National organisation is a product of the separate ones. It is a synthesis of the Connolly Youth Movement, which, initially a looser organisation, through concrete work in class politics has come to a firm Marxist-Leninist basis, and of the Communist youth league, originally a rigid youth organisation of the CPNI, becoming through its own experience involved in the mass movements of the people.

As the introduction notes ‘Currently Ireland is in the prelude to political change more significant than for many years’ and makes the point that both the Unionist Party and Fianna Fáíl faced different but not dissimilar challenges.

It also notes that the Youth Movement ‘campaign on the particular demands of young people’ and it says that these include:

Democratic structures within the schools and universities.

Integration of all pupils at school, regardless of religion, class, or sex.

A spreading Irish Culture and games and the reviving of Gaelic as a viable National language.

Full adult rights at 18 years, and an end to all discrimination against young people.

Tellingly the first resolution is one on housing and the CYM offers ‘support the struggles and the just demands of Tenant’s Associations, Housing Action Committees, Residents’ Associations and Preservationist groups in the 6 and 26 counties and will work with any group or organisation for the implementation of any or all of our demands.’

Equally telling is the emphasis on Civil Rights. Here the CYM argues that ‘it [the CYM] must remain in the leadership and in the forefront of the fights for civil rights, realising all the time of course that the Civil Rights Movement is a movement for REFORM not REVOLUTION – and a movement which can be used to bring about a climate in this country wherein all political parties and groups can work more freely than now for the attainment of their political aims.’

The Foreign Affairs Resolution unsurprisingly suggests that:

Not withstanding the strength of imperialism, there are opposed to it – mightier forces; the socialist community of nations, especially the Soviet Union, the world-wide national liberation movement, the broad movements for peace, democracy and against discrimination and the international working class.

Interestingly the document states:

One of the great tragedies today has been the abandonment of Marxism by the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and the substitution of the personality cult of Mao-Tse-Tung coupled with their efforts to split and fragment the International Communist Movement. We are confident that these efforts will be defeated and that Marxism will once again triumph in China.

The Left Archive: “Forward” with the Connolly Youth Movement circa 1972 October 15, 2007

John O’Neill (of the Irish Socialist Network) writes about a further addition to the Left Archive.
Forward fcym2.pdf – Is the somewhat erratic publication of the Connolly Youth Movement, youth section of the Communist Party of Ireland. I joined SFWP in 1980. By then the WP and the CPI had ended any joint work or cooperation so as a member of the Irish Democratic Youth Movement (SFWP youth) I had little or no exposure to the CYM.

The CYM had a membership that always appeared to me to be a lot older than IDYM members back then. They always had a significant presence at any demonstration I attended in my youth particularly Anti Apartheid demos or May Day celebrations.

‘Forward’ is pretty well produced for the ‘dark days’ of Getstetner duplicating machines that were the bane of my life, requiring a stencil to be cut on a manual typewriter then placed on the drum of the Gestetner and printed, usually by the turning of a handle, one copy per rotation for one side of the document. A tiresome process not made any easier by the truly noxious smell of the ink it used.

This edition of Forward that I date 1972 by the reference to the national wage agreement being “due to expire in June ’72” (page eight) but it could be from 1971.

The surprising and depressing thing is that the issues for the left contained in Forward remain largely the same today or even worse with the exception of unemployment. NGO’s are still producing reports highlighting the poverty and the Government is still shelving them. The Herald is still sensationalising social problems to sell their rag.

Granted we have moved away from Industrial schools but I read only yesterday in the CPI’s ‘Socialist Voice’ that the late Dermot Kinlen Inspector of Prisons in his Annual Report (2004/05) was damning of our Prison system stating “It was clear that the Minister was merely using St. Patrick’s. . . as a warehouse for young people who learnt the finer points of criminality in St. Patrick’s which almost certainly guaranteed their progression into the ‘university’ of Mountjoy.” So there’s not much sign of progress or commitment to rehabilitation there after 30 years.

The Crannac Factory takeover similar to the recent book binders occupation in Wicklow and the National Wage Agreements, now called Partnerships, continue to neuter the any radicalism within the Trade Union movement.

‘Forward’ reflects the norms of the time, probably written by party members IMO not very appealing to its target group – young people – but I don’t recall any left wing youth publications that ever were, then or now.