The
Communist Party of Ireland
A Critical History, Appendix by DR O'Connor Lysaght, 1976
Stalinism and the British & Irish Communist Organisation
'This
two nations theory is now being put forward, in an oblique
way, by both Government and Opposition spokesmen. The only organisation
to come out with it openly has been the tiny group calling
itself
the British and Irish Communist Organisation. It also backed
entry into
the Common Market. It thus supported the two main policies
of the upper classes of both North and South. Why it calls itself
'Communist'
is
a mystery.'
A. Raftery, The Exploited Island, p.9
There is
no room, here, to do justice to the remarkable British and Irish
Communist Organisation. A detailed study may be made elsewhere
– though even here, there is much that is likely to remain a mystery
for some time.
All that is necessary here is to defend the BICO from the accusation
that, somehow or other, it is less a 'Communist' (read, for both
organisations 'Stalinite') body than the Communist Party of Ireland.
As it will, itself, be the first to boast it is, at least, formally
more Stalinite than its denouncer. It publishes and sells far more
pamphlets by Stalin than the CPI does through New Books. Its only
disagreements with the late General Djugashvili seems to be his
definition of a nation and in his appreciation of imperialism (in
Foundations of Leninism). Indeed its career lends justification
to the Trotskyists who have always maintained that Stalin's theory
(with the possible exception, precisely, of Marxism and the
National Question) was one of his least successful ventures.
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