Британдық және Ирландиялық Коммунистік Ұйымының тарихы

The British and Irish Communist Organisation (B&ICO) was a small group based in London, Belfast, Cork, and Dublin. Its leader was Brendan Clifford. The group produced a number of pamphlets and regular publications, including The Irish Communist and Workers Weekly in Belfast. Τhe group currently expresses itself through Athol Books with its premier publication being the Irish Political Review. The group also continues to publish Church & State, Irish Foreign Affairs, Labour Affairs and Problems.

Brendan Clifford was an Irish emigrant from the Sliabh Luachra area of County Cork who had migrated to London and become involved in left wing politics there. Clifford and some of his followers had been in Michael McCreery's Committee to Defeat Revisionism, for Communist Unity and later they joined the Irish Communist Group. This body consisted largely of Irish people who were living in London and were opposed to the Soviet aligned communist organisations intended for Irish people. Following a 1965 split, the Maoist wing named itself the Irish Communist Organisation, which later became the British and Irish Communist Organisation. The broadly Trotskyist wing, led by Gerry Lawless, became the Irish Workers' Group. The ICO undertook an investigation into the development of Maoism, and concluded that it was not a suitable model for an anti revisionist group. The Chinese Communist Party had supported some aspects of Nikita Khrushchev's "revisionism", and then been dishonest about its past positions. One founder member, Dennis Dennehy, was Secretary of the Dublin Housing Action Committee, which organised a highly successful protest movement in the early 1960s. In 1968, the ICO issued a press release which defended the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia.

In the 1980s, B&ICO was advocating the extension of the British parties to organise in Northern Ireland, and many B&ICO members were involved in the organisations, the Campaign for Labour Representation (CLR) and the Campaign for Equal Citizenship (CEC) in Northern Ireland. One member of B&ICO, James "Boyd" Black, ran on an "Equal Citizenship" platform in the Fulham by election in 1986. The B&ICO group were extremely antagonistic to the Anglo Irish Agreement, and much of their activity in Northern Ireland was directed at publishing material and supporting groups who shared their hostility to it. The B&ICO also believed nuclear power and nuclear weapons were beneficial to humanity, and were against the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. It also praised Wojciech Jaruzelski's imposition of martial law in Poland. The B&ICO also took issue with other left wing parties for adopting anti Stalinist and anti Zionist political positions. When the Falklands War broke out, the B&ICO supported the UK war effort on the grounds the UK was more "progressive" than Argentina. Members of the B&ICO, the Socialist Party of Ireland (1971) and Jim Kemmy's local organisation in Limerick merged to form the Democratic Socialist Party (Ireland) in 1982. Some of B&ICO's members in the Republic were involved in the Campaign to Separate Church and State and published the linked Athol Books magazine, Church and State. In tandem with these campaigns, the B&ICO also urged a hard line against the Provisional IRA; it opposed the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike. Its publications also opposed the campaign to free the Birmingham Six, insisting on their guilt. In August 1988, Clifford was involved in controversy after his publication, A Belfast Magazine, printed an article, "The Knitting Professor" that was strongly critical of Mary McAleese. McAleese claimed the article was libellous and took legal action against the publication with the help of her lawyer, Donal Deeney QC. The case was eventually settled out of court in September 1990; as a result of the undisclosed settlement, A Belfast Magazine ceased publication for several years

The B&ICO's British branch, the Ernest Bevin Society, continued to agitate for Workers' Control throughout the 1980s. It also took unconventional positions, such as defending the British Monarchy and, most controversially, opposing the UK miners' strike (1984–1985).

The B&ICO was never officially disbanded, but came to work solely through Athol Books, the Aubane Historical Society and the Ernest Bevin Society. Their chief outlet in Ireland became the magazines Irish Political Review (1986–present). In the United Kingdom it is the Labour and Trade Union Review, journal of the Ernest Bevin Society. This continues as Labour Affairs. In the 1990s, B&ICO former members decided that the Irish nationalism that they had originally opposed had collapsed and that it was necessary to oppose the new, globalist forces that came to dominate the Republic of Ireland. The group called for a United Ireland based on a revival of the "traditional" Irish nationalism. It said, "we are not at all convinced that parties based in either Dublin or London have any real or significant contribution to make to Northern Ireland politics by organising there. We are also far from convinced that there is sufficient demand at present within the North itself for a single, all Ireland, social democratic party." B&ICO criticised the Western response to Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, stating that Saddam had been given no chance to back down. At one time, B&ICO was pro Israeli, but, since the late 1980s, it has become pro Palestinian. Mark Langhammer, the ex Newtownabbey Labour Party councillor, is affiliated with this political tradition. One writer associated with Athol Books, Dr. Pat Walsh, has denied that there was an attempt to exterminate the Armenian people by the Ottoman authorities during World War I, arguing responsibility for their deaths rests with the British government: "If the deaths of Armenians are seen as 'genocide', the power that was most responsible for it was Britain. In the interest of destroying Germany and conquering the Ottoman territories, it made the Ottoman State an impossible place for Armenians to live in the space of a few months after they had lived in it peacefully for centuries." Athol Books' Church and State magazine was critical of the British media's coverage of Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the United Kingdom, arguing the media were unfairly biased against the Catholic Church. Church and State also took issue with a BBC documentary on Cardinal John Henry Newman for featuring a contributor who suggested Newman may have been homosexual. It has published research by a wide range of authors who question, from a variety of perspectives, the 'revisionist' analysis of Irish history by authors such as Roy Foster (Aubane Versus Oxford, The Embers of Revisionism), Peter Hart (Troubled History, Embers of Revisionism, West Cork's War of Independence), Eoghan Harris (An Affair with the Bishop of Cork, Embers of Revisionism, West Cork's War of Independence), Kevin Myers (Embers of Revisionism). Activities in Britain continued through the Ernest Bevin Society, with its journal Labour & Trade Union Review, now Labour Affairs. Also a quarterly journal called Problems of Capitalism and Socialism, now just Problems.

The Crisis in the Unionist Party. (Belfast: Irish Communist Organisation, 1969). The Communist party of China and the 20th Congress of the C. P. S. U. (Belfast: B&ICO, 1970). On Trotskyism. (Belfast: B&ICO, 1971). The Economic struggle in Britain. (Belfast: B&ICO, 1971). The Two Irish nations: a reply to Michael Farrell. (Belfast: B&ICO, 1971). Is Wales a nation?. (Belfast: B&ICO, 1972). Connolly and Partition. (Belfast: B&ICO, 1972). The Economics of Partition. (Belfast: B&ICO, 1972). The Home Rule crisis, 1912–1914. (Belfast: B&ICO, 1972). Catholic political culture and the Constitution of Ireland. Jack Gannon. (Belfast: B&ICO, 1972). Article 44: the historical background to Constitutional change in Southern Ireland. (Belfast: B&ICO, 1972.) The Twentieth Congress and After. Neil Goold. (Belfast: B&ICO, 1973). Zionism: its European origins. (Belfast: B&ICO, 1974). A Reply to Michael Barratt Brown. (London: Communists for Europe in association with the B&ICO.) The Stalin Era. Anna Louise Strong. (Belfast: B&ICO, 1976). Against Ulster nationalism. (Belfast: B&ICO, 1977). How Right are the Racists?. Peter Brooke. (Belfast: B&ICO, 1978). Stalin and the Irish working class. (Belfast: B&ICO, 1979). The EEC: The Economic Case for!. (London: B&ICO, 1979).