The 1916 Societies note renewed claims of ownership by the British government, in the words of six-county Secretary of State James Brokenshire in the British House of Commons, to the ‘whole of Lough Foyle’, a disputed Irish waterway bordering Derry and Donegal contested since the time of partition.

The claims of James Brokenshire and the state he represents, the so-called United Kingdom, are an outworking of the continued violation of Irish national sovereignty by that same state. They are wholly without foundation given Britain has no democratic title in Ireland. Lough Foyle, as all of Ireland and her territorial waters, belongs as of right to the Irish people and to them should be returned.

The 1916 Proclamation declared the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, holding that right as sovereign and indefeasible, a position endorsed by overwhelming majority through the historic 1918 Election. With that in mind and like all Britain’s claims to Irish territory, this latest grab for the Foyle and her resources represents the imposition of force in defiance of democracy for British imperial gain.

Britain, then, should abandon not only her claims to Lough Foyle but with it her claim to the Six Counties, which remains integral to the Irish Nation regardless those claims. Their sovereignty restored, the Irish people, through democratic engagement among and between their number, can then agree new constitutional arrangements for a modern all-Ireland republic.

The British government must end its involvement in the internal affairs of our nation, that our right to self-determination might proceed without impediment. An independent all-Ireland republic, as freely agreed by our people, can at that point go forward by national referendum, restoring the ownership of Ireland to the people of Ireland as remains their inalienable right.

As the great James Connolly once asserted, Britain ‘has no right in Ireland, never had any right in Ireland, and never can have any right in Ireland’. It remains ever thus. Britain, then, should drop her undemocratic claims to our country and leave, allowing a peaceful tomorrow for the Irish people in a democratic republic for all.