Posted by Jim on May 4, 2017
Via the 1916 Societies, a commemorative event this Sunday in honour of those who died at Loughall thirty years ago.
Loughgall Martyrs 30th Anniversary This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Loughgall ambush when 9 Irishmen were killed by British Crown Forces. Volunteers Declan Arthurs, Seamus Donnelly, Tony Gormley, Eugene Kelly, Paddy Kelly, Jim Lynagh, Padraig McKearney and Gerard O’Callaghan were members of the East Tyrone Brigade IRA. Civilian Anthony Hughes was also killed that evening.
The attack was part of a British murder campaign in East Tyrone/North Armagh in the late 1980’s/early 1990’s when the full might of the British war machine including SAS, British Army, RUC, UVF, UDR were unleashed on the people of East Tyrone. These nine men were husbands, fathers, sons and brothers to their loved ones whose only crime was that they were Irish in British Occupied Ireland. They were killed by faceless, nameless paid SAS assassins who were in Ireland to carry out Britain’s war of terror against the democratic rights of the Irish people.
The main commemoration this year is the Independent Republican March and Commemoration on Sunday 7th May assembling at Galbally Community Centre at 3pm organised by the P.H. Pearse Society Galbally/Cappagh. The event is non-party political and everyone is welcome. Sunday 23rd April @2pm 5 mile Sponsored walk, Assemble Republican Monument Aughnagar Chapel.
The James Connolly 1916 Society Monaghan will be holding a day of events to mark the 30th Anniversary of The Loughall Massacre. This will be in conjuction with other independent republican commemorations in Tyrone and Monaghan. On Sunday April 30th we will embark on a sponsored walk from the Jim lynagh, Padraig McKearney, Loughgall monument in Drumfurrer, Carrickroe Co. Monaghan to the Seamus McElwaine monument Knockatallon, Scotstown, Co. Monaghan.
A short lecture will take place after the walk in the Sliabh Beagh Hotel with refreshments served . That night we will be hosting a social night in Moyna’s Bar, Scotstown @9. A Prominent speaker will be in attendance on the night.
The annual mass organised by the families will be on Friday 5th May in Altmore at 7.30pm with refreshments afterwards in Galbally Community Centre. There will be a Tour of the Graves assisted by local 1916 Societies on Sat 6th May starting at 10.30am in Altmore and continuing on then to Galbally, Aughnagar, Monaghan, Caledon, Tullysarron, Moy and finishing at Edendork. On Sunday 7th May the main commemoration and march assembles at Galbally Community Centre at 3pm and will make its way to Cappagh. This commemoration gives all Republicans, young and old, a chance to remember these fine Irishmen who died thirty years ago that evening in Loughgall. Their story is one that the people of Ireland will always remember with sadness, anger, love and pride.
Posted by Jim on May 3, 2017
Stop fighting a war that is over, Michelle O’Neill responds to unionist complaint about her commemoration of the eight IRA-men the SAS killed, the Loughgall Martyrs of republican legend.
Everyone, O’Neill says, has a right to ‘remember their dead without being demonised’.
The softly-spoken, current incarnation of Arlene Foster, kicking off encounters with Irish-speakers as O’Neill’s commemoration became news, said her Loughgall pitch was ‘wrong and backward looking’; disappointing when she, Foster, was ‘trying to make this a shared place for everybody in Northern Ireland.’
Hmmm. After a year’s worth of crude ignorance, it is a bit soon to want credit for starting to show civility, a bit rich for Foster to be disappointed by someone else’s behaviour.
Good that she can meet schoolgirls and language activists and say go raibh maith agat without flinching.
A signal of rethinking, if this prefigures acceptance not just of Irish the language but Irish the identity, as cherished by the north’s Irish. Nobody misses the main point, that the DUP leader plus at least some of those around her belatedly recognise how she electrified the Sinn Féin vote by her own bad behaviour.
She won’t be doing that again. But ‘backward looking’, from someone who describes her own culture as ‘British Orange’?
As for O’Neill, thirty years after Loughgall and with ‘the war’ over now for at least twenty years according to republicans, it is past time to make the words real for republicans as well as unionists.
Over should mean over. The SAS opened up as the Loughgall eight crashed through the gates of the barracks with a bomb in a digger, which now makes them the patriot dead to O’Neill. The best republican rewrite-teams can do with that is not mention the bomb.
No matter how many martyrs’ memorials she addresses Michelle won’t look any more like Martin, the human bridge between wartime IRA and peacetime Sinn Féin.
Or is the plan to be still memorialising the republican version of the Troubles 300 years down the line – as Orangemen remember Aughrim, Enniskillen and the Boyne and the humiliation of the Catholic Irish that followed King Billy’s triumph?
Now there would be a fine act of simultaneous reciprocation, and reconciliation. Republicans proclaim an end to commemorations, and the Orange Order declares itself redundant for the good of society.
Foster will not have the Troubles rewritten, no sirree, but with traditional unionist insistence on one law for security forces and another for everyone else she will not stand for prosecution of soldiers and police. Still, there she was at the weekend telling Glaswegians there is a plan to make a plan to … make the case for the union, in time for the centenary of the state’s foundation.
Starting now, or last week, unionists have to be proactive and positive to ‘make unionism more appealing to everyone within our society.’ The majority has gone. If only across the water and at one remove from her party faithful, Foster faced it, said the words, preached a remedy.
We have been here before. Behold the recurring search for the unicorn, the Catholic unionist, the creature who can make up the numbers. But if the search imposes better manners and makes civility and ‘reaching out’ consistent, won’t that be good?
An essay in the Irish News has had Foster pitching Brexit less as victory, more as challenge to be flexible.
Thanks to that displaced majority in the last election, a DUP leadership – whoever it consists of – is well into presentation of Foster Mark 2. Sir Jeffrey and the Conservative lobby for a security forces amnesty will keep on raising hackles.
But if we’ve heard the last of a rasp-tongued Arlene, if Gregory Campbell can manage to keep on voicing respect for Irish and lets his monoglot parody fade from mind, a better time to ask for reciprocation might still arrive.
And will Sinn Féin begin to make headway meanwhile with the Protestant republican, the mythical individual who in crowd formation will follow up applying for Irish passports by calling for a border poll?
That’s decades away unless Brexit truly does tear up the Union and shake economies apart; though pragmatic, unromantic decisions to go for the full Irish might just come sooner.
At any rate, next month’s first past the post poll won’t reveal shifting allegiances. The two main camps will go out on polling day still clinging to the dream United Ireland or the damaged United Kingdom. Calling the contest sectarian changes neither minds nor hearts.
Posted by Jim on April 29, 2017
A second arson attack on a Catholic church in Belfast city centre is
being blamed on loyalists.
It is understood a box of leaflets and papers was set on fire at St
Patrick’s Church on Donegall Street shortly before 6pm yesterday. The
fire broke out in the part of the church where cremation urns are
stored.
The fire also comes just weeks after curtains draped in front of a Holy
Door were set alight, causing greater damage to the church. An elderly
priest was praying in the church when the building was set on fire. He
escaped injury was said to have been very shocked.
The fire also came just days before the church plans to host a Mass of
Hope for Belfast’s homeless community. A new soup kitchen will be opened
at the Mass on Wednesday evening.
Tensions in the area escalated this week after loyalists gathered along
a stretch of nearby Royal Avenue in an attempt to intimidate a
republican Easter commemoration.
Five years ago, the church became a sectarian flashpoint after an
infamous incident outside the building during Belfast’s annual 12 July
parade by the anti-Catholic Orange Order. A sectarian band was filmed
marching in a circle outside the church, playing The Famine Song – an
anti-Catholic song.
Thirteen band members were prosecuted, but they successfully appealed
their convictions in 2015 with the bizarre claim that they were playing
a Beach Boys song.
UVF FEUD
Meanwhile, a spate of arson attacks in County Antrim is being linked to
a loyalist feud in the town of Larne.
In the latest incident, a car was driven into a house and set on fire.
It is the seventh attack in the town in over a week to be linked to the
feud. Last Tuesday, a gang targeted a hairdressers when a car was
reversed through a metal shutter and set alight. Days earlier, a number
of cars were torched.
At least two of those arrested in relation to the attacks have been
described in court as being “involved” or “influential” in the unionist
paramilitary UVF.
Sinn Fein’s Oliver Mc Mullan said residents are too afraid to speak out.
“I was contacted by one of the families, they feel terrorised and just
want to live in peace. Nobody wants this, it’s going back to the dark
ages,” said Mr McMullan.
Elsewhere, there has been no claim of responsibility for an explosive
device abandoned in Ardoyne in north Belfast in the early hours of
Sunday morning. The PSNI have described it as ‘an attempt to kill police
officers’.
Sinn Fein’s Gerry Kelly said “like all elected representatives” he
condemned it outright. “We represent the people of Ardoyne here and they
condemn it,” he said. “Those responsible for this don’t represent the
people of Ardoyne. The community doesn’t want them.”
Posted by Jim on
Monaghan Republican and Ex-POW John Crawley delivered a graveside
oration at a commemoration for Seamus McElwain in Scotstown recently.
Unlike many here today I didn’t have the privilege of knowing Seamus
McElwain personally. I found out only in the last fortnight that he and
I were members of the same Colour Party in 1980 but with all the
activity on the day I don’t believe we had the opportunity to speak to
each other. I do recall the first time I heard tell of Seamus. I was in
a house at another part of the Border and a Volunteer from this end of
the country told me about a young lad who showed particular promise and
was shaping up to be an outstanding IRA Volunteer. I looked forward to
meeting him but between prison sentences and one thing or another I kept
missing him.
I was in Portlaoise prison in April 1986, serving the first of three
sentences when news came through that Seamus had been killed in action.
Jim Lynagh had been released from Portlaoise prison only a week
previously. Little did Jim know that he would shortly be attending the
funeral of his friend and comrade Seamus McElwain or that his own
funeral lay so close ahead, just over a year later, along with seven of
his comrades killed at Loughgall. That was the dangerous world IRA
Volunteers inhabited in 1986 when Seamus lost his life.
Few of us knew then what was ahead of us but all of us knew what we were
fighting for and let nobody tell you different. We were on precisely the
same mission as the men and women of 1916 – to put an end to British
Crown sovereignty in Ireland and to establish a 32-county republican
government of national unity based upon democracy and social justice. To
that end we were prepared to engage in both military and political
activity.
Militarily Seamus was a legend. A highly motivated, courageous and
inspiring Volunteer, he placed himself continually at the tip of the
spear, at the cutting edge of resistance, leading from the front,
leading by example. In any conventional army Seamus would have been a
highly decorated soldier, recognised and acclaimed for his audacity and
gallantry. But in the secretive and perilous existence of an IRA
Volunteer, involved in a guerrilla campaign against such overwhelming
odds, his exploits would, for the most part, and of necessity, remain
known only to a select few. Such courage and commitment cannot, however,
be kept completely secret in all its aspects and his reputation grew and
spread among his comrades in the IRA and among the many supporters of
the republican struggle who, at great sacrifice and personal risk,
opened their homes to Seamus and his comrades.
In addition to his military activities Seamus was also active
politically. His father James was a member of Monaghan County Council
for 20 years and Seamus himself had run in a 26-county general election
in 1982, while on remand in Crumlin Road prison, receiving an impressive
vote.
In 1986, political activity was encouraged by most thinking Volunteers.
The IRA campaign could not be allowed to become a spectator sport, with
a small number of Volunteers taking all the risks to life, limb and
liberty. We needed to make ourselves relevant to people’s lives and
build alliances both foreign and domestic. A larger portion of the
populace had to become involved in the republican struggle, had to be
educated in the necessity of Irish Unity and independence and had to
become an integral and engaged part of what we believed would be the
final stage in Ireland’s long War of Independence.
Make no mistake that when Seamus was killed in 1986 republican politics,
for the Active Service Units in the field and for the captured
Volunteers in the prisons, was about furthering the aims, ideals and
objectives of the 1916 Proclamation. Political opportunism and careerism
was, in our view, strictly reserved for Castle Catholics and
partitionist poltroons.
The British government, for their part, took us on militarily and
politically. When you take on the Brits you are taking on a lot, utterly
ruthless they are world-renowned experts in counter-insurgency.
According to one British historian, of 196 countries in the world today
the British have invaded or established a military presence in 171 of
them. So it is not surprising that they have evolved a multi-layered and
coordinated approach to achieving British strategic objectives through
the focused use of applied violence and the manipulation and co-option
of indigenous leaderships, groups and movements.
Militarily they used their informer directed SAS ambush teams to kill
IRA Volunteers in direct combat. Behind the scenes they used Loyalist
death squads, armed and directed by RUC Special Branch and British
Military Intelligence, to murder republicans, their supporters and
totally innocent Catholics whenever they judged it opportune to do so.
Their agents bombed Dublin and Monaghan and carried out a host of other
black operations, North and South and overseas. They killed who they
could, they jailed who they could and they bought who they could.
In parallel with their military efforts the British had a political
strategy. They outlined this very clearly in a discussion paper produced
after the so-called Darlington Conference in September 1972. In this
paper the British government published what it called ‘some unalterable
facts about the situation’ and ‘some fundamental conditions… which any
settlement must meet’.
These included UK parliamentary sovereignty over all persons, matters
and things within the Six Counties, All-Ireland endorsement of the
Unionist Veto, the need for a reformed Stormont giving Nationalists a
share in the exercise of executive power, public confidence in, and
collaboration with, the locally-recruited British constabulary, and the
need for Dublin government buy-in to the new arrangements, with a
special focus on the removal of Articles 2 and 3 of the Irish
Constitution and increased security collaboration with the 26-county
state.
In a separate strategy, the Brits also hoped to lure republicans into
protracted and ambiguous negotiations, in order to gain intelligence and
gradually ensnare them into a habit of interfacing with agents and
agencies of the UK government as part of a British state legitimation
process. Softly, softly catchy monkey.
So British policy, from the very beginning of the Troubles, was to
dismantle the Orange state and replace it with a viable political entity
which would preserve the political and territorial integrity of the
United Kingdom. To do this the British needed to defeat or neutralise
the IRA and bring the vast bulk of nationalists on board as stakeholders
in a reformed Stormont. As their strategy evolved, they realised they
needed to do more to convince unionists that these moves did not flag up
any disengagement from Ireland. The Downing Street Declaration of 1993,
which outlined British preconditions for a settlement, refers to the
Unionist Veto eight times in its twelve points.
The British can be quite practical. If you oppose the British state in
what they consider the wrong way they may imprison or kill you. But the
British will pay you a salary and expenses to oppose them if you agree
to become bound by their terms and conditions. When British Prime
Minister Tony Blair announced the train was leaving the station and any
party not on it would be left behind he didn’t mean the freedom train to
a United Ireland but the gravy train to Stormont.
A constant battle was fought between republicans who wanted politics to
be about revolutionary advancement and British counter-insurgency
strategists who were trying, through the judicious use of bribery and
butchery, to nurture a loyal nationalist opposition and an insurgent
leadership fit for purpose.
What was that purpose? To shape the strategic environment in a way that
allowed Britain to define the nature of the conflict, shape the
parameters of Irish democracy and determine the boundaries within which
Irish opposition to British rule must operate. For Republicans,
democracy in Ireland is the expression of a united and free people,
fully informed and without outside interference or impediment. For the
British, democracy in Ireland is any mechanistic exhibition of electoral
theatre which, despite the use or threat of force, bribery, censorship,
partition, gerrymander or sectarian interventions, achieves a desired
result.
At present there is no mechanism to advance Irish Unity that isn’t
comprehensively ringfenced by British constitutional constraints. A
glaring example is the proposed six-county Border Poll under Britain’s
Northern Ireland Act 1998, which permits the Secretary of State
(presently an English politician without a single vote in Ireland) to
determine if and when a poll may be called, the wording of the poll and
who qualifies to vote. Even if passed, the British parliament retains
the final say on whether or not the result will be endorsed by the UK
government.
The British have a remarkable capacity for channelling Irish political
trajectories in a particular direction, harnessing Irish leaderships to
drive the strategy and then making the Irish believe it was their own
idea. James Connolly called it ‘ruling by fooling’.
A core concept of Irish republicanism is that Irish constitutional
authority derives exclusively from the Irish people and does not defer
to laws or decrees emanating from England. The signatories to The
Proclamation believed that in April 1916, every republican believed that
in April 1986 and, despite all the inducements to do otherwise, many of
us believe it still.
We are told by the political establishment north and south that the 1998
Good Friday Agreement represents the democratic will of the Irish
people. We were once told that the achievement of Home Rule represented
the democratic will of the Irish people. Then we were told that the 1918
General Election was the democratic will of the Irish people. Then the
1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty was the democratic will, except this time the
only democratic will that mattered was that of the Irish people in the
26-Counties. And so it goes ad nauseum.
A Fine Gael TD and former Dublin government minister claimed that the
results of the 1998 referenda on the Good Friday Agreement were, ‘the
purest form of self-determination ever given by the Irish people’. Yet
in 2000 and again in 2002 British Colonial Secretaries, who between them
had never received as much as a single vote in the whole of Ireland,
were able to scrap the Good Friday institutions and reinstate British
direct rule. So much for the democratic will of the Irish people,
dismissed with the stroke of an English pen. Under the principle of UK
parliamentary sovereignty the British government can do this at any time
it chooses without reference to a single member of the Irish electorate.
The Brits are able to do this because in Stormont Irishmen and women
hold office but England holds power.
We are often advised we must not dissent from a political process which
bestows upon Britain democratic title in Ireland because it could
undermine the peace. Liam Mellows TD said during the Treaty Debates in
1921, ‘if peace was the only object why, I say, was this fight ever
started? Why did we ever negotiate for what we are now told is
impossible? Why should men have ever been led on the road they travelled
if peace was the only object? We could have had peace, and could have
been peaceful in Ireland a long time ago if we were prepared to give up
the ideal for which we fought.’ Liam Mellows was later executed by the
Free State government for defending the Republic and resisting British
attempts to impose a treaty which partitioned Ireland and re-defined
Irish democracy in British Imperial interests.
Being an authentic and active republican has often been a serious and
dangerous business. We know from Irish history what a soft bed can be
made from a tissue of lies. There have always been those who service the
lie at great personal profit and those who act on the truth at great
personal cost.
Seamus McElwain died acting on the truth. The same truth spoken by James
Connolly at his court martial 100 years ago when he said, ‘we went out
to break the connection between this country and the British Empire, and
to establish an Irish Republic… Believing that the British Government
has no right in Ireland, never had any right in Ireland, and never can
have any right in Ireland, the presence, in any one generation of
Irishmen, of even a respectable minority, ready to die to affirm that
truth, makes that Government for ever a usurpation and a crime against
human progress.’
Breaking the British connection was what the struggle for Irish freedom
was about in 1916. That is what the struggle for Irish freedom was about
in 1986, when Seamus died for it, and that is what the struggle for
freedom is about now. In the words of Padraig Pearse, ‘we know only one
definition of freedom: it is Tone’s definition, it is Mitchel’s
definition, it is Rossa’s definition. Let no man blaspheme the cause
that the dead generations of Ireland served by giving it any other name
and definition than their name and their definition.’ Although some
former comrades now call on us to respect the British connection as a
gesture to Irish Unionism, breaking that connection and establishing a
united national citizenship free from Britain is the historic mission of
Irish republicanism.
Seamus McElwain was a good republican, a good soldier and a good man.
His death at the hands of the British army of occupation near Roslea,
Co. Fermanagh on the 26th of April 1986 was an incalculable loss to his
family, his friends and his comrades. His life is remembered by them
with love and pride. To those who did not know Seamus personally, or
were not even born when he was killed on Active Service, his truth,
courage, honour and commitment are an inspiration and an ideal to be
aspired to. Fuair se bhas ar son Saoirse na hEireann.
Monaghan Republicans, in conjunction with the McElwain family, are
holding an Independent 30th Anniversary Commemoration to Vol. Seamus
McElwain at the Monument in Knockatallon, Saturday 23rd April at 2pm.
All welcome.
Posted by Jim on
By Sean Bresnahan
With Brexit looming and unionism fast becoming not only a national
minority but one within its own gerrymandered statelet, what is now
required is a national dialogue, inclusive of all stakeholders in
society, that moves to agree – freely and without impediment – proposals
for an independent all-Ireland republic. An elected Constituent Assembly
is arguably best-placed to speed that function and should proceed at the
earliest opportunity.
Such a ‘new Ireland’ requires a modern, pluralist political arrangement,
where the identity of all is secured and upheld regardless their class,
tradition or creed. Republicans must prepare a solid proposal that puts
substance to that vision, giving form to a new and vibrant democracy in
tune with the needs of today. Our initiative must speed an advanced
proposal towards that end, offering a new beginning for Ireland and her
people as is their democratic entitlement.
If there is to be such a ‘new Ireland’ – spoken of increasingly by many
and which no doubt will come to pass given changing demographics – then
republicans must influence its form and appearance, ensuring to the
greatest extent practical that it is bound by our rights to national
freedom and sovereignty. Our banner is the Irish Republic and we must
position to ensure that when constitutional change arrives that
republican objectives are achieved.
The revisionist concept of an Agreed Ireland is out of sync with
traditional notions of a full republic. It is instead yet another
compromise with the occupation. Britain should not be allowed to
negotiate the terms of her withdrawal, the shape and structure of the
new Ireland with it, and should not be facilitated in so doing in the
event of Irish reunification. That is what the ‘Agreed Ireland’ project
is really about and it must not go forward unchallenged.
If a United Ireland should come to be then as a people and as a nation
it will be for us – ourselves alone – to determine its constitutional
form. By agreement among and between our people, yes; inclusive of their
number entire. But the link with Britain, fully and in its totality,
must go and without equivocation.
Key here is that a United Ireland must be an Irish Republic. Indeed it
is arguable it should be The Irish Republic – the Republic of 1916. It
is there in that Republic where our rights to freedom and sovereignty
reside. As such it should be restored to the people, albeit in
newly-agreed form where the requirements of society, in all its
diversity, can be accounted for as they must in the Ireland of today.
Post-Irish Unity, allowances for Ulster’s Protestants – their culture,
identity, traditions and fears – should only be accounted for under the
constitution of a united and sovereign republic. The ‘Agreed Ireland’
notion of ‘enhanced ethnic status’ for unionists, encompassing a
constitutional recognition of their attachment to the Crown, is an
anathema to the idea of a republic. Constitutional protections should be
afforded all citizens, not a group within their number, if sectarian
division is to be consigned to the past. If there is to be Irish Unity
then contrived divisions, fostered by colonial rule, must not carry
through into a new beginning.
The republican position is simple: British rule derives from conquest
and is without legitimate title. Accordingly, Britain should leave
Ireland and allow her people to determine their own future, freely and
of themselves. It does not and should not require a vote, of any
description, to see this made good – not even an all-Ireland referendum.
Nevertheless a vote could prove useful in the face of Britain’s refusal
to leave. Indeed, given that one such vote has already been signed-off
for under the British-Irish Agreement and given also and in turn the
shifting demographics exposed by the last election, republicans would
ignore this at their peril.
With that in mind, republicans should be conscious of the emerging
dynamics, laying out in turn that constitutional change – regardless how
it comes to pass – must deliver, in full, Irish Unity. There is no
reason we can’t hold that Britain should leave Ireland – no matter of
any poll and on the basis that she has no right here – while taking
stock of emerging realities, factoring them in as we proceed on a
nuanced basis, exploiting them where we can and at the ready. It seems
at times as though republicans are good at saying what we’re against but
not so strong regards what we’re for.
The real task before us is to contest the narrative of what should
happen should constitutional change unfold – to ‘steer the bus’ towards
destination Irish Republic rather than the emerging consensus that a
role reversal, within the Good Friday set-up, should follow a
nationalist majority. Why should it? We have waited long enough. Britain
has outlined her terms for leaving and should they be met – regardless
whether we consider them legitimate or otherwise – then out must mean
out.
As much has been codified in the British Irish Agreement – an
international and binding Treaty between two sovereign states registered
at the United Nations – which allows only for ‘continued Union with
Britain’ or a ‘sovereign United Ireland’, depending on unionism’s
ability to retain its majority internal to the north. Should that
majority be eclipsed by a rising nationalist population within the
northern gerrymander then Britain’s feet should be held to the fire:
full Irish Unity should proceed without delay and as agreed.
On that basis, Irish republicans need to forward a detailed plan as to
what should happen, from our perspective, in the event of Irish Unity.
With the British Government’s triggering of Article 50, this is now a
matter of urgency. Republicans must get their heads around the
game-changer ‘Brexit’ will prove. Its implications for Ireland are
massive. The time to get this moving is now, with immediate effect.
Slogans and rhetoric, while useful to an extent, will not carry the day
and will simply bounce off the establishment’s narrative.
The establishment cannot be allowed to frame the agenda unhindered but
to challenge it, as we must, requires something more comprehensive – a
solid proposal, with substance behind it, that all can lend their weight
to. It remains to be seen how far we are capable of putting this
together but it stands as the task now before us.
Ultimately, how Irish Unity is to be achieved – whether by national
referendum, six-county border poll, a declaration of intent or some
other means – is secondary to the form it will take. Brexit and
demographic change are set to bring forward that day and so we must get
our house in order. The time to put this together is now. A Constituent
Assembly as spoken of above, its remit to determine the form and
specifics of a new all-Ireland republic, is arguably where our weight
needs applied. It is here and here alone where the new Ireland should be
agreed.
In such an initiative lies new opportunity to reconnect republicanism,
and the notion of the Republic, with the broad mass of the people –
without whom constitutional change is a near-impossibility. As much is
the task before us and we cannot afford to wait. We must set forward our
proposals now, placing the Irish Republic at the centre of the debate as
a viable alternative to the failed status quo.
Onwards to the Republic – An Phoblacht Abu.