07.12.1995

Twenty-first anniversary of the founding of the IRSP

Statement by the Ard Comhairle of the Irish Republican Socialist Party

ON THE anniversary of our founding the leadership of the IRSP sends revolutionary greetings and congratulations to all our members and supporters on our coming of age.

We were founded in the midst of an armed and mass struggle in 1974. We were determined then to play an active role in ensuring that the voice of the working class in the struggle for national liberation would be heard.

Despite many trials and tribulations our movement has survived intact and we salute those who stuck by the ideals and principles of republican socialism.

But the necessity to articulate the voices of the radicalised working class still remains. In the 1970s the northern nationalists were marginalised and excluded. Today it is the radicalised working class who remain marginalised and excluded.

In the midst of a ‘peace process’ that all but ignores the constituency we represent it seems to have been forgotten that Sinn Fein cannot speak for all those who have struggled against British imperialism. We in the republican socialist movement represent a strand of resistance to imperialism that should not, nor cannot, be ignored. We will not be marginalised.

It is clear that the representatives of the establishments in Ireland are not prepared to take ‘risks for peace’. They exclude from all discussions and debates representatives of the republican socialist movement.

We cannot accept as genuine a process that deliberately excludes from debate a major player in the struggle of the last 21 years.

We welcome the absence of violence. But the absence of violence will not solve the class exploitation of working people, north and south. The incorporation of the nationalist middle classes within a British/Irish-approved set-up will do little for the unemployed, for the low paid, for victims of state oppression, for the powerless and the poor.

There remains a clear need for an organisation that articulates the needs and aspirations of the disempowered and dispossessed.

On this our 21st anniversary the republican socialist movement intends to continue to create that organisation.