The Peadar O’Donnell Socialist Republican Forum has outlined its thinking on the need to define a democratic programme for the 21st century in the document below. We welcome comment and suggestions to our email: forumodonnell@gmail.com

A Democratic Programme for a New Century

In 1916 the Proclamation of the Irish Republic declared “the right of the Irish people to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible.” Earlier in 1916 Patrick Pearse had written “that the nation’s sovereignty extends not only to all the material possessions of the nation, the nation’s soil and all its resources, all wealth and all wealth-producing processes within the nation. In other words, no private right to property is good as against the public right of the nation.” Also writing in 1916, James Connolly stated that “the re-conquest [of Ireland] involves taking possession of the entire country, all its powers of wealth-production and all its natural resources, and organising these on a co-operative basis for the good of all.” In April 1916 he insisted to the Irish Citizen Army that “we are out for economic as well as political liberty.”

The Democratic Programme of Dáil Éireann, passed on 21 January 1919, incorporated this political understanding: “We declare in the words of the Irish Republican Proclamation the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies to be indefeasible, and in the language of the first President, Pádraig Mac Phiarais, we declare that the Nation’s sovereignty extends not only to all men and women of the Nation, but to all its resources, all the wealth and all the wealth-producing processes within the Nation, and with him we re-affirm that all rights to private property must be subordinated to the public right and welfare.”

January 2019 is the hundredth anniversary of the inaugural meeting of the first Dáil in the Mansion House in Dublin. The Democratic Programme adopted by Dáil Éireann set out a social programme for the Irish Revolution. Both the 1916 Proclamation and the Democratic Programme reflected in part the political understanding of Pearse and Connolly that the welfare and happiness of the people can only be secured in a sovereign, independent Irish Republic in which the people have full democratic control over all aspects of their society and economy.

This anniversary provides an opportunity for us to revisit the radical message of the Irish Revolution, consider to what extent its promise has been achieved, and focus on the pressing needs of the people today.

Ireland today is dominated by imperialism and lacks any meaningful democracy, sovereignty, or independence. Imperialism is the extension of the system of capitalism globally as capital reaches beyond the borders of the state and incorporates peoples, countries and regions in its economic order, subordinating them to its owns needs and interests. Imperialism emerged through the concentration of capital in huge corporations and monopolies; the growth and concentration of finance capital, until it surpassed productive capital and came to dominate it; and the increased movement of capital across borders until the export of finance exceeded the export of goods. These economic developments gave rise to a new global division of labour and a new political division of the world into spheres of influence and domination.

Imperialism dominates Ireland through its domestic and international agents. The domestic include successive Irish governments, the mainstream political parties, native capitalists and their associations, and their ideologues in the universities and the media, while the international include the European Union, the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the global corporations that invest or establish operations here, and powerful states such as Britain and the United States.

The recurring political, social, economic and cultural failings that beset Irish society cannot be resolved without recognising the reality of imperialism and challenging it at every opportunity.

This is not a new understanding: it is the political analysis of Pearse and Connolly, and it is the central message they brought to the 1916 Rising and the Irish Revolution. They were not pursuing a romantic ideal or an abstract political theory: the demand for real democratic control in a sovereign, independent Irish Republic was the practical means of securing the needs and interests of the Irish people. For them, political and economic freedom were inseparable: the one could not be achieved without the other. Connolly had earlier argued that completing the political revolution on its own, ignoring the need for revolution in the economy, would be futile: “England would still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her financiers, through the whole array of commercial and individualist institutions she has planted in this country.”

With the revolutionaries of a hundred years ago, we believe that it is only in a truly democratic, sovereign, independent Irish Republic that the problems that beset the Irish people can be addressed. Only then can the people collectively determine their own lives and together create a society that has the common good of all as its guiding principle and in which all our social relations are free and fully human.

Democracy means that the people have real decision-making power over their own lives and all aspects of their society. Real democracy cannot be confined to the political domain only; if the people are to control their own lives, democratic control must extend to the economy as well as to the political, social and cultural spheres. A society in which the people do not have control over all decision-making is not a democratic one.

Sovereignty is the ability of a people or state to govern and make the laws within their borders; without it, the people are not sovereign, and no democratic decision-making is possible. Independence is the exercise of sovereignty and democracy free from external coercion, restraint, or interference; this does not mean isolation from the wider world or a lack of engagement with it but being able to act freely within it and to interact with others on our own terms.

In the Ireland of today, dominated by imperialism, there is no real democracy, sovereignty, or independence; the people cannot determine their own lives or control their society; and there are no answers to the social problems that confront us. One obstacle to the people exercising democratic control is the existing system of liberal democracy (sometimes also called representative or parliamentary democracy). Having the right to vote every five years for one party or another to govern us is not democracy and gives us no real control over the decisions that affect our lives. The institutions of governance themselves prevent the people from exercising any decision-making power; in fact they remove decision-making from the people and place it with the elite, the bureaucracies, and the rich. Connolly considered governments in such societies to be no more than “committees of the rich to administer the affairs of the capitalist class.” Today politics, the legal system, the media, the universities and the other institutions of governance and control are populated by those who either willingly promote and implement the interests of the rich and the capitalists or those who do not understand the impossibility of resolving our problems within this system.

This system of governance cannot be democratised by reform. A society that intended to empower all its members and give them control over their lives would not devise institutions and processes that systematically remove power from them and vest it in small elite groups, both elected and appointed: politicians and elected representatives, bureaucrats and senior civil servants, judges, and experts and technocrats. New institutions and processes will have to be created in order to empower the people in their society and give them real decision-making power over everything that affects their lives.

As capital increasingly moved across national borders and imperialism came to dominate much of the world, new supranational institutions of governance and decision-making began to emerge. Designed to promote and ensure the interests of a globalising capitalism, and created by the national states that already served those interests, the new institutions removed democratic control even further from the people. The institutions of the European Union, the euro zone and the European Central Bank are another obstacle to the Irish people exercising democratic control over their lives, and their role in hollowing out democracy and protecting the interests of capital were starkly exposed during the economic and financial crisis of recent years. They have been central to the imposition of austerity policies throughout the EU, to the foisting on the people of the private debt of the banks and finance houses, and to the insistence that there is no alternative to capitalism and the market. Instead of considering whether the system of capitalism and their own policies were part of the problem, the EU, the ECB and the euro zone reinforced the system and punished the peoples of Europe, particularly in Ireland, Greece, Spain, and Portugal. The European institutions are institutions of imperialism, designed to protect and promote the interests of big business and globalised finance. If the Irish people are to take real democratic power into their hands they will have to extricate themselves from the EU and the euro zone.

Writing in The Sovereign People, Patrick Pearse insisted that “no private right to property is good as against the public right of the nation.” The “right to private property”—the core characteristic of capitalism, which is embedded in all its political, social, cultural and economic ideology and practices—is a central obstacle to the Irish people assuming democratic control over their lives. The imposition on the people of the private debt incurred by banks and speculators is no more than a particularly naked example of the everyday practices of capitalism. While the debt is no longer to the fore in public discourse, it has not disappeared: in fact both public and private debt remain at historically high and unsustainable levels. The people who are being forced to repay the debt incurred by others also carry a heavy burden of personal debt, and they were neither those who caused the speculative debt nor those who benefited from the boom that preceded the crisis. Those who benefited were the speculators, financiers, developers, and those who serviced them in politics, the media, and the universities and think tanks.

The burden of debt is a means of locking the people in to servicing the system permanently. At the level of the state we are committed to decades of repaying the private banking debt, transferring wealth produced by the people to the financiers and speculators; at the level of the individual this process is repeated as people are burdened with debt for increasing periods of their working lives and into retirement. The system requires that, individually and collectively, we remain in permanent debt servitude, making payments in perpetuity to the financiers and speculators who own the debt. While the debt cannot and should not be repaid, it is no more than one aspect of the system of capitalism. If the people are to exercise democratic control over their society and their lives, it will be necessary to exert social control over capital and finance and over all the productive economy.

Writing in 1914, James Connolly argued that partition “would mean a carnival of reaction both North and South, would set back the wheels of progress, would destroy the oncoming unity of the Irish Labour movement and paralyse all advanced movements whilst it endured.” The partition of Ireland is a further obstacle to the Irish people exercising real democratic control over their society and their lives. The division of our country arises out of the historical colonial domination of Ireland by England and Britain; the plantation of Protestants from England and Scotland and the deliberate promotion of sectarian antagonisms to protect colonial interests; and the needs of imperialism in the twentieth century to secure a stable Ireland where the interests of capital would be advanced.

As a response to political upheaval and revolution in Ireland in the early twentieth century, partition provided a solution for and within imperialism. It divided the democratic forces and the working class; it was a compromise that unionism and its Tory supporters could accept; it provided a state in the 26 Counties in which nationalist capital and big business could advance their class interests; it provided a means of ending the Revolution without sparking social transformation; and it secured both parts of a divided Ireland for imperialism.

Partition can only be addressed by confronting its role in denying democracy in both parts of Ireland and producing the “carnival of reaction” that Connolly foresaw. North and South, we are denied real democracy, sovereignty, and independence. All the institutions of governance—the EU and the euro zone, the British Parliament, the Stormont Executive, and the Dáil in Leinster House—serve to remove democratic control from the people and to promote the interests of capitalism and imperialism. Institutions in Ireland that would facilitate the people themselves in exercising real democratic power are the only means through which the interests of the people can be secured and imperialism defeated.

This assembly holds that in Ireland today, North and South, there is no real democracy, sovereignty, or independence; that the interests of imperialism and capital are promoted at the expense of the interests of the people; and that the people are unable to exercise any meaningful control, individually or collectively, over their society and their lives.

We insist that it is only through the achievement of national democracy, real democracy, sovereignty, and independence, that the interests of the people can be secured and implemented and that the people can determine together their relations with each other and the nature of the society they create collectively and live in.

All the obstacles to the people exercising real democratic power must be confronted and overcome:

The lack of real democracy in the domestic institutions of governance must be challenged and new institutions created that facilitate the people controlling their lives.

Membership of and the transfer of sovereignty to international and supranational bodies that prevent the people exercising democratic power must be reversed and ended.

Controls must be placed on the operations of capital and finance in the interests of the common good of all the people. All parts of the economy and production must be subject to increasing social control.

The partition of Ireland must be opposed and real national democracy established throughout Ireland. We must address those who support partition and enter into dialogue with them about the necessity of the people exercising real democratic control if their interests and needs are to be realised.

This assembly affirms its commitment to the struggle for a truly democratic, sovereign, independent Irish Republic, in which the people will be sovereign. The people must have full decision-making power over all aspects of their society and economy, and the common good must replace private ownership and profit as the driving principle in our shared lives together. When the people have real democratic control over all political, social, cultural and economic matters, the interests of the few can finally be subordinated to the needs and wishes of the many, and we can create a truly free, equal and human society. End

Based on the above, the Peadar O’Donnell Socialist Republican Forum has drafted 6 motions to put before the centenary celebration of the First Dail to be held on Saturday 26th January 2019 in Liberty Hall, Dublin.

Motion 1

For a democratic Ireland

We, participants in the People’s Dáil, gathered to celebrate the centenary of the first Dáil Éireann, are of the belief that full democracy and the democratic expression of the people’s will must be the foundation of democracy. It is clear that none of the political institutions currently established in Ireland are accountable to the people but rather are the product of those they serve. They serve the interests of those who have wealth and economic power as well as the needs and interests of imperialism. Democratic control of all institutions, and decisions within those institutions, that affect people’s lives must be controlled by the people at all times. All elected representatives must be subject to recall, whether at the local or the national level. This democracy must be extended to our places of work and to all social and cultural spheres of life. In a new, democratic Ireland every citizen must have full participation in all decisions affecting their family, community, and place of work. This will require a radical and fundamental change in how our country is run and how we, as citizens, govern rather than are governed.

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Motion 2

For a neutral Ireland

A democratic Ireland would be neutral and non-aligned. We oppose involvement in any and all military structures. We oppose the use of any part of our country by aggressive military alliances, such as NATO or PESCO. A democratic Ireland would be a beacon of solidarity and hope for the billions of oppressed peoples struggling under imperial domination and control. We oppose all external institutional controls that prevent the people of Ireland from asserting their national sovereign wishes and their democratic capacity as a people. A democratic Ireland would promote global solidarity and justice and mutually beneficial economic trading relations. It would not engage in the oppression of other peoples or nations, economically, militarily, or culturally. A democratic and free Ireland would never collude with others in the exploitation of the resources or peoples of other nations. We understand that in order to assert these policies we must have complete national sovereignty and national democracy.

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Motion 3

The global environment crisis

The economic system imposed upon us—monopoly capitalism—is plunging our planet and the very survival of hundreds of millions of people around the globe into an environment abyss—a catastrophe that we may well never recover from. We need to end the destruction of the environment by global corporations and to challenge the subservient politicians and governmental systems. It is only in the controlling of, and ultimately the breaking up of, these global monopolies and in instituting an economic system that is centred on the needs of the people, one that is environmentally sustainable and in which the profit motivation is removed, that we can hope to save our planet.

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Motion 4

Partition

Partition was a most grave and anti-democratic act imposed upon our people by Britain and its allies in Ireland. Partition can only be addressed by confronting its role in denying democracy in both parts of Ireland producing the “carnival of reaction” that Connolly foresaw, North and South. We are affirmed our belief that it is only the working people of Ireland, that have the capacity to end partition and unite our people, to establish meaningful national sovereignty and national independence in order to secure their own material needs and interests.

We resolve to strengthen the unity of people’s organisations on a national basis and to support campaigns and solutions that strengthen the unity of our people in an all-Ireland struggle. In line with the historic tradition of Tone, Connolly, and Pearse, we oppose all manifestations of sectarianism and division and oppose all groups and forces that wish to sow further division among our people.

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Motion 5

People’s ownership

We reject the narrow concept of democracy that confines the people’s participation to a formal vote every four or five years. We believe that all the means of producing the necessities of life including the control of capital, all natural resources, both land and sea, should be owned and controlled by and for the people of Ireland. These resources are to be used only in a sustainable way to enhance the social and cultural development of our people, and not for the profit of a tiny elite or transnational corporations. It is the people’s wealth and should, therefore, be owned by us.

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Motion 6

Economic and social development to serve the people.

A democratic Ireland should be one in which everyone can enjoy the fruits of their labour, in which to grow and develop to their fullest potential, free from discrimination because of their gender, sexuality, ethnicity, race or religion. Priority would be given to enhancing the social and cultural development of every citizen equally, with economic and social development spread evenly throughout our country. This must include the Gaeltacht and other historically marginalised regions.

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Something to celebrate

The first Dáil Éireann and the Democratic Programme

Next January the Peadar O’Donnell Socialist Republican Forum will mark the centenary of the first Dáil Éireann and the publication of one of modern Ireland’s landmark documents, the Democratic Programme. The forum will celebrate the occasion with a conference in Liberty Hall, Dublin.

While it is important that seminal events are remembered, it is also necessary that we learn from them. There are lessons from that era that are not only of historical interest but have relevance to contemporary Ireland and its relationship with the rest of the world. The celebration on 26th January 2019 in Liberty Hall, therefore, will go beyond a simple commemoration: it will also explore the progress, or lack of it, since then and ask participants to contribute towards making a positive and progressive impact in the days to come.

The people who participated on that historic occasion in 1919 not only asserted the Irish people’s right to self-determination and independence but also identified a need to rectify serious social and economic issues that had a detrimental effect on Ireland’s working people. Moreover, they also created a political arena that had the potential to implement these tasks. That the eventual outcome did not fulfil its intention is cause for regret rather than outright dismissal.

Firstly, therefore, let us look briefly at the conditions under which working people live and labour in today’s Ireland. A century after the publication of the Democratic Programme, which included the statement that the Republic will “reaffirm that all right to private property must be subordinated to the public right and welfare,” there can be little doubt that this objective has been decisively rejected by governing institutions in Ireland.

The dogma of free-market capitalism is ruthlessly implemented, with little care for its effect on working people. There is a housing and homelessness crisis, with the neo-liberal Irish state, in spite of an obvious emergency, insisting on the provision of houses through the private sector, notwithstanding the abject failure of this policy. Lengthy hospital waiting-lists, and the spectacle of patients parked for hours on trolleys, is a national disgrace. Exacerbating difficulties within the health service is the absence of adequate provision of home help for the elderly. Nevertheless, this state persists with the detrimental practice of maintaining a parallel private and public health service.

Typifying the Irish state’s neo-liberal ethos is the fall-out from the Carillion fiasco.¹ So determined was the Dublin government to assist the privileged elite that this reckless British company was awarded responsibility for the design, building, financing and maintenance of six new schools around the country. This so-called public-services company powerfully illustrates the drive towards the privatisation of public services that has been relentlessly pursued over the past decades.

Whereas once the capitalist state provided a protective structure whereby an elite would profit from manufacturing and finance, this has now become a situation where the state also ensures that a favoured few benefit by being paid handsomely to manage public services. In the process, standards are frequently lowered, trade unions are often expelled, and ultimately, if privatised, the management fails, as Carillion and others have done, with the taxpaying public picking up the bill.

Illustrating the sheer mendacity of this regime was the astonishing spectacle last year of an Irish government refusing to accept €13 billion in taxes owed by the enormously wealthy Apple Corporation.

In the light of all this it is reasonable to ask whether a sovereign Irish republic as asserted in the Mansion House ninety-nine years ago exists in any real sense in Ireland today. In the first place, a raft of restrictions is imposed on the popular will as a consequence of membership of the European Union. This can only get worse if proposals for closer integration, coupled with the strengthening of the euro zone, are implemented. Moreover, it is likely that this will come about, since the Davos poster-boy Emmanuel Macron is proposing this very package and has recently been receiving backing form the supine leadership of Germany’s Social Democratic Party.

More worrying still is the flagrant violation by the United States of what is left of Ireland’s neutrality. This was emphasised last month at Shannon Airport, where the vice-president of the United States, Mike Pence, posed for photographs as he shook hands with American soldiers in combat fatigues. These soldiers, bound for Kuwait, are clearly not tourists, and their presence in Shannon Airport makes the Irish government party to their military campaign. As Aengus Ó Snodaigh TD (Sinn Féin) said, “these images are a stark reminder that the civilian Shannon Airport has virtually become a forward base for the US army to carry out military operations and exercises.”

Let us not be complacent either, because this situation has a resonance beyond national pride. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has moved its symbolic Doomsday Clock to two minutes before midnight,² thanks largely to the “unpredictability” of Donald Trump. Compromising neutrality, therefore, poses a risk that Ireland could be dragged almost unwittingly into an imperial war.

To address the problems arising from a diminished sovereignty coupled with the destructiveness of neo-liberalism, it is worth reflecting finally on a central concept promoted by the first Dáil. This was the extension and empowerment of democracy. Those who gathered in the Mansion House on that January day could have taken their seats in the British Parliament but, while forming a significant bloc in the House of Commons, would nevertheless have remained as impotent as the Irish Party had been fifty years before. Just as then, there is now a need to facilitate a more participatory form of democracy, one that is not at present available.

The Peadar O’Donnell Socialist Republican Forum is not calling for anything as dramatic as the creation of an alternative parliament. What it seeks to do, among other things, is to draw attention to the limitations imposed by a reliance on the existing parliamentary process, where, in the words of Lenin, “capital exercises its influence on the state power.” The powerful and inspiring campaign against the water tax taught us that single-issue campaigns are effective but can be limited. Without the continuous popular pressure of a mass movement the ruling class make strategic concessions that can be eroded in time.

The Forum plans thereafter to use its celebration of the first Dáil in 2019 to explore and advocate the establishment of a wider forum, aimed at encouraging political discourse and promoting the creation and direction of a bottom-up mass movement. Doing this, however, requires the building of a regularly convened assembly or arena designed with the intention of identifying and promoting a comprehensive programme capable of transforming Irish society. What the assembly would be named, how it would be made up or where it might be convened are matters for democratic agreement and are not a prerogative reserved by the Peadar O’Donnell Forum.

What the forum does insist upon, though, is that a hundred years after the first Dáil the Irish working class must be allowed to realise the promise and potential of that assembly’s Democratic Programme.

1. Paul Mason, “Ink it onto your knuckles: Carillion is how neoliberalism lives and breathes,” Novamedia, 15 January 2018.

2. “Doomsday Clock moved to just two minutes to ‘apocalypse’,” BBC News, 25/01/ 2018.

This article first appeared in Socialist Voice … Feb 2018

Forum celebrates Wolfe Tone in Bodenstown

Above: Jimmy Doran delivers main speech at theWolfe Tone celebration in Bodenstown churchyard

The Peadar O’Donnell Socialist Republican Forum organised a united celebration of the life and ideals of patriot, democrat and republican Theobald Wolfe Tone on 19th August 2018. The event was chaired by Caoimhe Ní Loinsigh and the main oration was delivered by Jimmy Doran (see below for full content of speech).

Above: Caoimhe Ní Loinsigh chairing the event

Jimmy Doran address in full

Full text of the oration by Dublin District Communist Party of Ireland chairperson Jimmy Doran at last week’s United Wolfetone Commemeration in Bodenstown.

Padraig Pearse once referred to this place as the holiest spot in Ireland. I’m not an expert on holy spots but it certainly is one of the most revolutionary spots in Ireland. It is the burial ground of Theobald Wolfe Tone one of the greatest Irish revolutionaries and the founder of Irish Republicanism.

We are here today to remember him to learn from him and use this knowledge not to repeat history but to change it.

This is a year of many anniversaries both Irish and international.

It is 220 years since Wolfetone led the 98 rebellion.

200 years since the birth of Marx. &

150 since the birth of James Connolly

If any of those revolutionaries were here today what would they say to us now,

What would they say to us ?

They would say to us I told you so

I told you so because

Nothing has changed.

They warned us what would happen everything they fought against and tried to expose and predict has come true.

The ruling elites Rule in there own interest and their interest alone at an enormous expense to the rest of us.

Wherever there is a massive accumulation of wealth there is an equivalent poverty and disenfranchisement of somebody else.

Huge amount of wealth cannot be accumulated without depriving others.

Wealth doesn’t just appear it does not just happen or fall from the sky.

It’s called capitalism

All wealth is created by the interactions of two things the natural resources of this planet and our labour.

Nobody should own those natural resources they are provided by nature to be used for the benefit of humanity not for any elite to horde or exploit for themselves. Without these two components wealth just does not exist and there would be nothing to Accumulate, Horde, Stash, Rob, Deprive or Steal from the rest of us.

Workers get paid a wage for creating all the wealth that is produced, the rest of this wealth, the surplus or profits the vast majority is taken and horded by capitalists to lavish on their class.

We are ruled by deception distraction and division in order to confuse us and plant distrust of each other among us.

Multiple solutions to dilute revolutions.

There is no crisis that capitalism cannot get out of so long as the working class are willing to pay for it or can be conned into paying for.

Wolfe Tone founded the Society of the United Irishmen in 1791 to “break the connection with England the never failing source of all our evils”

He recognised that Britain ruled us in the interest of her capitalist class to the detriment of us the people of no property.

Overlooking Belfast on Cavehill Tone and his comrades took a solemn oath “ never to desist in our efforts until we have subverted the authority of England over our country and asserted her independence”.

Wolfe Tone was very much influenced by events in France during their revolution and knew that independence was not a geographical thing it was a political thing independence of the people of Ireland from the dominance of the British ruling class.

British imperialism was in Ireland and the other colonies not as tourists but to extract everything they could out of countries and peoples to benefit their elite ruling class and quell revolt from their own citizens in Britain. It is no accident that the British built schools hospitals cities and towns for their citizens but built railways, roads and ports in the colonies to flood home the wealth, riches and Resources from the colonies while leaving the colonialial citizens to starve in abjact poverty. This policy continues today as globalisation but it is much more subtle than it was back then.

Tone recognised our artificially divided people had a common enemy and would only be defeated when the common name of Irishman was substituted for Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter

Unity of our people and unity of our class would be our strength and our main weapon and a united people was and is the only way for our people to gain independence and build the Irish Republic.

Wolfe Tone called out to “ The numerous and respectable class, the people of no property,

He said “ the gentry (as they affect to call themselves) have uniformly been corrupted by England, and the merchant and middle class Catholics have, when not corrupted, been uniformly intimidated whereas for the common people for the most part have remained unbought and unterrified”.

As James Connolly himself put it “only the Irish working class are the incorruptible inheritors of the fight for freedom in Ireland”

Many individuals and groups who come to this “holiest spot in Ireland” to honour and praise Wolfe Tone, republicanism and Irish revolutionaries would be, the very ones who persecuted Wolfe Tone and his like when they lived.

As Connolly pointed out Apostles of freedom are ever idolized when dead would crucified on alive.

James Connolly at the start of Chapter 4 in his book labour in Irish history quoted the United Irish Society of 1791 as follows:

“ when the aristocracy come forward the people fall backward when the people come forward the aristocracy fearful of being left behind insinuate themselves into our ranks and rise into timid leaders or treacherous auxiliaries”

This quote is as relevant today as it was when James Connolly quoted it in 1910 or when It was first written by the united Irishmen in 1791 all around us we are surrounded by treacherous forces who insinuate themselves into our ranks to lead us in a different direction their direction.

Our history books record stories of how informers have always betrayed our people and yes there has always been treachery in the form of informers down true Irish history. Comrades treacherous and all that informers work is and the pain, devastation and death it has caused our people down through generations. An informers damage is limited it can foil an ambush or thwart a prison escape and lead to the arrest, death or imprisonment of people or groups of people.

That’s the type of romantic exciting stories of gallant heroes, battles and prison escapes that the ruling classes want to be repeated, retold, remembered and to live on for future generations .

What they do not want remembered is the politics of Tone , McCraken or Connolly. Or O Donnell.

You can murder or capture a rebel but you cannot murder an idea but you can stifle erase and revise the narrative to suit your class.

Treachery is much worse than informing it is the redirecting and leading our struggle to instead of defeating imperialism to compromising with it propping it up and facilitating the dominance of our people by Imperialism and leaves behind it a confused and disheartened people weakening the entire working class in the process which can take a generation to recover from.

They are but sheep in wolf’s clothing and traitors to their class. We do not seek favours from capitalism we look them in the eye and demand what is rightfully ours.

Everything from the plough to the stars.

Reformism is not an advance for our class it is but a forced compromise and a pillar that props up and strengthens capitalism by distracting, dividing and confusing the working class.

Multiple solutions to dilute revolution.

The worker on the Shankill Road on poverty wages who can’t afford the excessive rent demanded by rack renting slum landlords has the same enemy as the Derry worker the Dublin worker or the worker from Cork or Galway who suffer the same exploitation and oppression their common enemy is capitalism propped up and supported by any division division that can be manufactured to keep workers divided and confused such as race gender or religion or anything else that can be used against us.

Ruling by fooling and is all done to divert attention from the real battle of defeating capitalism and stop us building a socialist republic because the building of the republic will end their rule, power and exploitation.

We cannot reform capitalism that naturally produces poverty, inequality and division it must be abolished. Today as monopoly capitalism goes into overdrive , conditions for workers have been falling the gap between rich and poor is increasing. Since the defeat of the Soviet Union an emboldened Capitalism has gotten confident in its never ending search for more profit. Now that they don’t have to compete with the advances made by workers in the Soviet Union.

In this neo liberal race to the bottom no longer can workers afford a roof over their head, they are forced into overcrowded and substandard homes as private rented accommodation is now the main type of tenure in our cities and towns.

According to the 2016 census overcrowding has increased for the first time in 50 years.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Northern Ireland civil rights Association as the establishment fall over themselves to commemorate it what they won’t be telling you during the various commemorations is that the housing waiting lists in Dungannon and Coalisland all over the six counties today are longer than they ever were in 1968 .

The orange state may be gone but today we have inequality dealt out in ever increasing but equal measures on both communities the common enemy comrades capitalism not taigs or prods. What we need is system change not government change

Low pay and precarious employment is now the order of the day. The day of the hiring fair is back unlike in days gone by we don’t stand on the corner waiting for a lorry to pull up to give us a day’s work we now wait at the end of our phone for that call to give us another couple of hours work,

or a shift which is done at the behest and the whim of a manager or boss

This is leaving workers in the Never-ending uncertainty of not knowing what we will earn from one week to the next how can people plan ahead living with this constant burden.

No wonder suicide rates are through the roof.

Meanwhile the social contract the compromise between citizens and state is almost gone a thing of the past, we now have two work till we are 68 years of age in order to secure an inadequate pension from the state.

All social benefits are under attack and have been cut to barest of minimums from the NHS in the north to the HSE in the south . Hospitals are overcrowded with people waiting for days on a trolley or in a chair to receive emergency treatment often at the very end of their lives.

The last couple of hours on this planet your privacy your dignity stripped from you.

That’s capitalism, comrades

Waiting lists for normal everyday medical care a doctor’s appointment and minor operations are at all-time highs this is not unique to Ireland this is the case all over the so-called developed world as capital squeezes its grip on workers as Capitalism reaches its highest stage “ Imperialism” in a class war which they are winning hands down.

The developed world is developed at the expense of the masses to the benefit of an elite.

The transfer of our social wealth from the people by the government by the selling off of all our natural resources and utilities to big business for them to extract maximum profits goes in unabated.

This has been proven throughout the period of austerity from 2008 since the global financial crash when the richest elites got richer and the vast majority of everybody else got decidedly poorer as the policy of austerity worked very well for those it was designed by and for the ruling capitalist class. It was designed by The Capitalist class for their benefit and paid for by the working class.

Inequality is at an all time high The richest 8 people in the world have more wealth accumulated than The poorest 50% of The world’s population.

83% of all goods manufactured in the world are produced in the Global South in sweatshops for slave wages with no consideration for the health and safety of the workers or environmental damage being caused in the process. The massive profits created by this exploitation are exported back to the developed countries where little or no tax is paid on them and they are divided up among the tiny elite the owners of capital to live a life of unimaginable luxury.

Just as Wolfe Tone campaigned against slavery in his time we must campaign against this modern-day slavery. The united Irishmen supportered the campaign to end the consumption of tea and sugar in solidarity with the struggle to end slavery we should do the same and Boycott all products that are manufactured in the third world for slave wages in sweatshops as globalisation runs riot among the poorest people of the world to the benefit of a tiny ruling elite. Thomas Russell said every cube of sugar has blood on it so too comrades has every t-shirt or track suit

Wages here are now so low the vast bulk of which working people have to spend on food and shelter and the servicing of debt leaving very little left to spend on the other necessities of life.

So workers have little choice but to to buy these products and in doing so contribute to this inequality and the super exploitation of our fellow human beings in the sweatshops of the Global South.

There is no such thing as a nicer form of capitalism by its very nature capitalism is anti people it will always place the pursuit of profit above everything else. Today most trade Union battles are defensive rather than offensive that is to prevent things getting worse it’s time for workers to go on the offensive in the interest of all humanity we can either save humanity or capitalism we cannot save both.

The workers movement needs to seriously reconnect with the defence of international workers, humanity and the environment build this into an anti Monopoly strategy, that turns against imperialism and grows class consciousness and working class unity because to break the connection with capitalism is the only route to a sustainable Society.

Irish workers and their trade unions must stand together against this globalisation and exploitation of the most vulnerable people in the world as a people we have suffered tremendously as result of British imperialism we cannot stand idly by and contribute to this modern day slavery.

We must take a leading role to educate and organise link up with fraternal international organisations and fight for better conditions of all humanity once and for all to end Imperialism.

We must push trade union demands much further than everyday issues of minimum wage or living wage etc to other much more radical demand that will affect all workers and their families uniting them in struggle such as universal public housing, health education etc. and build these into campaigns which will bring class consciousness and class unity among the working class of this country to start we must campaign to end the anti trade union legislation both north and south which will give back some power to the trade union movement to fight back against the war the class war that is being waged on workers at home and Abroad.

Imperialism is rotten to its core inequality is it’s foundation stone and greed is it’s bedrock it achieves this by exploitation of the working class.

This gives us the working class a very strategic position in the struggle. There are but two classes in society both interdependent but one ruling the other to it’s advantage. But the working class movement has been deeply weakened by anti trade union legislation both here and in the six counties in order to strengthen workers this legislation must be repealed and abolished.

Comrades Wolfetone and the United Irishmen were not successful in 1798 but that does not mean that they were wrong. A united working class will defeat capitalism. We can win and we will win this struggle for the liberation of humanity.

So comrades if we learn anything from Wolfe Tone it is to unite or people in this struggle against our common enemy and always watch out for class traitors insinuating themselves into the ranks of the working class we are aware of the magnitude of the task but unity will be our weapon and there downfall.

Many will use the banner of Labour or socialism as a flag of Convenience to hide the true nature of their being. The only thing they want to share, is to gain a bigger share for themselves, of the massive profits produced by workers sweat.

They distort the meaning of United Irishmen to Unity of class and Creed as they join our ranks a Union of underpaid workers and overpaid bosses.

Capitalism creates a world in its image a world of total inequality exploitation and oppression we must unite the working class and bury in one common grave the religious hatred, the provincial jealousies and the mutual distrust upon which oppression has so long depended on for security.

Leo Varadkar talks about a republic of opportunity plenty of opportunity for landlords , bankers , speculators and big business

Where is the republic of opportunity for those waiting on a hospital trolley for a bed ?

Where is the republic of opportunity for the unemployed or for young people on zero hour contracts and poverty wages ?

Where is the republic of opportunity for the 140,000 people on the housing waiting list 10,000 citizens in emergency housing 4000 of them children ?

Where is the republic of opportunity for the mother who skips her meal so her child does not go hungry?

Where is the republic of opportunity ?

The Republic of opportunity for our people is the united socialist Republic the Republic of equals not slaves and master.

The Socialist Republic that WolfeTone and Connolly fought and died for.

Our task is momentous as will our victory.

“Some men, faint-hearted, ever seek

Our programme to retouch,

And will insist, whene’er they speak

That we demand too much.

’Tis passing strange, yet I declare

Such statements give me mirth,

For our demands most moderate are,

We only want the earth.

“Be moderate,” the trimmers cry,

Who dread the tyrants’ thunder.

“You ask too much and people By

From you aghast in wonder.”

’Tis passing strange, for I declare

Such statements give me mirth,

For our demands most moderate are,

We only want the earth.

………………..

Forum celebrates Wolfe Tone in Bodenstown

Above: Jimmy Doran delivers main speech at theWolfe Tone celebration in Bodenstown churchyard

The Peadar O’Donnell Socialist Republican Forum organised a united celebration of the life and ideals of patriot, democrat and republican Theobald Wolfe Tone on 19th August 2018. The event was chaired by Caoimhe Ní Loinsigh and the main oration was delivered by Jimmy Doran (see below for full content of speech).

Above: Caoimhe Ní Loinsigh chairing the event

Jimmy Doran address in full

Full text of the oration by Dublin District Communist Party of Ireland chairperson Jimmy Doran at last week’s United Wolfetone Commemeration in Bodenstown.

Padraig Pearse once referred to this place as the holiest spot in Ireland. I’m not an expert on holy spots but it certainly is one of the most revolutionary spots in Ireland. It is the burial ground of Theobald Wolfe Tone one of the greatest Irish revolutionaries and the founder of Irish Republicanism.

We are here today to remember him to learn from him and use this knowledge not to repeat history but to change it.

This is a year of many anniversaries both Irish and international.

It is 220 years since Wolfetone led the 98 rebellion.

200 years since the birth of Marx. &

150 since the birth of James Connolly

If any of those revolutionaries were here today what would they say to us now,

What would they say to us ?

They would say to us I told you so

I told you so because

Nothing has changed.

They warned us what would happen everything they fought against and tried to expose and predict has come true.

The ruling elites Rule in there own interest and their interest alone at an enormous expense to the rest of us.

Wherever there is a massive accumulation of wealth there is an equivalent poverty and disenfranchisement of somebody else.

Huge amount of wealth cannot be accumulated without depriving others.

Wealth doesn’t just appear it does not just happen or fall from the sky.

It’s called capitalism

All wealth is created by the interactions of two things the natural resources of this planet and our labour.

Nobody should own those natural resources they are provided by nature to be used for the benefit of humanity not for any elite to horde or exploit for themselves. Without these two components wealth just does not exist and there would be nothing to Accumulate, Horde, Stash, Rob, Deprive or Steal from the rest of us.

Workers get paid a wage for creating all the wealth that is produced, the rest of this wealth, the surplus or profits the vast majority is taken and horded by capitalists to lavish on their class.

We are ruled by deception distraction and division in order to confuse us and plant distrust of each other among us.

Multiple solutions to dilute revolutions.

There is no crisis that capitalism cannot get out of so long as the working class are willing to pay for it or can be conned into paying for.

Wolfe Tone founded the Society of the United Irishmen in 1791 to “break the connection with England the never failing source of all our evils”

He recognised that Britain ruled us in the interest of her capitalist class to the detriment of us the people of no property.

Overlooking Belfast on Cavehill Tone and his comrades took a solemn oath “ never to desist in our efforts until we have subverted the authority of England over our country and asserted her independence”.

Wolfe Tone was very much influenced by events in France during their revolution and knew that independence was not a geographical thing it was a political thing independence of the people of Ireland from the dominance of the British ruling class.

British imperialism was in Ireland and the other colonies not as tourists but to extract everything they could out of countries and peoples to benefit their elite ruling class and quell revolt from their own citizens in Britain. It is no accident that the British built schools hospitals cities and towns for their citizens but built railways, roads and ports in the colonies to flood home the wealth, riches and Resources from the colonies while leaving the colonialial citizens to starve in abjact poverty. This policy continues today as globalisation but it is much more subtle than it was back then.

Tone recognised our artificially divided people had a common enemy and would only be defeated when the common name of Irishman was substituted for Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter

Unity of our people and unity of our class would be our strength and our main weapon and a united people was and is the only way for our people to gain independence and build the Irish Republic.

Wolfe Tone called out to “ The numerous and respectable class, the people of no property,

He said “ the gentry (as they affect to call themselves) have uniformly been corrupted by England, and the merchant and middle class Catholics have, when not corrupted, been uniformly intimidated whereas for the common people for the most part have remained unbought and unterrified”.

As James Connolly himself put it “only the Irish working class are the incorruptible inheritors of the fight for freedom in Ireland”

Many individuals and groups who come to this “holiest spot in Ireland” to honour and praise Wolfe Tone, republicanism and Irish revolutionaries would be, the very ones who persecuted Wolfe Tone and his like when they lived.

As Connolly pointed out Apostles of freedom are ever idolized when dead would crucified on alive.

James Connolly at the start of Chapter 4 in his book labour in Irish history quoted the United Irish Society of 1791 as follows:

“ when the aristocracy come forward the people fall backward when the people come forward the aristocracy fearful of being left behind insinuate themselves into our ranks and rise into timid leaders or treacherous auxiliaries”

This quote is as relevant today as it was when James Connolly quoted it in 1910 or when It was first written by the united Irishmen in 1791 all around us we are surrounded by treacherous forces who insinuate themselves into our ranks to lead us in a different direction their direction.

Our history books record stories of how informers have always betrayed our people and yes there has always been treachery in the form of informers down true Irish history. Comrades treacherous and all that informers work is and the pain, devastation and death it has caused our people down through generations. An informers damage is limited it can foil an ambush or thwart a prison escape and lead to the arrest, death or imprisonment of people or groups of people.

That’s the type of romantic exciting stories of gallant heroes, battles and prison escapes that the ruling classes want to be repeated, retold, remembered and to live on for future generations .

What they do not want remembered is the politics of Tone , McCraken or Connolly. Or O Donnell.

You can murder or capture a rebel but you cannot murder an idea but you can stifle erase and revise the narrative to suit your class.

Treachery is much worse than informing it is the redirecting and leading our struggle to instead of defeating imperialism to compromising with it propping it up and facilitating the dominance of our people by Imperialism and leaves behind it a confused and disheartened people weakening the entire working class in the process which can take a generation to recover from.

They are but sheep in wolf’s clothing and traitors to their class. We do not seek favours from capitalism we look them in the eye and demand what is rightfully ours.

Everything from the plough to the stars.

Reformism is not an advance for our class it is but a forced compromise and a pillar that props up and strengthens capitalism by distracting, dividing and confusing the working class.

Multiple solutions to dilute revolution.

The worker on the Shankill Road on poverty wages who can’t afford the excessive rent demanded by rack renting slum landlords has the same enemy as the Derry worker the Dublin worker or the worker from Cork or Galway who suffer the same exploitation and oppression their common enemy is capitalism propped up and supported by any division division that can be manufactured to keep workers divided and confused such as race gender or religion or anything else that can be used against us.

Ruling by fooling and is all done to divert attention from the real battle of defeating capitalism and stop us building a socialist republic because the building of the republic will end their rule, power and exploitation.

We cannot reform capitalism that naturally produces poverty, inequality and division it must be abolished. Today as monopoly capitalism goes into overdrive , conditions for workers have been falling the gap between rich and poor is increasing. Since the defeat of the Soviet Union an emboldened Capitalism has gotten confident in its never ending search for more profit. Now that they don’t have to compete with the advances made by workers in the Soviet Union.

In this neo liberal race to the bottom no longer can workers afford a roof over their head, they are forced into overcrowded and substandard homes as private rented accommodation is now the main type of tenure in our cities and towns.

According to the 2016 census overcrowding has increased for the first time in 50 years.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Northern Ireland civil rights Association as the establishment fall over themselves to commemorate it what they won’t be telling you during the various commemorations is that the housing waiting lists in Dungannon and Coalisland all over the six counties today are longer than they ever were in 1968 .

The orange state may be gone but today we have inequality dealt out in ever increasing but equal measures on both communities the common enemy comrades capitalism not taigs or prods. What we need is system change not government change

Low pay and precarious employment is now the order of the day. The day of the hiring fair is back unlike in days gone by we don’t stand on the corner waiting for a lorry to pull up to give us a day’s work we now wait at the end of our phone for that call to give us another couple of hours work,

or a shift which is done at the behest and the whim of a manager or boss

This is leaving workers in the Never-ending uncertainty of not knowing what we will earn from one week to the next how can people plan ahead living with this constant burden.

No wonder suicide rates are through the roof.

Meanwhile the social contract the compromise between citizens and state is almost gone a thing of the past, we now have two work till we are 68 years of age in order to secure an inadequate pension from the state.

All social benefits are under attack and have been cut to barest of minimums from the NHS in the north to the HSE in the south . Hospitals are overcrowded with people waiting for days on a trolley or in a chair to receive emergency treatment often at the very end of their lives.

The last couple of hours on this planet your privacy your dignity stripped from you.

That’s capitalism, comrades

Waiting lists for normal everyday medical care a doctor’s appointment and minor operations are at all-time highs this is not unique to Ireland this is the case all over the so-called developed world as capital squeezes its grip on workers as Capitalism reaches its highest stage “ Imperialism” in a class war which they are winning hands down.

The developed world is developed at the expense of the masses to the benefit of an elite.

The transfer of our social wealth from the people by the government by the selling off of all our natural resources and utilities to big business for them to extract maximum profits goes in unabated.

This has been proven throughout the period of austerity from 2008 since the global financial crash when the richest elites got richer and the vast majority of everybody else got decidedly poorer as the policy of austerity worked very well for those it was designed by and for the ruling capitalist class. It was designed by The Capitalist class for their benefit and paid for by the working class.

Inequality is at an all time high The richest 8 people in the world have more wealth accumulated than The poorest 50% of The world’s population.

83% of all goods manufactured in the world are produced in the Global South in sweatshops for slave wages with no consideration for the health and safety of the workers or environmental damage being caused in the process. The massive profits created by this exploitation are exported back to the developed countries where little or no tax is paid on them and they are divided up among the tiny elite the owners of capital to live a life of unimaginable luxury.

Just as Wolfe Tone campaigned against slavery in his time we must campaign against this modern-day slavery. The united Irishmen supportered the campaign to end the consumption of tea and sugar in solidarity with the struggle to end slavery we should do the same and Boycott all products that are manufactured in the third world for slave wages in sweatshops as globalisation runs riot among the poorest people of the world to the benefit of a tiny ruling elite. Thomas Russell said every cube of sugar has blood on it so too comrades has every t-shirt or track suit

Wages here are now so low the vast bulk of which working people have to spend on food and shelter and the servicing of debt leaving very little left to spend on the other necessities of life.

So workers have little choice but to to buy these products and in doing so contribute to this inequality and the super exploitation of our fellow human beings in the sweatshops of the Global South.

There is no such thing as a nicer form of capitalism by its very nature capitalism is anti people it will always place the pursuit of profit above everything else. Today most trade Union battles are defensive rather than offensive that is to prevent things getting worse it’s time for workers to go on the offensive in the interest of all humanity we can either save humanity or capitalism we cannot save both.

The workers movement needs to seriously reconnect with the defence of international workers, humanity and the environment build this into an anti Monopoly strategy, that turns against imperialism and grows class consciousness and working class unity because to break the connection with capitalism is the only route to a sustainable Society.

Irish workers and their trade unions must stand together against this globalisation and exploitation of the most vulnerable people in the world as a people we have suffered tremendously as result of British imperialism we cannot stand idly by and contribute to this modern day slavery.

We must take a leading role to educate and organise link up with fraternal international organisations and fight for better conditions of all humanity once and for all to end Imperialism.

We must push trade union demands much further than everyday issues of minimum wage or living wage etc to other much more radical demand that will affect all workers and their families uniting them in struggle such as universal public housing, health education etc. and build these into campaigns which will bring class consciousness and class unity among the working class of this country to start we must campaign to end the anti trade union legislation both north and south which will give back some power to the trade union movement to fight back against the war the class war that is being waged on workers at home and Abroad.

Imperialism is rotten to its core inequality is it’s foundation stone and greed is it’s bedrock it achieves this by exploitation of the working class.

This gives us the working class a very strategic position in the struggle. There are but two classes in society both interdependent but one ruling the other to it’s advantage. But the working class movement has been deeply weakened by anti trade union legislation both here and in the six counties in order to strengthen workers this legislation must be repealed and abolished.

Comrades Wolfetone and the United Irishmen were not successful in 1798 but that does not mean that they were wrong. A united working class will defeat capitalism. We can win and we will win this struggle for the liberation of humanity.

So comrades if we learn anything from Wolfe Tone it is to unite or people in this struggle against our common enemy and always watch out for class traitors insinuating themselves into the ranks of the working class we are aware of the magnitude of the task but unity will be our weapon and there downfall.

Many will use the banner of Labour or socialism as a flag of Convenience to hide the true nature of their being. The only thing they want to share, is to gain a bigger share for themselves, of the massive profits produced by workers sweat.

They distort the meaning of United Irishmen to Unity of class and Creed as they join our ranks a Union of underpaid workers and overpaid bosses.

Capitalism creates a world in its image a world of total inequality exploitation and oppression we must unite the working class and bury in one common grave the religious hatred, the provincial jealousies and the mutual distrust upon which oppression has so long depended on for security.

Leo Varadkar talks about a republic of opportunity plenty of opportunity for landlords , bankers , speculators and big business

Where is the republic of opportunity for those waiting on a hospital trolley for a bed ?

Where is the republic of opportunity for the unemployed or for young people on zero hour contracts and poverty wages ?

Where is the republic of opportunity for the 140,000 people on the housing waiting list 10,000 citizens in emergency housing 4000 of them children ?

Where is the republic of opportunity for the mother who skips her meal so her child does not go hungry?

Where is the republic of opportunity ?

The Republic of opportunity for our people is the united socialist Republic the Republic of equals not slaves and master.

The Socialist Republic that WolfeTone and Connolly fought and died for.

Our task is momentous as will our victory.

“Some men, faint-hearted, ever seek

Our programme to retouch,

And will insist, whene’er they speak

That we demand too much.

’Tis passing strange, yet I declare

Such statements give me mirth,

For our demands most moderate are,

We only want the earth.

“Be moderate,” the trimmers cry,

Who dread the tyrants’ thunder.

“You ask too much and people By

From you aghast in wonder.”

’Tis passing strange, for I declare

Such statements give me mirth,

For our demands most moderate are,

We only want the earth.

………………..

Wolfe Tone commemoration addressed by leading trade unionist

John Douglas, general secretary of Irish retail trade union Mandate, delivered the keynote speech at a commemoration for Wolfe Tone on 20th August 2017 in Bodenstown, Co Kildare, organised by the Peadar O’Donnell Socialist Republican Forum

Address delivered by Mandate general secretary, John Douglas

to the Bodenstown Wolfe Tone commemoration

Comrades, Brothers and Sisters ….Our national freedoms were defined by the United Irishmen in terms of citizenship, the responsibility of the state to its citizens and the responsibility of all citizens to the welfare of each other.

Those freedoms were not a narrow they were based on the principles of the French Revolution; Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. Wolfe Tone and the United Irishmen fought for Liberty for not only Catholics, but also for “Dissenters” such as Presbyterians, Quakers and other oppressed religious minorities. The United Ireland of Wolfe Tone, Napper Tandy, McCracken and later Connolly was egalitarian – it made no tilt towards religion – they had no interest in a United Ireland subjugated by religion, monarchy, class, privilege or capital.

The Unification of the Island of Ireland was not a geographical project of narrow nationalism, rather a unification of the disenfranchised and the impoverished against the tyranny of Colonialism, British Imperialism and Capital. Clearly the vision of Wolfe Tone and the United Irishmen has not yet been fulfilled, as has not yet the vision of Connolly. The Island of Ireland is divided by sectarianism, inequality and exploitation – this did not happen by economic accident – but through economic design.

Ireland has been subjugated by Neo-Liberalism and Global Capitalism, our domestic sovereignty has been sacrificed on the altar of Capital. Our recent experience in the Republic of Ireland of EU imposed austerity and the plunder of our national wealth, the stripping bare of our social provisions should be a lesson to all, and a rallying call to all – to unite and mobilise.

Our Housing Crisis, our Health Crisis and the level of poverty and depravation in Ireland are a direct result of the interests of Global Financial Capital being allowed and facilitated by our government to trump the needs, wellbeing and rights of its own citizens.

Our weak and subservient National Parliament, the Dail were no match for a Neo Liberal Federal EU – which was able to dictate that all banks were too big to fail and that Irish citizens would shoulder the burden of 40% of all European bank debt. The result of which can be seen every night in the doorways of shops and the back lanes of Dublin where thousands huddle for shelter and food and in the cheap hotels and B&B’s where the growing numbers of homeless families are exiled to exist – out of sight and out of mind.

The phoney Brexit debate, whether in Belfast or Dublin, London or Brussels takes no account of these homeless families or of those living in poverty – a hard border or a soft border is of little consequence to the oppressed or the marginalised. The Brexit debate will be decided within the Capitalist/Neo Liberal framework which has no moral compass as its only driving force is to protect capital and those who benefit from it.

But during the Brexit debate in the UK, the narrative was often blatantly racist, fascist and based on the notion of one race or religion being superior to another. The post Brexit debate on this island has also often taken on a sectarian nature or indeed one of narrow nationalism. There is little or no consideration for those that the current political and economic construct has failed miserably – too many are seeking to use the opportunity to further nationalist or sectarian interests, both here and in the UK.

In the absence of a Socialist narrative and debate, the void is filled by rhetoric and division, by manoeuvring and cheap political tricks – all of which progress nothing – just deepen divisions.

Courting sectarianism, naked nationalism or supremacy of any kind is playing with the devil. As we have seen in the United States, Trump’s pandering to the far right and fascists has given them oxygen and the confidence to emerge from the bowels of humanity – what happened in Charlottesville is a direct consequence of this appeasement of racism and white supremacists – we on this island also have had our fair share of Charlottesville’s also fuelled by hatred and prejudice. We must fight fascism wherever we find it, we must fight supremacy and sectarianism wherever we find it – be that in Ireland, the UK, Palestine or the U.S.

A New Ireland is possible, an Ireland of equals, of opportunities for all, of fraternity – a United Socialist Republic – that of Tone and Connolly – in the words of Connolly;

“We are Republicans because we are Socialists”

The Left and other progressive forces in Ireland need to unite around a clear Socialist Republican vision. We need to set out clearly what we are in favour of – just as much as what we are against – we do not have the luxury to dance on the pin heads of ideological differences.

In the UK, Corbyn was able to set out clearly the policy platform for a decent future, for a better society for all UK citizens – it was by no means radical – it spoke about a Universal National Health Service, about nationalising public services, the right to a decent job, a decent home, dignity and respect. We in Ireland on the left have not been good at this – rather we tend divide, splinter and attack each other rather than uniting to convince citizens of what is “possible”.

The mass mobilization in the Republic of communities against water charges and privatisation of water resources is an example of what is possible – yes it was more about water charges – but water is a symbol of all life – the protests were about life, about hope, about a vision, about citizens collectively taking control and proclaiming… that another Ireland is possible.

The Right2Change movement which emerged from the Water movement attempted to bring left progressives to unite around agreed policy platforms – over 100 candidates in the last general election in the Republic supported the Right2Change Policy Platform, of which 33 were elected. There is an untapped hunger for change and justice in Ireland that we need to give expression to and we can only do this through the unity of progressive forces.

The gross and pervasive inequalities that have so profoundly scared our society are as much a result of our inability on the Left to unite and to set out a clear alternative as it is to do with the political hegemony of the Right which ensures that nothing really changes and that the elites and capital are always protected. Socialist dialogue and Socialist Struggle have been weak in Ireland, it was snuffed out in favour of a bourgeois nationalism.

Our task now is to build from the ground up, to educate, to agitate, not to do for those which they can do for themselves – we need to build a movement that is capable and confident and which grows with every victory – that’s why it is vital we complete the victory in the Water Campaign. I believe this is possible, I believe there is a real thirst for change and justice – as Capitalism sinks further into crisis it must be the revolutionary principles of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity which emerges triumphant.

Finally in the words of Wolfe Tone; “We will free ourselves by the aid of that large and respectable class of the community – –the men of no property”

Chairperson Eugene McCartan’s remarks

Comrades,

We gather here to pay homage on this, the 219th anniversary of the death of Theobald Wolfe Tone—the historical founder of Irish republicanism, the person who articulated the necessity for an independent, sovereign Ireland rooted in “the men of no property.”

In October 1791 Tone converted these ideas into practical policy by founding, in conjunction with Thomas Russell, Napper Tandy and others, the Society of United Irishmen. That year he published his Argument on Behalf of the Catholics of Ireland. Aimed principally at the Ulster Dissenters, Tone’s pamphlet called for unity, fraternity, and tolerance, without which the English government would “play upon the terrors of Protestants, the hopes of Catholics and, balancing the one party by the other, plunder and laugh at the defeat of both.”

Though written in 1791, it surely holds true today—how British imperialism continues to use and to sow division to secure its own strategic interests.

Our commemoration today has new elements, which the Forum Steering Committee feel are necessary and appropriate. We hope they reflect what we believe is the breadth of the thinking, experiences

and ideas that shaped not just Wolfe Tone but also the other leading figures of the United Irish movement of 1798.

Some here may wonder why “The International” is to be sung—not a traditional song on such an occasion. But I think it is very fitting. Tone and the other United Irishmen embraced the most radical ideas from the American and French revolutions, drawing upon the most advanced radical ideas at that time, best encapsulated by Thomas Paine in his Rights of Man, to find solutions to our people’s problems.

They were not narrow-minded or insular people but internationalists, in the truest sense: they embraced and were active at that time in solidarity with people’s struggles, fighting colonialism, domination, and exploitation.

For example, Thomas Russell, one of the leading thinkers and strategists of the United Irishmen, was a dedicated and consistent anti-slavery campaigner. He abstained from confectionery products, because they were made with sugar from British slave plantations in the West Indies. He wrote impassioned letters to the Northern Star and Belfast Telegraph, declaring that “on every lump of sugar I see a drop of human blood.” He identified the fact that slavery existed for the sole purpose of “contributing to the luxury and avarice of Europeans,” and he denounced the slave traders for introducing “the vices of Europe—fraud, subtlety, war and desolation—to these once happy countries.”

Today, the militant and gallant Palestinian people call upon us to boycott apartheid Israel. We believe that to support that boycott is in the best traditions of Wolfe Tone and the United Irishmen.

We stand shoulder to shoulder in solidarity with the heroic working people of Venezuela, resisting the attempts by reactionary forces, aided by the United States, to roll back the people’s victories. We stand in solidarity with the small but mighty anti-imperialist country of Cuba, in the best traditions and goals of the United Irishmen and of Wolfe Tone.

It is good today to have as our main speaker John Douglas, general secretary of Mandate, to give the oration. It has been a long time since the labour movement took its rightful place here. Mandate has been central in the mobilising of tens of thousands of working people throughout the country against water charges. It was and is locked in bitter disputes defending low-paid workers employed by the global corporate giant Tesco as well as our home-grown exploiter Dunne’s Stores.

Resisting imperialist domination

There is a triple lock of imperialist domination: British, European, and American. It is these economic and political forces that decide the fate of our people. The interests of giant finance house, bankers, and industrialists and transnational corporations come first, above those of the people. It is they who decide our people’s fate.

The Peadar O’Donnell Forum was established to end that domination. That task can only be realised by the politicisation and mobilisations of the people of no property: the working class.

We must find the ways and the means to bind the wounds of past hurt and divisions experienced by our people. We, as revolutionaries, cannot leave it to others. If we are to be true to the goals and principles of Tone, McCracken, Hope, and Russell, then we have to lead the struggle for unity among our people.

Our starting-point is to demonstrate that the institutions imposed by partition have failed working people. These failed institutions have fostered the division, bigotry and domination that have blighted the lives of thousands of our fellow-citizens, from Antrim to Cork, from Galway to Dublin.

We have all lived the nightmare of the “carnival of reaction” that partition has heaped upon our people. It is the people of no property, the working class, who are the only guarantors of our freedom and independence.

Neither socialism nor social justice are alien concepts, nor foreign imports into the struggle for Irish freedom, but have been central tenets of our people’s long struggle. This is clear from Wolfe Tone’s United Irishmen, the Emmet Rising, the Young Ireland movement, the Fenians, right up to the demands within the 1916 Proclamation and the Republican Congress. What has been central to them all has been the important and central role that the people of no property, the working people, must play in that struggle, and the need to link the struggle for national freedom with social liberation, to show that they cannot be separated. Where they have been separated it has led to failure and defeat. It has led to the reconfiguration of the chain of domination and of those who dominate us.

I would like to finish today’s commemoration with the words of James Connolly and what he had to say about Wolfe Tone in the Workers’ Republic, 13 August 1898:

“His Irish birth did not create his hatred of the British Constitution, but only intensified it. Like Mitchel, fifty years later, he held ideas on political and social order such as would have made him a rebel even had he been an Englishman. In this fact lay his strength and the secret of his enthusiasm.

“We who hold his principles cherish his memory all the more on that account, believing as we do that any movement which would successfully grapple with the problem of national freedom must draw its inspiration, not from the mouldering records of a buried past, but from the glowing hopes of the living present, the vast possibilities of the mighty future.

“When the hour of the social revolution at length strikes and the revolutionary lava now pent up in the Socialist movement finally overflows and submerges the kings and classes who now rule and ruin the world, high up in the topmost niches of the temple a liberated human race will erect to the heroes and martyrs who have watered the tree of liberty with the blood of their body and the sweat of their intellect, side by side with the Washingtons, Kosciuszkos and Tells of other lands, a grateful Irish people will carve the name of our precursor, Theobald Wolfe Tone, the man whose virtues we can only honour by imitation as the Socialist Republic will yet honour his principles by realisation.

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Respect the Sovereignty of Venezuela

Above: Her Excellency Rocio Maneiro speaks in Dublin

Her Excellency Rocio Maneiro, the Venezuelan ambassador to UK and Ireland, delivered a moving address in Connolly Books Dublin on Saturday last to a group of Irish supporters of the progressive South American Bolivarian republic. The diplomat dealt specifically with the threat currently faced by her country as it strives to deliver a more humanitarian system for its people. Her main concern related to the unwelcome and reactionary attempts being made by the United States to influence and bring about regime change in her native land.

The ambassador gave a brief outline of the history of outside intervention in the domestic affairs of many countries in South America over the last two centuries. She specifically highlighted the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 and the 1904 Roosevelt Corollary which the United States has used to give itself a spurious and illegal excuse for intervening in Latin America over those centuries. On 50 different occasions this has involved armed intervention. On more than 50 other occasions, the United States has used local proxies to deliver regime change. Invariably this has led to the immiseration of the native population and the persistence of authoritarian and dictatorial regimes.

Mdm Maneiro informed her audience that the US is attempting a twin approach in an attempt to strangle the progressive and democratic movement in Venezuela. On one hand the North American government is seeking to influence the Organisation of American States to impose economic sanctions on the government in Caracas. On the other hand, Washington is now using its diplomatic muscle to persuade the European Union to also impose economic sanctions on the Bolivarian republic in order to stall the progress made since the election of the late President Hugo Chávez.

Prior to his election, 82% of the people lived in poverty. In the years following the election of Chávez, this statistic changed dramatically and the welfare of the people improved immensely. It is this challenge to neoliberal hegemony that disturbs the forces of reaction and is causing them to attempt the destruction of a progressive development in the Latin American republic. The opposition to the government of Venezuela is endeavouring to sabotage every vehicle of progress by disrupting oil processing facilities and has even went as far as destroying food stores supplying hungry people.

In spite of this, Her Excellency Rocio Maneiro remains confident that the people of Venezuela will succeed in overcoming the present difficulties. As she said, sovereignty rests in the people of Venezuela and this must continue.

Concluding her address, she requested that the Irish people be informed of the truth in relation to her home country and that they be made aware of the real nature of the attack currently been made on working people in her country. She added that it would be of great assistance if progressive people everywhere were to organise and voice support for the democratic government under threat in Venezuela and demand that the Irish government gives it support to the call that the world respects the sovereignty of the Venezuela people and affords them the right to settle their own affairs.

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Peadar O’Donnell Socialist Republican Forum outlining its next step

The Peadar O’Donnell Socialist Republican Forum was established in 2013 to promote the ideas of socialist republicanism (as best expressed by Connolly, Mellows and O’Donnell) in order to create a political and ideological base intended to facilitate the creation of an anti-imperialist movement capable of bringing about real social change in Ireland. Since its foundation the Forum has published a booklet entitled ‘Undoing the Conquest; Renewing the Struggle’ containing the group’s view of the core crucial importance of class, the state, imperialism plus a statement of its principles. As well as the publication it has conducted well-attended meetings in Dublin, Belfast, Derry, Galway, Wexford, Tyrone and Monaghan.

Rationale

Having identified and set out its core principles, the forum is now addressing two further but related issues by elaborating what the forum seeks to achieve.

Firstly, while remaining adamant that it is not a campaigning group, it is nevertheless necessary to emphasise that the forum is designed to contribute to the creation of a broad anti-imperialist, socialist republican movement capable of uniting in struggle around political and economic issues. An essential first step in this process has to be the attainment of a working agreement[i] on a number of key issues and/or principles.

So that the forum can also reach beyond party political activists, it is important that organised discussions consider the concrete conditions of the Irish working class within the context of socialist republicanism. Broadly speaking discussions should fit into three currents; a) A core analysis[ii] b) Examination of current and contemporary issues[iii] c) Guided study of the past (1916 centenary in particular) in order to look forward. To further highlight the forum’s existence and role, members will consider participating in or supporting certain campaigns in a limited capacity. This is not to be confused with becoming a campaign group.

Secondly, while accepting that the forum’s objective is to identify the ideological basis on which an effective anti-imperialist movement can be built, it is therefore planned to develop a complementary series of actions to further this process. An important part of this work would be to develop a series of toolkits or templates that will help activists articulate the context in which developments are taking place in society. This will place single-issue campaign in context, demonstrating how they fit into a framework of class struggle, capitalism and imperialism. Particular attention will be devoted to exploring the dynamics of current political structures such as the inherent failings endemic within representative democracy and the need for popular participation and ownership of the political process.

Suggested actions to be undertaken

Expansion of current steering committee A review of available assets & potential allies and alliances Planning day with extended panel to review position and set programme of work. Building of social media & internet radio facility Summer/Winter schools and/or conferences Organisation of local forum meetings

Participants aimed for

With the national and social questions remaining unresolved, there is a myriad of organisations (socialist, republican, socialist republican and communist) ostensibly committed to their ‘democratic’ resolution. The potential for engagement with this constituency requires careful exploration so that the best may be encouraged to take part and destructive elements kept at a distance. A second and crucially important constituency that shall be invited to participate is non-party activists among that section of society that has been recently politicised as result of various protests against austerity. The forum welcomes opportunities to exchange its assessment with a range of activists but adheres at all times to a Marxist /socialist republican analysis.

Finally, the forum takes an all-Ireland approach when dealing with issues except for those that are obviously local.

[i] Working agreement. This is to afford a measure of flexibility but not providing an option for reneging on core principles.

[ii] These are; class, state, imperialism

[iii] For example; housing, water-tax, TTIP etc

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The Peadar O’Donnell Socialist Republican Forum held an event in the Ireland on Thursday 13 November 2014 to reflect on the 80th anniversary of the launch of the Republican congress. Historian and academic Mary Cullen chaired the event and introduced two papers delivered by Brian Hanley and Tommy McKearney.

Introduction by Mary Cullen

History aims to help us understand an event, and the aims and thinking of those involved, in the context of their time; this then helps us to understand how we have got to where we are today and to examine our own aims and thinking.

On the eightieth anniversary of the Republican Congress of 1934 it is appropriate that the Peadar O’Donnell Socialist Republican Forum organise a meeting to consider the Congress and its relevance for today. Forum and Congress share a common interest in the aim to combine socialism and republicanism, and Peadar O’Donnell was centrally involved in the Congress.

One question that arises is how did participants in the Republican Congress aim to achieve a socialist republic? What different views were held?

Should Congress declare its objective to be a workers’ republic and establish a political party to work for it? Or should it be a rallying centre for a mass struggle of anti-imperialists and anti-fascists of all parties and none, all committed to achieving the republic behind a working class leadership. Peadar O’Donnell wanted to involve small farmers, industrial workers, fishermen, unemployed. He also supported gender equality. He believed the nature of the struggle would determine the nature of the republic achieved. It would in practice be a workers’ and small farmers’ republic because the organs of the struggle would be the organs of government.

And how do we today plan to move from the structures of society we live in today to a socialist republic? Can we learn anything from the Congress’s agreements and disagreements? A related question is how did the participants in the Congress understand republicanism? And how do we understand it today? Did they, and do we, see a republic as meaning simply a fully independent state, free from outside control?

In Ireland’s history it is understandable that for most people, then and now, the idea of a completely independent state became and remains the essential meaning of a republic. But the original meaning of a republic, the res publica, the public thing, is richer and more multi-faceted; it is the concept of a state created and maintained by its citizens, each individually free from domination, co-operating to keep the state free from outside aggression and internal corruption, prepared to put the common good before individual interest, and by this engagement in this active citizenship developing their individual human potential. Reclaiming the full meaning of republican citizenship has a lot to offer in its interaction with socialism and democracy; it also resonates with Peadar O’Donnell’s ideas. Both see the building of a republic as depending on a bottom-up movement, broad-based and inclusive, and not as something handed down from above by an elite.

We have two speakers to address the subject of the Republican Congress and its relevance for today.

Brian Hanley, historian, author of A Documentary History of the IRA 1916-2005, and, with Scott Millar, The Lost Revolution: the story of the IRA and the Workers Party

Tommy McKearney, former hunger striker, member of the Peadar O’Donnell Socialist Republican Forum, author of The Provisional IRA: from insurrection to parliament; and organiser with the Independent Workers Union.



Republican Congress 80th anniversary

Dr Brian Hanley delivered the following address to the Peadar O’Donnell Socialist Republican Forum in the Ireland Institute on Thursday 13 November 2014

Firstly I would like to thank the Peadar O’Donnell socialist republican forum for the invitation to speak here tonight. When addressing this topic there are two things a historian could do. One would be to eulogize the Republican Congress and that would be both an easy option and also an appealing one, given the many admirable things about Congress. The other would be to deconstruct Congress and its ideas and essentially come to the conclusion that it was not very significant in real terms. That is what some academic critics of Congress have done and it too would be relatively easy. I was reminded recently of the very funny, but very cynical, Brendán Ó hEithir’s assertion that they story of the Republican Congress shows how the Irish left can turn a footnote of history into a chapter. After all, the organisation split after five months, leaving two rival Irish Citizen Army’s denouncing each other, a substantial section of Congress activists joining the Labour party and others simply dropping out of political activity. Congress was effectively defunct by mid-1936 after just a year and a half.[1]

But I don’t want to do either of those things. I believe Congress deserves respect and attention because of the seriousness of those involved and the breath of its agitation despite its short existence. When you read the Republican Congress paper, (and it was an excellent paper)[2], you see reports about the organization of tenant leagues in Dublin’s north and south inner-city, and in newer areas such as Cabra; activists preventing evictions by slum landlords, agitation among small farmers in Achill, articles publicizing the conditions of Irish migrant labour to Scotland; support for miners in Castlecomer and involvement in strikes at the Somax shirt factory in Dublin and the De Selby quarries in Bray. And of course Congress activists put opposing the Blueshirts and fascism as a central part of their political activity. This also involved international solidarity with the victims of fascism. This was not always easy or popular in 1930’s Ireland. When Italy invaded Abyssinia for example, many Irish nationalists sided with Italy, for various reasons. Congress responded by explaining the reasons ‘why Ireland must support Abyssinia’ and explaining why despite ‘much confused thinking’ by some republicans, largely because ‘because British imperialism opposes Italy’ in fact the struggle by Abyssinia against Mussolini was the ‘spearhead of anti-Imperialist struggle today.’ Of course this solidarity, and on the part of several Congress members, physical defence and indeed giving their lives, was again apparent in 1936 when the Spanish Republic was attacked. Again a very unpopular cause in the Ireland of the day. Similarly in July 1935, when in response to anti-Catholic violence in Belfast, there was a wave of anti-Protestant attacks in the Free State, Congress denounced what it called the ‘pogroms (that) had crossed the border’ and demanded that the ‘victimisation of Protestant workers (and) cowardly attacks on Protestant property’ should be ‘immediately stopped and the ringleaders brought to book.’ And very relevant today I think, when we are barraged with pro-war nostalgia about 1914-18, was the organization of the alternative Armistice Day commemorations in November 1934 and 1935. Under slogans such as ‘Honour the Dead by Fighting for the Living’ ‘We want war- on the slums’ and ‘Freedom for this small nation’, war veterans, republicans and socialists presented an alternative to the British Legion’s commemorations and the increasingly sterile IRA disruption of them. Frank Ryan, a veteran of the IRA’s campaigns to disrupt Poppy Day, described November 1934 as the ‘proudest of all Armistice Days for me.’ Worth noting as we face more glorification of World War One over the next few years.

It is also important to remember that Congress worked in a period of intense anti-communist hysteria and clerical hostility. Congress activist Frank Edwards lost his job because of this. Violence and intimidation were also common. From the Animal Gangs in 1934 to attacks on the left at the Easter 1936 parade in Dublin, followed by the wrecking of the Congress offices by mobs, Congress activists faced direct threats to their personal safety. And last but not least; the most iconic image of Congress is the photograph of the Shankill Road contingent at Bodenstown in 1934. The numbers of Belfast Protestants who attended are occasionally exaggerated and the incidents at Bodenstown misunderstood or misrepresented, but it was still significant that Congress could attract support from Protestant socialists, which of course also reflected radicalization after the Outdoor Relief riots of 1932 and realignments within Belfast labour politics.

It would also be wrong not to mention the record of individuals such as Peadar O’Donnell, George Gilmore (and indeed his brothers Harry and Charlie), Frank Ryan, Mick Price, Roddy and Nora Connolly, Cora Hughes, Kit Conway, Charlie Donnelly and many more. They were outstanding activists. And Congress had potential. The vote on whether or not to commit the IRA to the Congress appeal was very close at 1934 convention. A significant number of IRA officers, including O/C’s in Offaly, Westmeath, Galway, Mayo and senior figures in Cumann na mBan, Sighle Humphries and Eithne Coyle, along with 16 trade councils or union branches, the Kerry-based Republican Labour party, the Northern Ireland Socialist Party (formerly the Northern section of the Independent Labour Party) and the Irish Citizen Army, (which gained a new lease of life with Congress) endorsed the initial Athlone manifesto. Though only in existence for a couple of months Congress candidates contested local elections in June 1934, with two elected, in North Westmeath and Dundalk. It is always worth looking at what your enemies in the State think. In September 1934 a Garda Chief Superintendent reported (just after Congress split as it happens) that ‘it is thought that the orthodox IRA will never be a serious menace to the Government as at present constituted. It is thought that the Republican Congress Group, under Peadar O’Donnell, which endeavours to get contr