Éirígí, Eleven Months On' - Fourthwrite Article By Brian Leeson
Éirígí – One Year On – Almost!
Éirígí, What is it? Where did it come from? What does it do? These questions, and more like them, have become familiar to those of us in Éirígí over the last ten months. In answering them it is probably best to start, like any good story, at the beginning.
It was in the run up to the ninetieth anniversary of the 1916 Rising that a small group of Dublin-based republican activists came together to discuss how we, as non-aligned individuals, could best continue to contribute to the struggle for freedom and justice in Ireland. Of the half-dozen of us that took part in those initial discussions almost all of us had previously been members of Sinn Féin. Like many, before and since, each of us had recognised that the gap between our personal political analysis and that of the collective Sinn Féin leadership’s had become untenable.
Early in our discussions we realised that if we as individuals were to work successfully as a group, and avoid the mistakes of history, it would have to be on the basis of some form of shared ideological platform. In this we adopted a realistic approach, neither willing to accept the lowest common denominator nor striving for absolute agreement on all issues. As many of us had been comrades for a number of years it didn’t take long to identify the issues that were of most importance to us a group, namely the ongoing British occupation of six Irish counties and the exploitative socio-economic system in operation on both sides of the border.
In some ways that was the easy part. We had agreement on what issues were of importance to us and we had agreement that if we were to take collective action as a group our impact would be far greater then the sum of our individual parts. The next question we faced, that of what any individual, or a small group of individuals, can do to cause progressive change within society is a question without a definitive or absolute answer.
What we did know was that organised political groups can highlight injustices that might never otherwise enter the public consciousness and that such groups can also offer solutions and alternatives to the status quo around which popular support can rally.
We also knew that there are many issues that those who support the status quo in Ireland, in both the national and the socio-economic sense, would rather were not highlighted.
It was in this context that we felt our collective time and energy would be best used, as part of a socialist republican group with a strong campaigning edge, on the basis that campaigns offered the best potential to educate and radicalise significant numbers of people across Ireland.
Our website went live on Easter Sunday with our first campaign following within the month. “Reclaim the Republic” which was partially commemorative and partially contemporary saw us distribute 60,000 full colour, poster-size copies of the 1916 Proclamation, on a not for profit basis to homes across the city. The attached leaflet asked how the Ireland of today measured up to the Republic envisioned by those who penned the Proclamation and encouraged people to become politically active; to “Reclaim the Republic”. This campaign was followed by two more campaigns which are ongoing. One is focused on ensuring that the natural resources of Ireland are used to the benefit of the people of Ireland and the other on opposing Imperialism, in all its forms, in Ireland.
The positive response that we have encountered to these campaigns and the socialist republican politics they represent has convinced us that the decision we took last April in establishing Éirígí was the correct one. This is perhaps best demonstrated by the fact that the initial half dozen members have now been joined by dozens more from across the country. We hope that this expansion in both support and activism will continue apace in 2007. More information about Éirígí, our view of the world and the campaigns we are running is available on our website www.eirigi.org