Éirígí For A New Republic 2021 New Year Statement
As we enter 2021, Éirígí For A New Republic offers its collective gratitude to the hundreds of thousands of Irish frontline workers who have stepped up the challenges posed by Covid-19. From Ballymena to Bantry and from An Clochan Liath to Rosslare, Irish healthcare and other frontline workers have met the challenges posed by Covid-19 with quiet courage and stoic determination.
The Covid-19 crisis has once again exposed the critical role that low-paid workers play in the functioning of our society. Without them the supply chains that deliver food, drinks, medications, clothing and other essential items simply could not function.
To our healthcare workers and to our farm labourers, factory workers, couriers, retail staff, cleaners, public transport workers and many other frontline workers, Éirígí offers not only words of empty platitudes but deep, meaningful political solidarity.
The New Republic that Éirígí is building toward would give these citizens secure employment, housing, healthcare, education and other essential public services befitting of the important work that they do on a daily basis.
The heroic response of the Irish Nation at an individual and community level to the Covid-19 crisis stands in sharp contrast to the chaotic, contradictory, incompetent and opportunistic response of the Leinster House and Stormont regimes.
Their failure to introduce strong counter-measures, including all-Ireland border controls, in early March facilitated the silent spread of the virus, resulting in the first, and subsequent waves, of disease that caused widespread avoidable illness and death across Ireland.
This critical failure to act in a timely manner was motivated by a deep ideological impetus to protect the interests of the private economy. Ironically this desire to protect private wealth resulted in the eventual implementation of counter measures which were more economically damaging than the early intervention and border controls that Éirígí has been advocating for since the onset of the crisis.
Today, more than ten months after the first case of Covid-19 in Ireland, the regimes in Stormont and Leinster House have still failed to deliver a coordinated all-Ireland strategy to combat Covid-19. Instead they continue to pursue individual containment strategies which are doomed to failure, as evidenced by the current surge of the virus across Ireland.
Garden of Remembrance, Dublin, January 2020
The emergence of the Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, Green Party coalition government at the height of the first wave of Covid-19 represented a master political stroke of political opportunism in a state that has been defined by stroke politics since its foundation. The clear mood of change which was expressed in February’s general election was entirely ignored in a blatant power grab by these three parties.
The political opportunism of Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and the Green Party was only outdone by the Irish far-Right which has attempted to use the Covid-19 crisis for their own selfish political ends. Beyond legitimate criticism of the establishment’s handling of the crisis, the far-Right have actively sought to undermine basic public health measures that are designed to protect the health and lives of our more vulnerable citizens.
The actions of the Irish far-Right have directly contributed to the current surge in Covid-19 cases - a surge which will inevitably lead to the deaths of older citizens and other citizens in high risk groups. The actions of these anti-patriots during the current national crisis will be judged very poorly by future generations.
In recognising the reality of Covid-19 and its all-encompassing impact on 2020, Éirígí also recognises that the pandemic will pass and the many challenges that faced Irish society before and during the pandemic remain unresolved.
Housing Protest, O’Connell Bridge, Dublin, August 2020
Despite the difficulties caused by Covid-19, our activists, many of whom are also frontline workers, continued with their political and community work throughout the year. On key campaign issues including public housing, worker’s rights, the Irish language, healthcare, international solidarity and control of Ireland’s natural resources our activists continued to build support for radical alternatives to the failures of the status quo.
We take this opportunity to recognise and commend our party members and supporters for their ongoing contribution to the struggle for progressive change and a new Thirty-Two County Irish Republic.
The dawning of 2021 marks a new start for the British state as it exits the European Union. In 2016, Éirígí encouraged voters in the Six Counties to vote ‘Leave’ in the belief that Brexit would stretch the inherent contradictions within the British state to beyond breaking point.
Four years later we believe that analysis to be vindicated. Despite the protestations of some unionists the Six Counties now exists in a separate geographic, political and economic framework to the British state. In Scotland too, support for a break from England is growing - support which Westminster cannot suppress indefinitely.
2021 marks the centenary of the 1921 Treaty, a document which confirmed the partition of Ireland and created the conditions for counter-revolution forces to suppress the revolutionary republican movement.
In the place of an all-Ireland Republic, the Treaty created two conservative, sectarian, capitalist states - two states which have repeatedly failed to release the full potential of the Nation or to deliver for the majority of their respective populations.
Éirígí has previously stated that we believe that the tide of history is now flowing towards a correction of the great wrong that was partition and the reunification of Ireland into a single state to mirror the existing single Nation.
Garvaghy Road, Portadown, September 2020
Demographic, economic and political changes have undermined the long-term viability of the Six County state to the point that constitutional change is inevitable in the coming years.
Éirígí enters 2021 fully committed to not only building support for re-unification but also in shaping the Ireland that will emerge when Britain withdraws its illegal claim of jurisdiction over the Six Counties.
With our Democratic Progamme, Éirígí has laid out our vision for what a new all-Ireland Republic should like - for a new Republic that delivers for all of its’ citizens regardless of class, religion, gender, sexual preference, skin colour or any of the other false divisions that have been used by the ruling class to divide the working class for centuries.
Finally we take the opportunity of the New Year to invite you to join us - to become an agent for change in your community and part of a national movement that has been at the forefront of progressive political activism in Ireland for the last fifteen years. Together we can build the New Republic.