Éirígí Committed To A New Year Of Struggle In 2009
As 2009 dawns, Éirígí would like to take the opportunity to thank all of its members and supporters for their contribution to the struggle for freedom and justice over the last 12 months.
Éirígí also wishes to take the occasion of the new year to re-state its commitment to achieving an end to the British occupation of Ireland and to the establishment of a new all-Ireland Republic, based upon the socialist principles of social and economic equality and human solidarity.
Throughout 2008, Éirígí brought a socialist republican analysis to a wide range of national and socio-economic issues. In contributing to the defeat of the Lisbon Treaty and in challenging the normalisation of Britain’s occupation, in particular, Éirígí demonstrated how relatively small numbers of people can, with limited resources, influence the wider political landscape. All of this was only made possible by the commitment of Éirígí’s activists, who have given so much of their time, energy and resources.
2008 will be remembered as the year that global capitalism suffered its greatest crises in decades – perhaps ever. Indeed, a complete collapse of the capitalist system was only narrowly avoided by the intervention of government’s across the world, using taxpayers’ money to rescue countless private banks and financial institutions.
In Ireland, both the Twenty Six County government and the occupying British authorities did not hesitate in using public wealth to protect the interests of the wealthy. As ever, within the capitalist system, it will be the poorest and the most vulnerable that will pay for the lifestyles of the wealthiest and most privileged.
As capitalism enters its latest cyclical downturn, the governments in both parts of Ireland have already started to target the most basic of public services as they struggle to make capitalism ‘work’. Éirígí will, over the coming year, campaign tirelessly to protect public services and to challenge an overall system which both encourages social cannibalism and perpetuates social division.
In the Twenty Six Counties, the political establishment have made a mockery of the very concept of democracy by deciding to hold a second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. In June 2008, the people of the Twenty Six Counties saw through the lies of the main political parties, corporate media and business groups by rejecting the re-packaged European Union Constitution.
In 2009, Éirígí will be campaigning for a second rejection of the Lisbon Treaty, believing that an alternative European socio-economic model is not only necessary, but possible.
Capitalism in its most base form continued in 2008 to cut a swathe of human misery and suffering across Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and other countries as the imperial powers used violence to achieve objectives that could not easily be attained by economic or political means.
While, in Ireland, the British occupation currently deploys less violent means the underlying cause of conflict in Ireland – the British occupation – remains.
In 2008, Éirígí succeeded in challenging the normalisation of that occupation on a number of fronts, most notably in organising opposition to the triumphalist British military parade in Belfast in early November. In the coming year, Éirígí will continue to actively challenge the British occupation wherever the opportunity to do so arises.
Across Europe and beyond ever greater numbers of people are coming to recognise that neo-liberal capitalism and outdated imperialism are no longer sustainable from an economic, environmental or humanitarian point of view. The challenge facing progressives is to fully expose the true nature of capitalism while simultaneously building support for the viable, sustainable and just alternative that is socialism.
Éirígí remains committed to playing its part in a global movement for an alternative world order and encourages those who want to see a better world to become politically active. Through joining or supporting radical political parties, through becoming active in the organised labour movement or within their local communities every citizen can play a role in bringing the revolutionary change that our world so badly needs.