The Fight Against Racism And Sectarianism Is One Fight
The photographs below were take at two civil rights marches that were separated by 6,500 kilometres and four years. The top photo was taken in Selma in the USA in 1965. The bottom one in Newry in Ireland in 1969.
The civil rights movement in the US emerged from centuries of mistreatment of the black population by a system which used skin colour to divide the working class.
The civil rights movement in Ireland emerged from centuries of mistreatment of the catholic population by a system which used religion to divide the working class.
The organisers of the Irish civil rights movement of the late 1960s were inspired by the US civil rights campaign, adopting many of the same slogans, tactics and methods of organisation. They rightly understood that the fight against racism and sectarianism is one and the same fight.
In both cases the state response to peaceful protest was vicious, sustained violence. In Ireland the suppression of a peaceful civil rights campaign led to a decades long armed insurrection against British rule.
Today, Ireland's far-right are highlighting how much Irish people suffered under British rule, in a bizarre attempt to undermine the level of suffering experienced by Africans and African Americans historically and today.
Of course this is an utterly transparent and false narrative. The theft of land, enforced transportation, enslavement and exploitation are equally wrong, regardless of the religion or the religion or skin colour of the perpetrator or the victim.
The horrors that were inflicted on the Irish people and the people of Africa do not exist in competition to each other, but serve as two complimentary examples of horror perpetrated by the joint system of colonialism and capitalism.
The fight against racism, sectarianism and all of the other false divisions that flow from colonialism and capitalist exploitation knows no borders.
Inspired by more than two centuries of Irish republicanism, Éirígí has rejected and worked against racism and sectarianism in all of its forms since our foundation in 2006.
We seek to build a new all-Ireland republic, based on the foundation stone of equality for all - a New Republic that will treat all citizens as equal regardless of their class, religion, skin colour, gender, sexual preference, family connections or wealth. Join us at https://eirigi.org/join