Irish Republican Socialist Committees of North America, Easter Statement 2012
On the 96th anniversary of the Easter Rising, the Irish Republican Socialist Committees of North America send solidarity greetings to our comrades and fellow members of the Irish Republican Socialist Movement in the Irish Republican Socialist Party, Irish National Liberation Army, Republican Socialist Youth Movement, and Teach na Failte, along with all republican socialist prisoners of war presently in Irish and British prisons.
On this day above all, we proudly remember all those who gave their lives for an Irish Workers’ Republic. Just as we salute the example of James Connolly and his brave comrades in the Irish Citizen Army who fought for national and class liberation in 1916, we also remember those comrades in the IRSP and INLA who died so that the working class party of Connolly and Seamus Costello could continue to exist and continue the struggle for socialism. The political independence of the working class is essential in the struggle to build socialism.
It is therefore fitting that we also take the occasion of Easter 2012 to reaffirm our unwavering support for the leadership and program of the IRSP. Our commitment to the struggle for national and working class liberation in Ireland, and working class liberation worldwide, is unbroken.
We are proud to be the North American section of the IRSM, building solidarity as well as giving practical aid and support to the best of our ability. We stand firm in the Republican Socialist tradition begun by Connolly and continued today by the IRSP, a party whose political analysis and leadership has never been as sorely needed as now. The IRSP is the only organization within Irish anti-imperialism that can both understand the line of march and lead by example.
Recent events have tragically confirmed Connolly’s analyses. The new fiscal treaty which has been prepared for Ireland will further severely limit the nation’s sovereignty. It will ensure that the downward spiral in living standards continues without relent. In the occupied six counties, the bosses assault on working people has gone so far that the unemployed will now be denied their own homes and forced to live in overcrowded accommodations. Those bourgeois “republicans” who hijacked the anti-imperialist struggle insisted that socialism had to wait. Reality has demonstrated again and again that the struggle for independence cannot be divorced from the class struggle without disastrous results.
Our struggle is not over. And our comrades who fought, struggled, starved, and died for a free Ireland would accept nothing less than a united and socialist Irish Republic in which the means of production, exchange, and distribution are under the control of the working class and its allies; a society that puts conscious human will in the driver’s seat, above the irrational chaos of the markets; and a nation that cherishes all the children of the nation equally.
In the immortal words of James Connolly, “Our demands most modest are, we only want the earth.”
