IRSCNA: IRSM's 35 Years of Struggle -- Stormont Watch

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Date Posted: Mon, Dec 07 2009, 23:23:54 PST
Author: Danielle Ni Dhighe
Subject: IRSCNA: IRSM's 35 Years of Struggle

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

8 December 2009
Irish Republican Socialist Committees of North America

IRSM's 35 Years of Struggle

The Irish Republican Socialist Committees of North America are proud
to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the founding of the Irish
Republican Socialist Movement. As the North American section of the
IRSM, we are proud to carry the banner of republican socialism
alongside our comrades in the Irish Republican Socialist Party, Irish
National Liberation Army, Republican Socialist Youth Movement, and
Teach na Failte, as well as all republican socialist prisoners of war.

For three and a half decades, the IRSM, in particular the IRSP and
the INLA, has been on the front lines of the struggle for national
liberation and socialist revolution in Ireland, leading the way by
forging the national struggle and the class struggle into one.

The IRSM's story began with the Official Republican Movement
(Official Sinn Fein and the Official Irish Republican Army), and that
movement's slide toward reformism in the early 1970s. Principled
members like OSF vice-president and OIRA staff officer Seamus
Costello who opposed that slide were forced out of the ORM, resulting
in former members of the ORM, independent socialists like Bernadette
Devlin McAliskey, and trade unionists coming together on 8 December
1974 to form the IRSP with the stated goal of ending imperialist rule
in Ireland and establishing a 32-county democratic socialist republic
with the working class in control of the means of production,
distribution, and exchange. The INLA was formed at a secret meeting
later the same day as a vehicle for achieving those goals through
armed struggle.

Although the young movement quickly came under attack from the OIRA
and Costello was lost to an OIRA assassin's bullet in 1977, the IRSM
survived and continued its fight, with leaders like Miriam Daly and
Ronnie Bunting there to keep it going, until they too were
assassinated. During the hunger strike of 1981, INLA volunteers
Patsy O'Hara, Kevin Lynch, and Michael Devine gave their lives in the
ultimately successful pursuit of political rights for all republican
prisoners. In later years, leaders like John O'Reilly, Thomas Power,
and Gino Gallagher lost their lives at the hands of
counter-revolutionaries.

But no matter what our enemies did, no matter how they attacked us,
nothing could extinguish the flames of republican socialism, and like
the mythical phoenix, the IRSM always arose from every attack to
carry on the struggle for national and class liberation.

There were successes along the way, too. For the IRSP, it became the
first political party in Ireland to support the legalization of
abortion and equal rights for gays and lesbians in 1975, it won two
seats on the Belfast City Council in 1981 and a seat on the Shannon
Town Commission the next year, and in 1984 intense ideological debate
led to a declaration that the party stood in the tradition of Karl
Marx, Friedrich Engels, V.I. Lenin, and James Connolly. In 2005, a
youth wing called the Republican Socialist Youth Movement was formed,
and with the support of the IRSP and the IRSCNA, the RSYM continues
to grow in all four provinces and represents the political future of
the IRSM.

For the INLA, there was the assassination of British Member of
Parliament (and close advisor to Margaret Thatcher) Airey Neave in
1979 within the supposedly impregnable Houses of Parliament,
participation in the 1980 and 1981 hunger strikes, the bombing of the
Mount Gabriel radar station in 1982, numerous successful attacks on
British occupation forces and their loyalist allies, and the
execution of loyalist death squad leader Billy Wright within the
walls of Long Kesh Prison in 1997.

The INLA declared a ceasefire on 22 August 1998, and on 11 October
2009 called an end to its armed campaign, recognizing that the
objective conditions for armed struggle no longer existed and
declaring that "the objective of a 32-county socialist republic will
be best achieved through exclusively peaceful political struggle."

As Mao Zedong once pointed out, "politics is war without bloodshed,"
and so setting aside the tactic of armed struggle based on a sound
analysis of current conditions in no way means that the war for
national and class liberation is over. It merely will take a
different form, with the IRSP carrying the struggle forward through
organizing, agitating, and educating the working class.

The IRSM continues to believe that there is no parliamentary road to
socialism, because socialism cannot be forged by seizing the
bourgeois state apparatus; nor is there a guerilla road to socialism,
because a social revolution requires the active participation of the
masses; and therefore a socialist republic can only be established
through the mass revolutionary action of the working class in the
political, economic, and social spheres.

In the words of revolutionary Assata Shakur (a former member of the
Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army), "No movement can
survive unless it is constantly growing and changing with the times.
If it isn't growing, it's stagnant, and without the support of the
people, no movement for liberation can exist, no matter how correct
its analysis of the situation is. That's why political work and
organizing are so important. Unless you are addressing the issues
people are concerned about and contributing positive direction,
they'll never support you." This is what the IRSM has sought to do
by adapting its tactics to the objective conditions currently
existing in Ireland.

We in the IRSCNA are proud to be part of the IRSM, and we again
declare our support for the leadership and direction of the IRSP, and
our only allegiance is to the working class.

The Irish Republican Socialist Movement has survived 35 years of
intense political and military struggle, and it will continue to
exist and to struggle until Ireland is not only free of imperialist
occupation, but free of capitalist rule as well.

Onward to the Socialist Republic!

# # #

Irish Republican Socialist Committees of North America
PO Box 901479
Kansas City MO 64190-1479
USA
irscna@irsm.org
http://www.irscna.org/
http://www.irsm.org/irsm.html

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