32CSM Address
Launch Of
Irish Republican Forum For Unity
Derry 6/11/08
The GFA-10 Years On
Column inches, indeed yards in the establishment compliant media, are full of criticism at the failure of Stormont
Some have alluded to it being slower than the speed of the Darwinian evolution.
To really understand were we are at 10 years on, it is important to examine how this failure was invented and what was happening in the lead up to it.
For some years prior to 1998 contacts and secret talks were ongoing with the British Government.
A consensus was reached without any debate on an agreed agenda, an agenda which was controlled by the British Government in that their illegal constitutional position towards Ireland would not be changed.
Dublin facilitated this view as did the Stormont parties.
When the British side secured this agreement they were ready to clinch a deal in their own favour.
The rest became semantics, crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s but not altering the direction the British Government were headed.
When the final draft was agreed Tony Blair laughed the whole way home at how easy it was to outmaneuver the Irish.
All of this took place without debate or input from grassroots republicans.
The flaw in the negotiations was that everything was not on the table. The core cause of the conflict was not on the table. The price for entry into negotiations was the acceptance of a pre determined outcome based on the legitimacy of partition.
What followed will go down in history as the greatest somersault of all by republican leaders.
The British believed they at last had conquered the Fenian rebellion.
10 years on the question remains what has changed?
From a social and economic angle, house prices went through the roof. Public sector houses were not being built forcing people into high mortgages which they could barely afford.
Health care is being reduced with the closure of acute hospitals and reduced services in large geographic spreads.
The education debacle rolls on with nothing in place to replace the 11-plus.
But these are only symptoms of the more serious situation.
These symptoms reflect the inability of those at Stormont to have any vision and that in reality they are only administrators for the policies of the foreign government.
Similar to the old Stormont we now witness a new gerrymander of local government boundaries with peripheral areas being isolated in the new super councils.
This gerrymander has been agreed by the number crunchers in both the DUP and PSF so they will retain in the short term at least the undemocratic status which they created.
All of this has been done in the past when as I have said earlier, they are attempting to harmonise Partition with British Rule in Ireland.
Following the St, Andrews Agreement it is clear what we are now witnessing is an attempt to dress up British Rule as normal.
The British Army parade in Belfast last Sunday demonstrates the British Government are re- asserting their rule with their army on parade and with it the implicit threat to the Irish people, do not challenge us because this will be your answer.
Gordon Brown contributed to the greatest insult to the Irish people when he called for full support for the occupying army from all communities.
The issue of British policing in Ireland continues with the PSNI being the exact same police force as the RUC, both illegall, and I don’t have to tell anyone in this room the murderous and callous campaign of that force against the nationalist population with British laws designed to arrest and find guilty anyone they wanted.
Today we have nationalists and republican being monitored more than ever before because now we have the poacher turned gamekeeper directly involved in intelligence gathering and as a cover they are asking the nationalist people to report republican activity to the discredited PSNI.
Has anything changed for the nationalist/republican people, I’m afraid I have to say nothing has changed.
The republican position was seriously wounded with the GFA.
Thankfully the republican analysis has stood the test of time and tonight bears testimony to that.
The debate and discussion that were denied are now taking place and the launch of the Republican Forum for Unity sets republicans in the correct direction with diverse republican views being discussed and working together in areas of agreement to promote and develop the republican challenge as set out in the Proclamation of 1916.
On behalf of the 32CSM I would like to briefly outline where we feel the Republican Unity Forum can assist in pursuing republican goals. For us the Forum is a mechanism to political action. It is not a talking shop.
It is a body of persons listening and collating republican and socialist viewpoints with the intention of translating those views into agreed political action. We would like to put forward some examples of where this approach could have assisted republicans and where it can assist us in the future.
We can all remember the recent policing debate and the subsequent elections which were de facto seen as a referendum on that issue. This should have been our hour. This debate was our natural territory because it went to the very heart of our struggle.
But in the ensuing election republicanism was fragmented. It presented a poor front to our people who were looking for real alternatives and did not receive any. With the exception of Peggy O’Hara in Derry, were a good degree of republican cooperation took place, the election was a shambles for republicans.
We can cite excuses until the cows come home but can anybody here today with hand on heart say that we couldn’t have done better if we sat down in a mature fashion and approached that election with a worked out electoral strategy? This is where the 32CSM sees the function of the Unity Forum.
Likewise in the 26 Counties the recent Lisbon Referendum presented further opportunities for the republican socialist viewpoint to be aired. And even though that Treaty failed, and hearty congratulations to all involved, our republican socialist viewpoint is not credited with any degree of that success.
And again we put the question; could an agreed republican approach have secured a greater recognition for republican socialist involvement in the treaty’s defeat? We all opposed it. What was so ideologically prohibitive that prevented likeminded people sitting down and pooling limited resources in securing a common end? Again this is where we see the function of the Unity Forum.
Because we are in a struggle other issues and events will present themselves. But rather than being caught in a never-ending cycle of reacting to the politics of others we now have an opportunity to set the agenda.
We do this firstly by being ourselves. And as ourselves we bring forward our political programme to others in the hope that their political programmes yield common ground with ours and within the Republican Forum for Unity we can coordinate all our efforts in a more effective way. We are not advocating that people and organisations wait for the Forum to lead the way but that all of us can bring our ideas to it so that the Forum can maximise their effectiveness.
Ten years on from the Good Friday Agreement is a sobering experience for republicans. The Good Friday Agreement will not remove the British from our country. The politics it has created will not do it either. We need to abstain from that but we cannot abstain from our responsibility to present our people with a viable alternative that is not solely predicated on pointing the finger at the failure of others.
The GFA has failed. The 32CSM has no intention in wasting any more time restating this. With the assistance of the Unity Forum helping us to interact with others we are going to try and build a political alternative to Partition itself. We are not hung up on the past. We are not hung up on former comrades. We are not hung up on holy grails. We are content with the legitimacy of our position and see no reason to constantly dwell on it.
The 32CSM has made a formal submission to the Republican Forum For Unity for consideration by its other members. Our document Dismantling Partition sets out a strategic programme of interim goals that republicanism can work toward between now and 2016. We set out the type of campaigns which we can involve ourselves in to help secure these interim goals. We have formatted a plan of action which gives purpose and focus to the republican base. We want the Forum to consider these proposals to see which aspects of them can be married to the proposals of others so that an agreed campaign of action can be decided upon. We are drafting our own campaigns on issues we know we will be facing in the future and likewise we will be submitting these to the Forum, not for approval, but for consideration in conjunction with the campaigns planned by other members.
This is how we see ourselves acting in the ten years which are ahead of us. This is how we see the Republican Forum for Unity assisting all republicans in facing into those ten years. I am heartened with the focus on republicans at this time and the negative propaganda and lies emanating from the establishment parties shows were the real challenge to British Rule in Ireland lies.
Without question the previous decade belongs to those wedded to the failure of the Good Friday Agreement. Let’s ensure the decade to come belongs to a unified republican base.
Go Raibh maith agat