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Smashing Stormont?
 national |
rights, freedoms and repression |
opinion/analysis
 Tuesday September 07, 2010 10:07 by Ardoyne Republican - Republican Network for Unity (RNU)
In recent weeks, there have been a host of news reports, columns and internet blogs seeking answers to the growth of dissenting Republicanism. Much of which has focused on the morality surrounding armed actions.However, what many have failed to grasp has been the shift in ideological terms between mainstream and dissenting republicans. A much better description would be contemporary and socialist republicans.
 In recent weeks, there have been a host of news reports, columns and internet blogs seeking answers to the growth of dissenting Republicanism. Much of which has focused on the morality surrounding armed actions.However, what many have failed to grasp has been the shift in ideological terms between mainstream and dissenting republicans. A much better description would be contemporary and socialist republicans.
Throughout the past two centuries, the Republican Movement has been defined by its Nationalist and Socialist political ideology. While the military and political sides often worked in tandem with one another to secure a British withdrawal from Ireland. At various stages in its history, the Movement spilt into separate camps due to the pertinent social and political conditions at the time.
Consequently, it should be of little surprise that crucial changes to Sinn Féin policies enabled the Party to become the largest Nationalist Party in the North. Some of which included the primacy of nationalism, accepting the Unionist Veto and support for British policing. Many socialist members including myself, felt were a step too far.
Today, Sinn Féin is an integral part of a Stormont Coalition who practices a conservative economic policy with privatisation, water charges and public sector cutbacks high on its agenda. The sight of Martin McGuinness, a declared socialist in Wall Street gleefully banging a hammer brought little relief to disadvantaged communities across Ireland.
The Good Friday Agreement has not delivered social and economic freedom. Nor has it ended the British occupation or eradicated sectarianism. It has actually institutionalised it with Nationalist and Unionist communities vying for better resources. The ‘peace dividend’ has not yet arrived in working-class areas like Ardoyne and the Creggan.
There is a growing need for socialist republicans to learn from British sponsored agreements, strengthen existing partnerships and unify once more. Only then can we effectively challenge contemporary Republicans. Political opposition to Sinn Féin is quite legitimate, as is the pursuit of a 32 County Socialist Irish Republic. Progressive republicans do not need lectures about Irish history from Politicians who should know better and a compliant Media.
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Comments (3 of 3)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3we must constantly counter this negative ideology.....irish republicanism does have genuine and admirable achievements...it also has a history of sending young people to their deaths in the "cause of Ireland"
got to any of the republican museums in belfast, and have a look around......and you realise that you come be in any war museum....
war is war my friends....and there are many similarities between the people who justify it.....
I will kill you to achieve equality and freedom.....interesting that....
its the romanticism that's most dangerous.....the idea that killing people is actually to be celebrated....all armies do it....
republicans complain constantly about british revisionism....but they too invent and twist and contort their own history.....go into any irish republican book store, and you'll hardly find any mention of michael davitt....you see he is someone who does'nt fit their revisions, as a physical force republican who renounced violence, and actually led a very progressive and successful political movement....the land league....
give over this militant nonsense lads....and give your brothers and neighbours a dream worth living for, as opposed to dying for...
Some very good home truths mentioned by previous poster but lookin in a historical perspective i think we have to look on republicans with a little more empathy than armies of states etc. Unfortunately as a reaction to the propaganda and portrayl of resistors or activists (armed or otherwise) suffer through out the world but particularly the IRA as amateur, a gang, even gangsters, sometimes they take on routines, rituals etc that mimic a states 'army'. Having studied and talked to many, they share the belief that it was a bulwark against that that they went along with some of the trappings, remember many volunteers were students, workers, family men and had no time for pomp and ceremony. Further a lot it was pure publicity, what media coverage would a standard funeral of a volunteer get as oppposed to lets say a defiant one with volley of shots etc. When you are struggling against 'a power ' you aim to undermine every single aspect of its system. Also any serious or respected republicans i encountered in my days never claimed to glamourise the hardship of armed conflict. Anyway im not havin a go at last comment just mentioning a few things, it is a good debate to have within all social movements
It is strange to think that today our nation is one of the oldest but in the eyes of the world the south has been a legitimate political entity for less than one hundred years.
Michael Collins singed the Anglo Irish agreement in 1921, a stepping stone people believed like many before it in which Ireland had slowly taken back it's independence.
So how have we gone from then to now? still with a divided country, albeit a much more peaceful divide but evidently in some minds no less painful.
I agree that Nationalist of the north and south, if they wish for unity and complete independence, should find some unity among themselves or it will be a very long time until we see a united Ireland, that is if we ever see it.
Yet we should consider the possibility that a united Ireland will raise a number of issues which will be difficult to deal with, the least of which being that in the north the shoe will be on the other foot in terms of a minority who are hostile to the current situation. It is also true that we should not allow the minority to govern the majority and therefore this new unionist minority would have to be dealt with in which they are not victimised but treated fairly and equally as a citizen of Ireland. Too simplistic are the idea's which consider only one side of this argument. In a united Ireland it would the responsibility of the people to deal with integrate and accept a unionist faction of the population. If we want a united Ireland, in my mind this should include a unity not only among republicans but also allow for unity among all people of Ireland.
We can't repeat the same mistakes as we have in the past. We let momentum slip away among the people when we were closest to achieving our aims. Hopefully when the time comes and we have another chance for a united Ireland we will have a better more inclusive idea of the future. Sectarianism is what has ruined Ireland it's about time we stopped it.