2022 New Year Statement
Lasair Dhearg sends revolutionary greetings to our members and supporters across Ireland and internationally. We send solidarity to the exploited peoples of the world and those who suffer at the hands of capitalism and imperialism. We extend solidarity to those who fight injustice in the pursuit of a better world and those who are incarcerated for doing so.
Reflecting upon the past year and the months lying ahead, we take this opportunity to extend our thanks to those working within the health systems in both failed states in Ireland as they continue fighting around the clock with minimal resources to guide us through the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. It is not governments that have guided us through the last few years but those on the front line fighting tooth and nail for our survival. We owe them a debt that can never be repaid.
Since the inception of Lasair Dhearg in August 2017, and the opening up for new members in late 2019, we have experienced continued successes, and we continue to build a network of supporters in Ireland and abroad. So far, we have achieved our yearly strategic objectives in the building of a viable and creditable Socialist Republican alternative across Ireland, one that we hope will be capable of meeting the expected challenges of the future.
As we close 2021, a year we defined as one for ‘national growth’, with plans to grow beyond our mostly Belfast-based membership, we reflect upon the successes of these previous twelve months. With our sights set firmly on the cities of Dublin and Derry, we have now evolved over that period to having an established presence in all three cities. This has been accompanied by a growing supporters network across Ireland and internationally, all contributing to our continued development.
Indeed, 2021 witnessed the first Lasair Dhearg events in both Dublin and Derry, alongside commemorations, days of action, presence at protests and more. It is our intention to formalise branch structures in these cities in the near future, as we continue the transition to a new all-island Socialist Republican Movement.
In Belfast, we continued with our campaigns to highlight important issues and drive forward that Socialist Republican message. Utilising effective propaganda techniques, our relatively small organisation has been able to push our message to a much larger audience on the streets and via social media.
Whether it was the unchanged nature of the PSNI or the supply of Israeli produce in local stores; gender based violence, racism or homophobia; the lack of adequate and appropriate housing or the targeting of multinational corporations complicit in imperialism; or indeed the inauguration of war criminals such as Hillary Clinton as chancellor of Queen’s University Belfast, Lasair Dhearg has constantly and consistently pushed boundaries in order to get our message out there. For this, our activists should be proud of the work and the time that they have committed in recent months. Activism is the foundation upon which Lasair Dhearg was founded and upon which it continues to exist, and we ask those who support that activism and believe in our message not just to ‘join us’, but to take collective ownership of the project that we continue to develop in the fight for a Socialist Republic.
To manage growth, Lasair Dhearg will be repurposing and relaunching its supporters network in the coming months; we hope that a realignment will allow for the more effective utilisation of this network in terms of broadening our base and continued activism.
2021 was a year of anniversaries; 20 years since the rebranding of the RUC and the ‘birth’ of the PSNI; the 40th anniversary of the 1981 Hungerstrike, 50th anniversary of internment and 100 years of partition. Throughout the year Lasair Dhearg continually challenged the state narrative and combatted the normalisation of the PSNI in republican areas, whilst marking notable dates in a fitting manner.
In January we set out to ensure that the ten men who died on the Hungerstrike 40 years ago would be remembered and celebrated alongside the women and men who struggled with them in the H-Blocks and Armagh Gaol; to this end, we launched ‘Stailc ‘81’.
Engaging with comrades old and new to ensure that the legacy of the Hungerstrikers continued to inspire future generations, the anniversary of each of the ten men who died was marked at their grave-side. Online events recounting memories from the prison struggle and of those who died went out to thousands on social media. The Bobby Sands Creative Writing contest was supported by scores of contributors with poetry, short stories, art, photographs and more; culminating in the publication of ‘Dóchas: An anthology from the Bobby Sands Creative Writing Contest’, a 38 page booklet celebrating the struggle of those in and out of the prisons during that period of history. Hundreds of the free booklets were distributed across Ireland.
As hundreds gathered for the launch of a new mural dedicated to the ten Hungerstrikers during their 40th anniversary year, Stailc ‘81 ensured that alongside other events, committees and more, those who struggled and gave their all during that period of history would not be forgotten.
40 years on since that Hungerstrike, and indeed 50 years on from internment in 1971, Lasair Dhearg reiterates its position that republican prisoners in Ireland today are political prisoners and that those women and men currently held in British and Free State Gaol’s should be ensured their human rights and the right to political status.
2021 was a year that will cast long shadows into the future of Republicanism in Ireland. One of those shadows was cast by Sinn Féin’s decision to declare their support for the Free State ‘Special Criminal Court’. Condemned by Republicans and human rights activists for generations, the Special Criminal Court is utilised by the Twenty Six County state to intern and convict Republicans in the absence of a jury and has, in the past, sentenced them to death. This is why Sinn Féin opposed the SCC up until their about-face in October of 2021 and it is why Lasair Dhearg and other right-thinking activists continue to oppose it today.
The roots of the current occupation of Ireland’s Six Counties were marked in 2021 with the centenary of partition; a full 100 years since imperialists and counter-revolutionaries split our country in two. Those generations forced to exist within that rotten little Six County statelet, have suffered state-imposed sectarianism, jobs and housing discrimination, pogroms, internment, imprisonment, collusion and state brutality, torture and state-sponsored Unionist death squads, special powers, denial of language rights, denial of their rights as women, denial of their rights as members of the LGBT+ community and more.
Our campaign ‘100 Years of Oppression’ stated that 100 years of Orange supremacy was nothing to be celebrated, and we brought this message to the grounds of Stormont and the walls of Free Derry; it found its way into the bus stop advertisements in Belfast City Centre and to the distribution of articles and content to over 80,000 people on social media and countless others on the streets of those occupied Six Counties.
These past 12 months we have proudly stood in solidarity and with workers on picket lines in Belfast, Dublin and Derry including dockers, QUB staff, Dublin Fire Brigade, NHS staff and Glen Dimplex workers. We have celebrated the role of women in the liberation struggle, organising events to remember Margaret Skinnider in Dublin, Ireland, and Coatbridge, Scotland; as well as Winifred Carney and Mary Ann McCracken in Belfast. Alongside the marking of International Women’s Day in 2021, we have actively championed the rights of women by tackling issues such as bodily autonomy, misogyny and revenge porn.
As internationalists, Lasair Dhearg organised and attended events throughout the year in solidarity with other peoples across the globe. From Cuba to Palestine, and from Haiti to Nicaragua, this solidarity included direct action against Citibank in Ireland in support of the Anishinaabe people and their fight against the Line3 oil pipeline being forced through indigenous lands.
The world is fast approaching climate catastrophe as the greed of imperialists and finance capital reigns supreme. A system that moves away from fossil fuels and reverses the rampant commodification of the planet’s resources for profit is what is desperately required – this is what socialism can deliver.
This commodification extends beyond natural resources and into every aspect of our lives, its effects are there to see in the respective housing systems in both failed states in Ireland. Whether it is the crumbling homes of the MICA block housing disaster, or the crumbling damp-ridden portfolios of the rich and powerful north and south.
At present, there are more empty homes across both states than there are families in need of a home; Ireland’s housing issues could be solved at the stroke of a pen if only those in government had the political will. That is why only a Socialist Republic could solve the housing crisis, and it would do so by seizing all empty housing and utilising it for the common good; provision, not profit. The right to a home is an inalienable right, and is essential to a full and healthy life.
The coming years are important not just for Irish Socialist Republicanism but for the nation as a whole. At some point in the near future, the people of Ireland, held down by the weight of our chains, will decide to no longer exist on our knees but to stand tall, and to cast off those chains as we march forward into a new 32 County Socialist Republic. We must be ready.
“…beware
Beware of the thing that is coming,
beware of the risen people,
Who shall take what ye would not give.”
