Since the inception of Lasair Dhearg less than 18 months ago, our membership busied itself laying the foundations for the growth of a new approach to Socialist Republican activism in Ireland.
From less than a handful of activists in the months previous, consolidation saw our ranks swell to incorporate a full and functioning branch in the City of Belfast, with pockets of support across the country and growing working relationships with like-minded organisations. It also saw the creation of a new Socialist Republican quarterly magazine; ‘An Spréach’ has experienced huge success, selling out of every copy run in a matter of days. Managed independently, it aims to be a springboard for Socialist Republican thought and political debate, free from party politics, with imminent plans to expand beyond the platform.
Those few months saw the discussion and implementation of many internal documents, ideological and strategic, in a determined effort to create a foundation upon which a renewed and considered advance could be taken toward the re-establishment of the Irish Socialist Republic.
Foremost, was a new strategic approach, absent of an intention to intervene in the electoral process, but instead to strive to build alternative mechanisms of local power; putting our faith, not in the institutions of either failed state, but in the hands of the Irish working class; building self-empowerment at a community level and becoming arbiters of our own destinies.
This approach, put to the test with much hard work in the Lenadoon area of West Belfast, bore out a significant victory for residents of Carrigart flats over just a few short months, and will see the implementation of modern gas heating systems across over 70 households. A drop in the pond in the grand scheme of things, but giving truth to the lie that government bodies and elected representatives are reflective of the will of the people.
The lesson for all of us: collective work and community organising can effectively rectify the imbalance of power in our communities, and place it into the hands of those that need it most; you.
The next step in this process will be to replicate this across a larger area. Now more than ever, collectives of activists across the country, ready and willing to fight for our housing rights, must put forth and ingrain an economic narrative that would solve this issue forever; a home is a human right, not a commodity for the purpose of creating profit; no bank, no government, no landlord Stormont MLA or absentee landlord reserves the right to evict any tenant; if you live in a home, you should own it.
Our analysis is an economic one; rampant poverty, evictions, homelessness, huge housing and hospital waiting lists, lack of access to basic services and more are the result of an economic system imposed by a foreign power and maintained by the richest one percent and their collaborators in Stormont, Leinster House, Westminster and Brussels.
In the short term, Republicanism must answer the question of ‘power’ in our country and what it means. For it does not lie in the false parliaments north and south of an imposed border; those governments are merely free to administer our affairs in the absence of an effective opposition.
It is our firm belief that through effective community organising at a grass-roots level and the eventual implementation of a people’s housing policy, we can begin to right the wrongs of Ireland’s two failed states.
This coming year, our activists will begin the roll out of a number of initiatives as we expand, aiming to highlight the failures of the Six County administration through our ‘Stormont Can’t Deliver’ campaign, and working with comrades across the country to build upon the foundations of An Chéad Dáil Éireann. As the 100th anniversary of An Chéad Dáil approaches, we continue to be inspired by those revolutionaries who established alternative power structures in search of a better world, free from external interference.
It is our belief that both the public and private housing sectors in Ireland, will be the next battleground in the fight for a Socialist Republic, and that the contradictions in that system currently being laid bare, will allow for a broad economic and political awakening. In the coming months and years, Socialist Republicans must strive to ensure that our political narrative is to the fore in that debate.
To that end, we state emphatically: recent events in Roscommon, where a home was seized back in a dawn raid by activists and handed back to its rightful residents, has our full support.
It is clear that the Free State government and its allies in the media, fear the ‘violence’ meted out during the retaking of that home. Though their criticism of that violence doesn’t extend to include the bloody acts of Unionist security firms brought in to impose the will of the Capitalist establishment in Ireland.
They are right to be afraid; for in the coming struggle there will be no hiding place for those who seek to profit from our misery.
ENDS
