Republic An Sinn Fein must fill political vacuum

The Irish Republican Information Service, 15 November 1995

REPUBLICAN Sinn Fein President Ruairi O Bradaigh told his organisation's 91st Ard-Fheis (national conference) on November 11–12 that members must grasp the opportunity now on offer to win the allegiance and support of Republican-minded people and sympathisers who are seeing the futility of the present process.

These people view the process in anger and ask what were the enormous sacrifices down the years for? Are we to abandon these genuine people until disillusion takes hold of them? That is what the Establishment in London, Dublin and Washington seeks and all supporters of British rule in the Six Occupied Counties . . . to counter this, a resurgence is necessary on all sides of Republicanism, he said.

Nothing worthwhile had happened in the so-called peace process since the last Ard-Fheis, he told the more than 300 delegates and supporters present. As Mayhew told the British parliament, ‘all concessions are small and reversible’. The stand we took last year has been vindicated. We refused then to go with the tide—we stood firmly as we did in 1986 when the current process was born.

For those who oppose this process and seek an alternative way forward there has been harassment, visa denials and censorship still almost at Section 31 level. Political status has been denied to Republican prisoners and the Public Order Act of 1994 used against our members at every opportunity.

Our paper ‘SAOIRSE—Irish Freedom’; must be brought to a new generation. Young people with the clear, keen eyes of youth must be recruited so that they in their turn can make their contribution to the Republican struggle. With the dream intact, the capacity for struggle can be achieved and the support of the people built up, he said.

Earlier in his Presidential Address he said that London, with the support of Dublin and Washington, was trying to decide the future of Ireland. Our work, on the other hand, over the past year has been dedicated to the principle that the British government has no moral right to be in any part of Ireland and that it is for the Irish people alone—acting together as a unit—to decide the shape of the New Ireland.

He referred to the assertion by the SDLP in November last that the gun had been removed from Irish politics forever. But British guns abound in the Six Occupied Counties. Dublin politicians made the self-same assertion when they designated the 26-County State a republic in 1949. History has shown such claims to be spurious . . . History teaches us that as long as the British government remains in Ireland there will always be a revolutionary movement here to oppose it, he added.

Delegates voted to reject and actively oppose an internal solution in the Six Counties involving a new Stormont assembly, which they saw as the only outcome of the current process. They called for a Constituent Assembly to be set up, elected by the votes of all the people of the 32 counties, following a British declaration of intent to leave Ireland.

Other resolutions passed congratulated all Irish Americans who have stood by ideals and principles of Republicanism and have seen through so-called Republicans who have joined the elite moneyed groups for gain and not for the freedom of out country and called for pressure to be maintained on the US administration to grant a visa to Ruairi O Bradaigh and other Republican Sinn Fein supporters.