Comrades and friends,

Ten years ago, the Good Friday Agreement was signed. The struggle was declared over, something that was a “relic of the past” according to the ruling class. This ruling class was content and confident enough to assume that history was to end in 1998 and everything since then would strengthen and uphold their positions. This is true for the nationalist parties who uphold British rule in Ireland but it is not true for Republicans.

But Republicanism needs to be relevant and we need to be relevant. There is nothing revolutionary about calling oneself a Socialist but not working for the empowerment of the working class. There is nothing revolutionary in itself about having a secret army up your sleeve for a rainy day. There is nothing revolutionary about the wink and nudge attitudes. It’s the form we take as an organisation, the decisive and strategic political line decided collectively that will be the ultimate deciding factor. We are faced with two options, to sink or to swim.

Back to James Connolly, back to Seamus Costello should be our method over the coming years. We need to return to our roots as an organisation if we are to advance. The politics and ideas of men like Connolly and Costello are not fossilized relics; they are not to be quoted selectively at political opponents and comrades to prove one point or another, the real intention of which is to often silence people for daring to disagree with revered figures.

We should regard the teachings of Connolly and Costello as scientific processes which give us the tools, along with the classics of Marxism, to analyze the motive and class forces at work in society. Why do we neglect this? If the fundamentals are not grasped the potential is there to sink amidst a sea of dogmatism and its partner – Stalinism – as we tail the long forgotten politics and slogans of yesteryear to an indifferent working class and youth.

Ten years from the Good Friday Agreement there is still no viable vehicle for the Irish working class to see the attainment of its goals and to assert itself, let us set the task of building a party of the new type. It is duty of all Republican Socialists to leave this cemetery with a set task of rebuilding the movement politically. It won’t be easy and there will be pitfalls, traps and sabotage along the way. But it is in our interests and the interests of the working class to continue to forge an organisation that can guide and give leadership.

Ta Power once said “It is only by strengthening ourselves ideologically, inculcating in ourselves the values and ideals of the struggle and building up the ranks of the revolutionary party that we will make it.” Comrades, that is the way forward for the IRSM.