We stand by the democratically endorsed 1919 Declaration of Independence, issued by the duly elected First Dáil Eireann, to the free nations of the world.
We reaffirm that in this, the centenary year of that seminal event, complete recognition of the validity and vision of that Declaration remains the only solution to the Anglo-Irish conflict.
The Irish people of that era reasoned correctly that the carefully fostered divisions amongst traditions on the island, as a deliberate instrument of British policy, could only be addressed when those traditions are allowed to interact within an Irish sovereign framework.
The British reaction to the democratically expressed will of the Irish people was to declare that outcome illegal, which was tantamount to a declaration of war against the Irish people.
And yet it was the Unionist leader Edward Carson who succinctly, and presciently observed;
“What a fool I was. I was only a puppet, and so was Ulster, and so was Ireland, in the political game that was to get the Conservative Party into power.”
Partition has been a disaster for Ireland, on both sides of the border. We now stand on the precipice our forebears once stood upon but with one major difference; we have the benefit of history and the honesty of Carson to guide us.
As Irish republicans, we openly appeal to our unionist fellow citizens to once and for all take democratic control of your own destinies and do not leave your future to political horse-trading with British political parties who do not have your interests at heart. National sovereignty is always stronger than Parliamentary majorities or partitioned arithmetic.
And we deliberately make this appeal to ordinary working-class unionists, because your political leadership has vowed to abandon you if constitutional change comes to pass. Sit down with your fellow Irishmen and women and forge a sovereign republic for our people. Divorce your cultural heritage and identity from sectarian headcount politics and integrate its core ethos into building a sovereign society that offers justice and equality for all.
For our part, Irish republicans are preparing a social schematic of a sovereign republic that we believe can be created in the event that the violation of our national sovereignty ends. But no matter how eloquent or adroit this presentation may be, it will always be deficient, because it will lack the essential contribution of the tradition which gave us the great Protestant thoughts and input into the development of Republican ideals in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Those ideals are as much your heritage as it is that of those who currently espouse them. The totality of Irish sovereignty can only function within a society which has true autonomy in deciding its government and covets economic democracy to secure social equality and justice.
As much as absentee landlordism contributed to the misery of mass evictions in the past, absentee governance, by the Brussels financial elite, have contributed nothing but debt enslavement to the similarly marginalised and with similar consequences. The parallels of history are clear. Let us ensure that our solutions are steeped in this knowledge.
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