This April saw the tenth anniversary of the so-called Good Friday Agreement that ended the armed conflict between between the Provisional IRA and the Brits. It did a lot more than that (and a lot less). Ten years on and what do socialists say about it? Are the Irish people on the march, as Gerry Adams insists, to a United Ireland by the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising in 2016? He might have done better for himself if he put it off a bit, say until the 300th anniversary of the United Irishmen rising in 2098.
Sinn Fein has recently had “open” meetings all around the North to calm nerves and prop up the faithful over the last couple of weeks. I’m not normally a betting man, but I’ll take Gerry’s challenge. If you would like to enter the pool write me. Provo spin not withstanding the odds are now running at about 3,000,000 to 1. Here at the Rustbelt Radical we will entertain all wagers; any true believers in the Provo promise out there who would like to make a potential bundle write me and I’ll tell you where to send the money. A more likely bet, though one I wouldn’t make, is rather that the South of Ireland will be back in the Commonwealth by then.
Here’s John McAnulty some months ago in England giving a broad overview of how the situation arrived at where we are now. John is a leading member of Ireland’s Socialist Democracy from Belfast.
It may be a depressing scenario after thirty years of war, but it is the scenario confronting Irish revolutionaries. It is interesting the number of parallels one could draw from the general line of what John says about Ireland to similar movements in South Africa, Palestine, Nicaragua, etc. Though the Provo defeat seems more thorough, more total.
In the second video John answers some questions, including why Britain feels it has to remain in Ireland.
Rustbelt Radical 