This weekend many people will attend an Ireland’s Future event in the 3Arena. Many feel that a united Ireland is in our sights but how do we get there?
We need a border poll and there should be no excuses to postpone it. Nor do we want talk of weighted majorities. People have a basic democratic right to decide their future.
But what kind of united Ireland do we want? Ever since partition, we have had two conservative states.
The South has had nearly a hundred years of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael rule. The result has been poor public services and the Catholic Church control of our schools and hospitals.
You will wait over ten years to get social housing; you will pay over €1,000 to send your child to a creche; you will join over 90,000 people waiting for a hospital appointment.
But if you are a vulture fund or a big multi-national, you live in a tax haven paradise.
The North was built on the oppression of a minority nationalist community. To this day, bigots like the DUP can whip up sectarianism to give cover to their right-wing Tory policies.
A united Ireland cannot be built by stitching together these states.
Many years ago, James Connolly wrote that:
When the Sinn Feiner speaks to men who are fighting against low wages and tells them that the Sinn Féin body has promised lots of Irish labour at low wages to any foreign capitalist who wished to establish in Ireland, what wonder if they come to believe that a change from Toryism to Sinn Feinism would simply be a change from the devil they do know to the devil they do not.”
It was prophetic. We need a radically different united Ireland to guarantee a better life for working people.
Some reject this in the name of ‘realism’. They suggest that we can have a confederation to bring the two states together. They suggest that Orange culture should be respected and that a united Ireland should possibly join the Commonwealth. In other words, more of the same.
It is not a vision that People Before Profit shares. We want a radical socialist country to end partition. One that guarantees that no church runs our schools or tries to stop women accessing their reproductive rights. One is not a tax haven and can guarantee a free, top-quality health system and decent public services.
That was the vision of James Connolly. It is more relevant than ever.