Despite being decades into a pacification process that has repeatedly promised a United Ireland as an ‘inevitability’, yesterday’s remarks by British Prime Minister Andy Burnham that a unification border poll is ‘off the table’ should be a stark reminder to some delusional thinkers that a Socialist Republic will never be achieved through grovelling at the feet of the British or their sycophants in Ireland.
No amount of softening or compromising of Republican positions has opened the door to the possibility of a British withdrawal. No amount of humiliating or self-degrading gestures – the perennial remembrance of British killers, the legitimising of Loyalist ‘culture’, the approving nods towards graduating colonial militia – will ever be enough for those who oversee our occupation from London.
The occupation of Ireland, essentially the last vestige of the Empire, is so engrained in the psyche of the British leadership, that any thoughts of it as illegitimate, any criticism, is simply unworthy of consideration. No amount of electioneering, campaign slogans or rallies will change this.
A Socialist Republic in Ireland will never be achieved in a polling station. It will be achieved when working-class Irish people are willing to take it. We must rebuild Socialist Republicanism into the credible mainstream movement that is needed to fight not only the political occupation that most people will recognise, but also the political, social and cultural occupation that remains less obvious.
