Comrades, Republicans and Socialists, we gather here today on the 19th anniversary of the beginning of the 1981 hunger strike in the H Blocks of Long Kesh.

We come together to unveil this fitting monument in tribute to their steadfastness and courage in the face of British arrogance, intransigence and its lust for revenge.

We also remember the sometimes "Forgotten" victims of the H Block struggle, those activists who paid with their lives to put the plight of the POWs into the public domain.

IRSP members and H Block activists Miriam Daly, Ronnie Bunting, Noel Little -- all cut down in their own homes by British death squads. Also INLA volunteers Matt McLarnon and Jim Power, killed in action engaging the British military forces in the six-counties.

At this time we also remember John Turnley, Larne councillor, IIP member, H Block activist, assassinated by loyalist reactionaries in Carnlough, County Antrim.

To those innocents, blasted off this earth by British Army/ RUC plastic bullets we also recall them and their families today.

On the 1st of March 1981 Bobby Sands, followed by nine comrades of the Irish Republican Army and Irish National Liberation Army, began a hunger strike that would change the face of Irish politics and in particular the nature of the engagement between Ireland and Britain.

It would be easy to stand here today at the grave of our comrades Patsy and Mickey and claim that we have their assent for our present political strategy to achieve a 32 County socialist republic.

The truth is we do not know! Let no organisation claim the hunger strikers assent or dissent for a particular political strategy in the new millennium. Comrades, let us deal with what we do know about Patsy O'Hara, Kevin Lynch and Micheal Devine.

They were not members of the Republican Socialist movement by accident or a quirk of fate, they chose to join the IRSP/INLA, as this organisation represented the unity between class struggle and national liberation. They were physical force republicans with a finely tuned political acumen. They were soldiers and political activists.

Patsy O'Hara, Kevin Lynch and Micheal Devine were like all of us products of a corrupt state, a state that engaged in, encouraged and actively promoted sectarian division among the working class as a means of maintaining British rule in Ireland.

They witnessed first hand the brutality of the British state as they battoned and gassed the people off the streets of their native city. Patsy was to recall later -

"Even at the age of eleven, I couldn't help feeling a sense of purpose. The mood of the crowd was one of solidarity. The people believed that they were right and that a great injustice had been done to them. The crowds came in their thousands from every part of the city and as they marched down Duke Street chanting slogans - 'ONE MAN - ONE VOTE!' and singing 'WE SHALL OVERCOME' - I had the feeling that the people were united , and on the move were unstoppable".

Working class unity was recognised by Patsy, even at an early age, as the most powerful weapon for the working class. It has been a constant plank of IRSP policy since it was articulated by founder member Seamus Costello in "The Broad Front Strategy" in the 1970s.

The Broad Front Strategy was not and is not about setting up a pan nationalist front or an all-class alliance that can only act on behalf on the narrow self interest of the controlling classes. Does anybody honestly believe that Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern are acting in the best interests of the Irish working class?

This class analysis has remained the backbone of republican socialist politics through the years of struggle, both armed and unarmed for a socialist republic.

It will continue to do so as we determine the best way forward for our class, our cause and our struggle.

We do not ever forget the suffering of the families and loved ones of our fallen comrades have endured over the years, indeed still endure in the uncertain political climate of today.

We understand, indeed we share their misgivings about the Good Friday Agreement.

It is clear that the GFA does not contain either the vision or momentum to deliver peace let alone a political solution.

The "Belfast Agreement" is in tatters, collapsing of its own internal contradictions.

Those who remain wedded to the Good Friday Agreement remain wedded to the divisive, sectarian politics of the past and are prepared to prolong the suffering of the working class to prolong the life of this failed, flawed and finished document.

The IRSP believe that the Good Friday Agreement, whatever it started out as, has become a political straitjacket in which the peace is constantly threatened and endangered.

The single issue of unilateral Republican disarmament has brought the GFA to a state of collapse.

Let's be clear -- the decommissioning demand is unrealistic, the issue is being used as a weapon in which the British government and unionist establishment revert to kind and try to coerce a republican defeat.

From the republican socialist position we believe that until the six-county state is abolished no republican should play a part in its government. Comrades, In refusing to disarm Republicans do not have to take the armed road.

There is a need for the reaffirmation of the essential republican position. The creation of a non sectarian republican state on the island is the essential precondition for the political social and economic liberation of all the people of the isle.

We also believe there is no basis for armed struggle at this time. Apart from there being little desire for it in the population, it is counterproductive and will only be viewed as an attack on peace, not the British administration in Ireland.

There is an alternative from the republican perspective, and it is clearly neither guns or government.

The leadership of the Irish National Liberation Army has, in a series of talks with the leadership of the Irish Republican Socialist Party and other working class representatives / community activists since the calling of the INLA cease fire in August 1998 have developed what we believe is a positive, anti-sectarian strategy that recognises and nurtures the primacy of politics and will go a long way to securing a durable peace.

This week the Irish Republican Socialist Party is launching an initiative aimed at giving control of the peace and by extension control over our own lives back to the working class communities who fought the war, and removing the spectre of a "return to conflict" so readily used by those who claim sole ownership of "democracy" and the GFA, as if they are one and the same thing.

The proposed CHARTER FOR NON-AGGRESSION is in essence a pledge between working class communities not to attack each other.

This week we have contacted various working class representatives, political parties, trade unions, community groups and individuals with our suggested proposals for a charter for non aggression.

We look forward to discussing these proposals and listening to other working class views on how we can secure a durable peace in working class areas. Comrades, our opponents and detractors will question our motives in calling for such a Charter.

They will ask what is in this for the Irps?, What is our angle? Let us be transparent, this charter if successful can deliver and maintain immediate peace for the working class regardless, indeed in spite of the GFA.

It has the potential to remove the threat of a return to conflict. This is an initiative that does not require political compromise of working class representatives whether republican/nationalist or loyalist/unionist. However it could create a political climate free from fear in which all different shades of working class opinion can propagate our politics and preferences with the aim of persuading others to our point of view.

Comrades, the Irish Republican Socialist Party are confident in our politics and our class analysis, we remain fully committed to our goal for a 32 County socialist republic, we are prepared to debate, define and defend our political vision for a future Ireland.

Let others do the same.

At the beginning of this address we paid tribute to the Hunger strikers and how their sacrifice changed the face of political life in Ireland, how their analysis, life experiences and politics led them to the hard decision to go on hunger strike.

Comrades it is this same class analysis that leads us to our present strategy. We do not call on the dead to give us assent from the grave, but we do draw on our shared analysis, shared experience and shared politics to give us the inspiration to continue to strive for our shared aims.

Today, we salute the hunger strikers not only for their supreme sacrifice but also for their political analysis, their class politics and their yearn for Irish national liberation.

This fine monument stands not only as a testament to their death on hunger strike but also as a testament to their lives as republican socialists. Comrades a word of caution, we could fill the graveyards of Ireland with fine monuments but if we do not continue to struggle for the socialist republic then those monuments will remain just lumps of granite.

The Republic as envisioned by Tone, Connolly and Mellows, by Costello and Power, by Patsy, Mickey and Kevin is a living, breathing republic. It is the republic of people working and socialising, laughing and crying together as we strive for a common cause.

Let the establishment of an Irish Socialist Republic stand as the finest ever monument to our fallen comrades!