For two decades now, the Irish Republican Socialist Movement has expressed its solidarity with African people around the globe struggling for their liberation and the liberation of the African continent under Pan-Africanism and Scientific Socialism on African Liberation Day. We are happy and proud to do so again this year.

We remain mindful that the working people of Ireland share with African workers throughout the world an enemy in the form of imperialist exploitation; an enemy in the form of neo-colonial betrayal; a history as a colonised people, and a history as a people engaged in continuous struggle for generations. We continue to recognise that attempts to destroy the natural solidarity that arises out of those commonalities through racist ideology and historical falsification serve to demonstrate how threatening to our oppressors it is when we join together and express our mutual solidarity. Moreover, we continue to understand that the most sincere expression of solidarity is a preparedness to stand shoulder to shoulder with another and to share resources when possible, rather than merely  spouting words and phrases.

We are living in a world where the ruling class of the capitalist and imperialist nations believe themselves to have won a decisive victory over the working class, which is also a world in which that class is seeing the inherent instabilities of capitalism rising increasingly to the surface, so that the system of exploitation stands naked and hideous before the world. These two, mutually contradictory circumstances has thrown capitalism into crisis mode and prompted an increase in the degree and extent of imperialist adventures and a renewed viciousness internally.

As a result, we have seen the French and US governments conspire to destabilise and then overthrow the elected government of Haiti, perhaps the most African of nations of the Western Hemisphere. On the streets of Haiti, we saw a bloody class war initiated not by workers, but against them by the ruling class and that class war will continue to be waged, because the working people of Haiti cannot afford to do otherwise. We have seen the US imperialists step up their attacks on the Cuban people, many of whom derive from Africa and many of whom served with honour in the liberation movement's of the African continent. We are watching even now the continued assault and occupation being carried out by the British and US governments in Afghanistan and Iraq and by the Zionists in Palestine. Finally, we have seen the attempts to isolate and demonise the nation of Zimbabwe, to thwart revolutionaries such as the AZAPO, to hinder the African unity being championed by the Leader of the Libyan revolution. Nowhere, it seems at times, can one find peace in the world today; nowhere can one find harmony and justice.

We in Ireland have seen the largest force in the anti-imperialist struggle simply depart the stage, surrendering in the process the gains made through thirty years of difficult struggle and sacrifice. We are left with the Good Friday Agreement--a document which copperfastens the sectarianism that has plagued us for years, surrenders even the vestiges of national sovereignty that we had retained, and which does nothing to move us towards our long-sought goal to end the partition and occupation of our nation.  Those who again took Britain at its word, when that word has long been known to us to be completely worthless, have traded tangible means of self-defense in exchange for the right to run for a legislature that isn't functioning and little else. Our people, our communities, languish in despair and dismay at the present and future that they confront now; kids turn to self-destructive hedonism and suicide is reaching epidemic proportions in the nationalist communities of Ireland's occupied six counties.

Our enemy is emboldened and our own people demoralised. The imperialists become increasingly vicious in their exploitation, while the anti-imperialist forces have been badly shattered through ill-fated processes of 'negotiation' in many nations. But we in the IRSP say to you today, we cannot secure our liberation through discussion with our oppressors. What is required is not pacts reached with our class enemies or foreign occupiers. What is required is unity, such as the unity that Pan-Africanism offers to Africans throughout the world; bonds of solidarity between anti-imperialists in Africa, in Ireland, in Palestine and Iraq. We in the IRSP express our solidarity with you now, in celebration of  African Liberation Day, because we must keep our alliances strong in the face of this onslaught.

Together, we will win this struggle for the liberation of our nations and our class. Together we will create justice and harmony and lasting peace or fall in pursuit of  it, because to live on our knees is simply not an option.

Forward Ever, Backward Never!

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