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Members of the the Thomas Ashe Society Omagh, the Rising Phoenix Society Derry City, the James Connolly Society Monaghan and the Sean MacDiarmada Society Fermanagh erected a number of billboards during the week calling for ‘Irish Unity Now’, this in response to the British Government’s triggering of Article 50 and the imminent negotiations to effect its withdrawal from the EU.
Speaking afterward, Sean Bresnahan of the Thomas Ashe Society said that “post-the recent ‘Brexit’ vote in the UK and with Britain now negotiating her terms of exit from the European Union, Ireland – both north and south – faces certain upheaval over the months and years to come”.
Continuing, he described Brexit as the “dominant conversation in Irish politics, with much of that discussion centering on whether a ‘renewed’ border – despite it having never gone away – should be a ‘hard border’ or a ‘soft border’, depending on what arrangements are decided on by Britain and the rest of Europe when Brexit has been finalised”.
In Derry, Frankie Quigley of the Rising Phoenix Society said that:
for ourselves, the damage Brexit is certain to do Ireland – in particular the North – which faces acute isolation removed from Europe and on the margins of the so-called United Kingdom – demands neither a hard border or a soft border but an END to the border, with full Irish Unity to proceed in its stead.
Pat Corrigan in Fermanagh added that:
Brexit thus establishes a renewed imperative for Irish Unity and that, with continuing partition set to present major difficulties for all of Ireland, this is now a national priority and indeed THE national priority. On that basis, we propose that the Irish people be afforded their long-denied right to determine their own future, through a national referendum that brings forward an independent all-Ireland republic.
In conclusion, Monaghan’s Mark Campbell described such a republic, which he argued should be “socialist by design”, as:
best-placed to resolve the complex challenges thrown up by Brexit, affording all of the Irish people – both north and south – an opportunity to build a better future, for each of their number, in an Ireland that affords the necessary stability demanded by these uncertain times.
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