Alan Ryan Remembered

By AM Wednesday, September 11, 2024

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John Murphy 📢 delivered an oration at the annual Vol. Alan Ryan Commemoration on 8-September -2024.

A chairde I would like to welcome you all here today to our annual commemoration for IRA Volunteer Alan Ryan. Each year that passes brings its own fresh challenges to the struggle for which Alan paid the ultimate sacrifice.

And one of those challenges is the creeping and insidious policy of this state, and its political parties, to be selective in choosing who it is that is worthy of commemoration. The hierarchy of victims policy is now complimented with a hierarchy of patriot dead.

The path to political office is littered with sell outs and betrayals and it is clear that this now extends to the exclusion of Irishmen and Irishwomen, from whatever organisation, who gave their lives for Irish freedom.

We cannot stress how important it is to commemorate all our patriot dead. It is a powerful political statement confirming revolutionary continuity and intent. Even in the most darkest and isolated days in Irish republicanism commemorations held the line, facilitated debate and provoked ideas to move us forward. Today’s commemoration will continue in that tradition.

Throughout our history we Irish have never wavered in identifying and taking on our enemy.

We have never been a people to scapegoat or punch down in pursuit of Irish freedom and sovereignty. We understand our enemy and we know all too well the trail of destruction they have left around the world in their pursuit of colonization murder and theft.

We were the first to have experienced Britain's tactics of attempting to colonize our country and generations of Irish have watched as Britain perfected those tactics here and used them throughout the world.

It is with a heavy heart that we, this generation of Irish republicans, watch our people lose sight of who our enemy is. The new era of colonization has once again set working class people against their own kind. Those who control these colonialist and globalist policies are equally determined to divide opposition through smoke and mirror tactics to disguise themselves as the true authors of mass exploitation.

The question of immigration has commanded centre stage on the political agenda, not just in Ireland but throughout Europe and beyond. It provokes a wide and emotive range of reactions. Whether it be through fear, manipulation, ignorance, political naivete or wilful racism the scale of immigration has sparked division within our communities which in turn has polarised debate as to how this issue should be addressed.

Republicans and socialists cannot shy away from the gravity and depth of this issue. It is incumbent on us to fully acquaint ourselves with a thorough knowledge of the totality of immigration and the political and economic forces which drive it. But in equal measure, we cannot fall foul of any strawman arguments designed to deflect from the true extent of the problem. We cannot invent enemies simply to reward ourselves a mythical victory in the deeply flawed belief that republican redemption is to be found in a slogan.

The Dublin Government is clearly implementing an immigration policy which is being dictated to them from outside sources. It is not a sovereign decision. No government, however incompetent, could remotely develop a policy which it vainly struggles to even partially implement. The spectacle of tent encampments being met by metal fencing as some kneejerk solution only underscores the shambolic policy from the outset.

It is also abundantly clear that these external influences are blindly indifferent to the impact such a policy on immigration has on local communities which in turn demonstrates their clear indifference to the welfare of immigrants themselves.

Recurring reports that immigrants are now being advised to destroy any documentation they possess as a sure way of exploiting the State’s legal obligations towards them only adds to the already deep scepticism our communities hold towards the immigration process. But it also introduces the reality of people trafficking, the organised exploitation of those who once they surrender their documents are at the complete mercy of slum landlords and ruthless employers paying slave wages.

When our people see government ministers responsible for this debacle struggling to answer the most basic of questions; when they see opposition wannabes flip flopping like the opinion poll prostitutes that they are, when they are told that failed asylum applicants are responsible for deporting themselves, and the whereabouts of the thousands who don’t is unknown, their scepticism rapidly turns to cynicism.

Working class communities are seeing immigrants being placed on their doorsteps without consultation or consent by a government and opposition with no inclination of providing either in the future. There is no regard as to the ability of local services to cope with such a sudden influx, which reflects a national concern on other national services already struggling to address the needs of the status quo. That they take to the streets to protest should be first understood before it is strategically mislabelled and disgracefully misjudged.

The government and opposition would claim that no community has a veto over who lives in their area. Yet the same political class negotiated the entrenching of the Unionist veto, which excludes the vast majority of Irish people from living in a sovereign 32 County Irish Republic. True liberty is the right of every man and woman to be honest, to think and to speak without hypocrisy.

Of course there are those with nefarious agendas who will seek to exploit the anger and frustration of the people. For republicans to engage in an activity that drives all protest off the streets in the delusional belief that the far right or the fascist tendency are the main actors behind these organic protests are only serving the State and globalist agendas. If we cannot discern the baby from the bathwater, we fulfil the proverbial outcome.

In a coordinated and systematic campaign the State and its NGOs have raised the spectre of the rise of the far right as a classic deflection tactic in an attempt to avert scrutiny from their disastrous immigration policy. It has paved the way to label all those opposed to their gross mismanagement as either far right or racist as a means to deflect from any examination of the State’s subservient role in facilitating it.

Why should republicans and socialists cavort with this political posturing when the very core of what we are should be on the streets exposing it? We cannot become pawns for the pawns of EU capitalists in order to silence dissent against them.

We know who is responsible for the housing crisis. We know who is responsible for the health crisis. And we also know that the increased pressure placed on these services by a flawed immigration policy is a deliberate tool to ultimately place those services in the hands of private ownership.

In conjunction, this State's policy of neutrality is being deliberately eroded to move towards a military agenda devised by the same external influences who are driving mass economic migration. Private profiteering is behind fascist wars like that in Ukraine and so-called regime changes in other countries which feeds into the displacement of populations as billions are pumped into the coffers of the arms traders.

The displacement of peoples from these imperialist motivated wars, and imperialist economics, is as equally profitable in terms of cheap labour and the private sector supply of accommodation paid for by public funds. A naïve approach to these fascist acts will only make us complicit in the fascist acts themselves.

And let’s not delude ourselves that the planning for this mass immigration is a recent construct or a response to recent conflicts. The legal and political framework to enable it has its origins in successive EU Treaties, culminating in the Lisbon Treaty which gave it legal effect. And now that we see the dysfunctional fruit of that treaty, we have a better understanding of why they forced a second vote upon us. Republicans and socialists have always opposed the EU as a capitalist and militarist venture. Why should our opposition to its concept and practices stop now?

Vacuous terms such as diversity and inclusivity fly in the face of the abject failure of multiculturalism throughout Europe. Woke words are the bread and butter of those whose vision for Ireland is to profit from whatever Irish society looks like on the day. Ideological posturing on the reasons for this failure cannot alter this basic fact. As George Orwell stated, “The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.” Speaking the truth becomes a revolutionary act.

And this is what Irish republicans and socialists must bring into the national narrative, revolutionary ideas complimented by revolutionary acts. And regardless of which issue it is, partition, neutrality, immigration, healthcare, housing or education even in a democratic socialist republic the rules of the road must apply.

Our clear definition of what Irish sovereignty actually means for our people will set us apart from those who, knowingly or unknowingly, would reduce our country and our people to a regional entity governed and exploited by capitalist interests from the EU. So before we take to the streets in protest at least let us have a grounded understanding of the issue at hand and that we fully understand who our protests must be directed against.

All revolutionary ideas and actions have consequences. We must display the courage that Alan and all our patriot dead have shown when we engage and initiate them. To do any less is the most counter revolutionary act we could commit.

Rest in peace Alan. The struggle continues.

Beir Bua!

⏩ John Murphy is a former republican prisoner from Cork.