Republican News · Thursday 30 April 1998

[An Phoblacht]

Republicans and May Day

The struggle for national liberation in the North has undoubtedly led to a widespread radical politicisation of not just IRA Volunteers but of the oppressed people who realise that the fruits of our victory must be social and economic as well as the political freedom of national separation.

The term nationalism is something of a dirty word politically among left groups on the continent where it has right-wing connections. But our nationalism is anti-imperialist and radical and we realise that if the connection is not made with the struggle of labour there will be no realisation of socialism in Ireland, just as the Labour Movement, if it ignores the national question, is also acquitting the full potential of the working class.

To Connolly the basic condition of socialist advance was the assertion and acceptence of Ireland's right to self-government. His opponent in the debate was William Walker, a Belfast member of the British Labour Movement, whose conception of socialism was reformist. Walker pointed with pride to the progress of `municipal socialism' in Belfast. Did they not `collectively own and control' gasworks, waterworks, harbour works, markets, tramways, electricity, museums and art galleries? They had even organised a police band!

Connolly described Walker's position as `gas and water' socialism and insisted that the Irish question was not merely an economic question, it was also a democratic question, a question of national independence.

Phoblacht 28 April 1983.


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