Republican News · Thursday 13 February 2003

Don't do it

These artificial and unnatural wars, prompted by greed and power, are the source of all misery now destroying mankind...   - Roger Casement, August 1916.

This weekend, tens of thousands of Irish people on the streets of Dublin and Belfast are joining millions in demonstrations throughout the world and demanding that the governments of the United States and Britain stop their drive to war and do not launch their planned full-scale invasion of Iraq.

These mass demonstrations may be the largest ever seen around the world on one day and they expose the isolation of George Bush's US Administration and of his British ally Tony Blair in the face of world opinion.

In Ireland, opposition to the war has been mobilised in massive numbers and has placed the demand for truly independent Irish foreign policy and positive neutrality back at the top of the political agenda. The 'nod and wink' arrangement whereby an Irish government has allowed Shannon Airport to be used as a staging post for the war has been revealed in all its shameful hypocrisy.

Irish republicans are to the fore in the campaign against this war. Independent foreign policy and neutrality have been fundamental to Irish republicanism from the days of Wolfe Tone to James Connolly and Roger Casement to the present day.

Sinn Féin is campaigning for lasting peace with justice not only in Ireland but internationally and when republicans march this weekend they do so because the cause of Irish freedom is inextricably linked with the cause of freedom and justice throughout the world.