Time to act

A statement by the 32 County Sovereignty Committee on the crisis in the 26-County state.

After usurping the Declaration of Independence the architects of the Twenty Six County State invoked a sovereign legitimacy to use British guns on fellow Irish people. It continued to invoke this legitimacy to strap Irishmen to landmines, to execute Irish prisoners, to allow Irishmen die on hunger strike and to employ an English hangman to eradicate those who believed that Irish sovereignty does not stop at the border and that our national ethos should be modelled on the Proclamation.

Invoking a sovereign legitimacy it set about rewriting the terms of its own existence, not in accordance with those who defended it as a preamble to national reunification, but as a prologue for establishing a partitionist power base serving sectional interests. When it introduced its Constitution in 1937 it predicated that document on a definition of sovereignty as one which encompassed the whole island and its peoples. It spent the next sixty one years failing to restore that sovereignty culminating in its abandonment in 1998. It abandoned their fellow Irish people in the Six Counties, standing idly by whilst a sectarian gerrymander was allowed to masquerade as democracy.

Invoking a sovereign legitimacy it raised an army and called it Oglaigh Na hEireann. It placed this army on the border to reinforce its view that the Twenty Six County State had a sovereign right to exist. It sent this army into the world as a symbol of its sovereignty and generously referenced their peace keeping efforts, and their deaths, as a glowing tribute to this sovereignty.

Invoking a sovereign legitimacy it raised its own tax and allowed its governments to utilise these funds for party political interests. It allowed its Ministers to feather their own nests and encouraged a political ethos which was solely concerned with satisfying the local constituency. In pursuit of power it placed the Catholic Church and Financial Speculators at the heart of its policy making with disastrous consequences. Those that opposed such economics were adjured to commit suicide and those who argued for complete Church State separation were marginalized and stigmatised.

And now it stares into the abyss created by its own abject failure to understand what Irish sovereignty actually represents. It has now surrendered the fate of its citizens to an institution whose sole concern is the making of money no matter the social cost. As a state it can neither look back nor look forward to redeem itself. Only its citizens retain the ability to rise above the penury the state has forced them into.

The 32 County Sovereignty Movement calls on all the Irish people to take back their sovereignty. We call on all republican organisations and the labour movement to unite and organise the shutting down of the state. This is not a time for righteous rhetoric or for tinkering with the status quo. It is a time to reach out and effect fundamental change for our people. Partition has failed on both sides of the border. The restoration of our national sovereignty is an essential prerequisite to achieving this change. It is time to act.

Urgent Appeal