"Grovelling" For Border Poll Off The Table, Say Socialist Republicans After Andy Burnham Comments

Socialist republicans across the board have condemned the recent comments of Andy Burnham, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party, in which he stated that a border poll for Irish unity is “off the table”, and vowed to keep fighting for the republican cause. 

The comments highlight that Britain never intended to keep its promise to Ireland, and adds credence to claims that the Good Friday Agreement was designed as a containment strategy to pacify the republican movement and nationalist communities in the South and the North of Ireland. 

It has certainly left Sinn Féin embarrassed, who have been working in Stormont to co-manage British occupation in the North of Ireland and insisted that the reformist path is correct on the path towards unity. With the illusion broken, socialist republicanism is amassing popular support across the 26 counties and the occupied 6. There is a palpable shift in the public mood. The working class is looking to the republican movement for leadership, while liberal, reformist constitutional nationalism is regarded as an empty promise from the British establishment, which will never deliver a United Ireland in which the working classes hold the keys to economic and political power. 

Socialist republicans from a variety of groups vowed to keep fighting for a 32-country socialist republic, as mass condemnation of Andy Burnham’s comments have taken place in Ireland.

The Anti-Imperialist Action (AIA) group, for instance, stated that his comments “expose the contradiction at the heart of the reformist strategy for national liberation”, adding that “for 3 decades, the Irish people have been sold a pup. The people have been told that managing British rule, rather than challenging it directly, would provide a pathway to ending it”. The group also remarked that the border poll is not a neutral mechanism. Rather, it is squarely in the hands of the British establishment. “Sinn Féin’s, People Before Profit’s and the SDLP’s constitutional strategies remained confined within parameters ultimately determined by the British State and it is time these opportunists and  their followers recognized that fact, “ the statement added. 

Lasair Dhearg stated that “despite being decades into a pacification process that has repeatedly promised a United Ireland as an 'inevitability', yesterday's remarks by British Prime Minister Andy Burnham that a unification border poll is 'off the table' should be a stark reminder to some delusional thinkers that a Socialist Republic will never be achieved through grovelling at the feet of the British or their sycophants in Ireland, “ adding that “a Socialist Republic in Ireland will never be achieved in a polling station. It will be achieved when working-class Irish people are willing to take it”.  

The Republican Socialist Youth Movement (RSYM) commented in an interview with Aontacht Media, that “the Good Friday Agreement was celebrated as a Republican win. Look at the agreement. Who has the power to grant us a referendum or a border poll or anything like that? It's a Secretary of State planted there by the Brits. So we can't turn around at any point and say, look, listen, we have a nationalist majority, give us our referendum, with any real leverage. They're going to turn around and say no, and we can't do anything about it, “ with the speaker also criticising Sinn Féin for its pro-EU, capitalist stance, and its milquetoast reaction to the comments. 

Republican Sinn Féin Poblachtach (RSF) noted that “twenty-eight years have passed since the signing of the Stormont Agreement (Good Friday Agreement), since then Provisional Sinn Féin have been promising the nationalist population a Border Poll. Every year it’s “only a matter of time” McGuinness, Adams, Mary Lou and O’Neill have repeated it on loop and their supporters have swallowed every word, “ and asserted that “the Stormont Agreement has done nothing but copper-fasten the partition of our country. In a recent Irish Times article on “dissident” Irish republicans, Dr. Johnny Byrne, senior lecturer in criminology at Ulster University, said “the trajectory toward normalisation only runs in one direction.” Normalising the British occupation of Ireland was, and still is, the central purpose of the Stormont Agreement, to extinguish the flame of Irish republicanism and secure permanent acceptance of the status quo”.

Saoradh released a statement which stressed that “republicanism doesn’t require permission drawn from a subsection of British statute. It stands on its own ground, rooted in the unfinished business of 1916, and in the plain fact that occupation of the six counties hasn’t ended simply because a party that once opposed it now runs its administration from Stormont. Sinn Féin swapped the certainty of struggle for the whim of a British minister’s discretion, and dressed that trade up as strategy, “ also adding that "nowhere in eight hundred years of history has freedom on this island ever arrived through a process built, owned, and freely ignorable by the very power occupying it”.

Éirígí and the 1916 Societies released a joint statement in which they noted that as “a nation, we will never reach our full potential until the scar of partition is erased and a new all-Ireland socialist republic is established and that “for decades, the establishment political parties have told the Irish people to wait quietly for reunification. That patience has been met with inaction and constitutional stagnation”. 

Republican Network For Unity (RNU) asserted that “the British government has no mandate to deny the Irish People our democratic right to unity. The constitutional future of Ireland is not a matter for Westminster to determine; and the constitutional future of Ireland does not concern any ‘’question’’ of Ireland unity, “ while noting that “for three decades now, the nationalist community has been strung along and told that the Good Friday Agreement created a peaceful pathway to Irish unification. This was presented as a ‘’democratic alternative’’. Let us be very clear as Republicans; the occupation of our country is not a ‘democratic’ situation, and furthermore, the touted mechanism for Irish Unity itself is clearly anti democratic as it is not only a mechanism confined to 6 of Ireland's 32 counties, but it has a British controlled triple lock mechanism securely in place”. 

These are not new observations. In fact, socialist republicans like Brendan “The Dark” Hughes, pointed out that Sinn Féin’s direction, participating not just in Stormont but in fact in co-governing with the British occupation, has led the party down a reformist path. He grew increasingly critical of Sinn Féin’s direction in the 1990s after the Good Friday Agreement (GFA), slamming them for selling out the cause and administering the British occupation in the 6 counties rather than fighting for liberation. Based on the acronym, he coined the term “Got Fuck All”, stressing that the agreement sold out working-class communities and the socialist cause for which republicans fought.