Public Meeting Calls for Break with EU, America and the British for a Sovereign Ireland
A meeting organised in Connolly Books on Saturday heard calls to reclaim Ireland’s sovereignty from the trifecta of the European Union, American foreign direct investment and British occupation in the North.
László Molnárfi
A meeting organised in Connolly Books on Saturday heard calls to reclaim Ireland’s sovereignty from the trifecta of the European Union, American foreign direct investment and British occupation in the North.
The meeting was hosted to promote Eoghan O’Neill’s new book, titled Breaking Dependency: Ireland’s Struggle for Class Power and Sovereignty, which discusses the necessary struggle ahead of the working class to break Ireland’s dependency on foreign countries.
Presenting his book, O’Neill said: “In the North, dependency was anchored in British capital, industry, and state subsidy, and in the South, dependency was reorganised around agrarian exports and later around multinational capital and global finance. So, different forms but the same underlying relationships”, he said, adding that these are “different structures but the same outcome: limited sovereignty and a working class divided within the same island”.
“This is the world we live in. And if you don't grasp that, or just don't want to grasp that, then all you do is fill the ranks of a class you actually don't belong to. So while Ireland does not just reflect capitalism, it reflects a specific form of capitalism, a dependent form, and Ireland sits within that system in a very particular way.”
The alternative to Ireland’s dependency on foreign powers, he said, is “democratic planning, public ownership, production organised for needs, construction progress projects organised at local, regional, national level”.
This was met with support from attendees, who asked questions relating to the struggle ahead for a sovereign Ireland, and on the slow process of building working class power in communities.
“The task is clear: to move from analysis to action, from fragmentation to unity, from dependency to sovereignty, because the system we live under is not permanent,” O’Neill concluded.
Copies of the book are available from Connolly Books on Essex Street in Dublin city centre, or can be purchased online via the website.
