It
is often demanded of the Republican dissidents
that they produce a fully drafted political program,
and that they put this before the nationalist
electorate. Of course, the Shinners jest when
they make such demands, for they are well aware
that those they so contemptuously term "dissidents"
are firmly within the Irish Republicanism tradition,
whilst they themselves teeter on its brink these
days. Otherwise, why would they spend so much
energy attempting to discredit the Dissidents?
After all, they have few local councillors; and
no TDs, MPs or MLAs. No matter, for the Shinners
understand clearly from their own history, it's
the potential of any group that poses the threat.
The more so if it represents an idea seeped in
history whose day may well come again, given a
slight change in the current situation, or if
it opposes a seedy republican organization which
is well past its sell by date.
Those
who follow Ruairi O'Bradaigh are set in the most
traditional of Republican moulds and with RSF
have a full political platform which includes
abstention form the Dail and Northern Assembly.
Indeed it is a program Gerry Adams is extremely
familiar with, as he spent years trooping around
Ireland calling on young volunteers to go to war
under its banner.
Thus
Mr Adams, of all people, understands what a potent
brew O'Bradaigh's program can be to young patriotic
minds, and he must be conscious of the fact that
if his younger SF members were to study RSF Éire
Nua, it might make them question who the actual
dissident is when it comes to Mr Adams and Ruairi
O'Bradaigh.
O'Bradaigh sticks rigidly to the terms of the
oath he swore to the Irish Republic as a young
volunteer, which is after all the whole purpose
of swearing an oath of allegiance. Gerry Adams
flip-flops all over the place, having long ago
carelessly tossed his own oath of allegiance to
the Irish Republic, along with his honor, into
the dustbin of history, whilst demanding of his
membership that they abide by their loyalty —
not to the Republic, but its mockney President,
Gerry Adams.
Adams
proclaims to his northern party membership that
all has changed, changed utterly, and Republicans
must recognize the State they live in and its
institutions, including, it now seems, the PSNI
or to use its former name, the RUC.
O'Bradaigh
see little real political change of the sort he
has spent his life fighting for, simple yet more
political maneuvers and shenanigans by Perfidious
Albion, designed to pull the teeth of the Republican
Movement and confuse and disorientate Irish patriots.
O'Bradaigh notes the butchers-apron still flies
above the institutions of the State-let within
the north east of Ireland, and at their master's
whim the British army and the PSNI still patrol
the streets and hamlets of a part of nationalist
Ireland.
Loyalist
bigots, the heirs of those who have tormented
the nationalist working classes since the northern
state-let's inception, still block the way to
full democracy, refusing to sit as equals with
Adams' republicans in the gerrymandered State-let's
Stormont Assembly, whilst demanding that it is
Irish republicans and the communities from whence
they come who must compromise and bend the knee,
as if they were the guilty party and the obscenity
that was Northern Ireland between 1922-69 never
existed.
Adams
exclaims it might seem so, but all that is needed
is trust in the British and all will be well,
for they have no selfish intent or strategic interest,
for that is all in the past. Tell that to the
Iraqi people, one might howl back in fury as Adams
demands of his party just one more compromise,
although of course he uses the Neo-conservative/New-Labour
doublespeak to cover the fact that he is asking
of his 'republican family' that they become Quislings,
without a thought to the fact that if compromise
was the road to take, Ireland would have been
free long ago. Stoops and chuckies of all types
have always cried compromise, trust the British
State whilst they themselves lived high on the
hog, leaving it for the Irish working classes
to pick up the tab for such crass stupidity.
It might seem a tough choice, the bearded one
cries, but once it is done we will all feel better
and we can get on with the rest of our lives,
as if he were a branch-man advising his prisoner
to admit their offense, get it off their chest
and they will feel much better. (Even though it
will mean they serve a forty year stretch.)
