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Friends
and Comrades the leadership of the INLA wish to take
this opportunity to once again pay tribute to Volunteer
Neil McMonagle and to all our other volunteers who
died in the struggle for national liberation and socialism.
All our volunteers were of the working class and for
the working class. They fought not for personal greed
or personal advancement but for the liberation of
the Irish working class from both foreign Imperialism
and native capitalism. Like Neil they were heroes
one and all. We salute them. May we also place on
the public record and pay homage to, and express our
admiration and respect for other republican volunteers
no matter which organisation they came from, who over
the past thirty years also sacrificed their lives
in the struggle for the Republic.
They
died during the recent armed conflict. Revolutionaries
know that the one thing you can be sure of is change.
Life changes, societies change and people change.
Accordingly the tactics of revolutionaries have to
adapt to these changes. This leadership knew that
the phase of armed struggle had come to an end for
this generation when the people of Ireland voted for
the Good Friday Agreement. We acted accordingly, called
a ceasefire and began the long process of readapting
to the new situation by increasing the politicisation
of the whole movement. We call on our friends, supporters
and members to turn in the absence of armed struggle
to political activity, to listen to the concerns of
the people, to share their hardships and struggles
and to continue to organise
Challenging
times lie ahead for us all after the current elections
are over. It is not the function of this army to tell
people who to vote for or even to vote or not vote.
People are intelligent and wise enough to make their
own decisions. While we may not like their decisions
the decisions should be respected. Too often in the
past the people have been relegated to a sideline
role, mere spectators while others decided their fate.
No matter what political settlement is cobbled together
we can say without fear of contradiction that it will
not solve the fundamental contradictions within the
Northern Statlet. Whether we face a new power sharing
administration, direct rule or joint sovereignty the
twin evils of sectarianism and poverty will remain.
The national question and the class question are indissolubly
linked.
To
those who adhere to the beliefs of Connolly we say
this is not the time for republican socialists to
do nothing. There needs to be a realignment of those
who are in opposition to an internal Stormont settlement,
are for working class unity and oppose the neo-liberal
economic agenda that the last power-sharing executive
implemented. That has to be the major political tasks
of the day.
For
ourselves we wish to reiterate that this Army will
remain true to the fundamental principles of our founder
Seamus Costello and will play our part in the building
of the Socialist Republic as an army of the people
and for the people.
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