James Connolly Society Debate the Way Forward

them. We _ need to challenge them but not by copying them.The H block-Armagh movement showed that it is possible to appyoach workers from outside the Labour movement and win support. And we can learn from our mistakes then by also working seriously and consistently in the labour movement.Here a great challenge faces the republican movement. It has shown a new openness, a new enthusiasm and )a new level of organisation in relation to the working class.But it has yet to put forward new policies to deal with the economic crisis and this is an essential element in building a. real movement of the working class.

Apart from these strategic difficulties, there is a more general political problem facing the anti-imperialist movement. The decision to stand in elections was pre-dated by a long discussion around the old argment - ‘If elect‘ions could achieve anything they would make them illegal.’

Sinn Fein’s victories have settled this to. some extent without clarifying the role of elections in the revolutionary process.We in Peoples Democracy believe that revolutions are made by the mass of the people rather than by individual _groups no matter how large or well organised. People must free themselves.They cannot be freed by an external “agency.

The sort of debate that the Connolly Society is holding tonight is of great value to the activists who attend but it doesn’t reach the mass of working people. They learn from their own experience and_ their own actions.It is here that elections are’ important. Through elections, revolutionaries win a platform in_ political debate.They win sections of the working class to their program and in voting for this program workers ‘take a first step.Its up _ to revolutionaries to present them with the next step of uniting in mass struggle against capitalism and imperialism.

Its the job of revolutionaries to prepare and organise and unify the struggle to pose the “question of power.Thats why we need a revolutionary party and thats what Peoples Democracy is fighting to build.

There are many problems to be _ resolved. But there are also many opportunities.The main point is that we do not have to resolve all these problems now. ‘*The first thing before we can discuss the way forward is to take into account not only recent events and _ developments, not only revolutionary strategy but the tradition of nationalist resistance in the North. Since partuun tett the people of the North isolated and condemned, through the civils rights struggle and the process of armed struggle, the nationalist people of the North have come back time and time again and have borne every cross forced upon them.

Milt is extremely important to understand that out of that nationalist tradition there was always a republican movement which had potential - revolutionary potential - to be radical Many will resolve tnemselves in action. What we do need to do is to unite together to build united action.Gerry Adams’ recent speech advocating passive resistance to the British occupation is a welcome move in this direction. We should not delay but come together now to build a movement of the working class that can throw out the imperialists and their capitalist collaborators and put forward the real solution to the crisis of imperialism’ = ‘an~Irish Workers’ Republic!. and which was of th people. From th Struggle - from civ rights through arme struggle, through th heroic sacrifice of te young men, and if nee had been women j Armagh gaol, on hunge strike throughout 1981 what they represente was genuine grievance genuine determinatio ‘and grit of a peopl determined to be fre ‘And we have {1 appreciate that, we hav to look at why the exists, we have to exam ine why that doesn largely exist in th twenty-six counties an what has contributed that development, whe is behind partition, whi is behind the drivin force of the Irish revo ution, which | believ is the Republica