Comrades and friends,
On behalf of the Robert Emmet 1916 Society, it is an honour to stand in Manchester to commemorate three bold Fenians—William Allen, Michael Larkin, and Michael O’Brien—whose courage continues to fuel our unfinished struggle. We are not spectators of history, but participants in a living revolution.
Empire believed it could hang an idea in 1867. Yet, the names of the Manchester Martyrs endure because the cause they stood for—national liberation and social revolution—cannot be silenced, imprisoned, or killed. The noose that ended their lives is the same instrument of class terror that today tightens around the necks of the working class from Belfast to Birmingham, from Derry to Dundee, from Cork to Cardiff.
Let us be clear: the oppression facing the Irish working class and the working class in Britain is one and the same struggle.
The same landlords, the same monopolies, the same imperialist interests, and the same political class enrich themselves at our collective expense. Working people here in Britain are hammered by neoliberal austerity, stripped of dignity, and denied democratic control—the very same system that has oppressed Ireland for centuries and still denies its national sovereignty. The ruling class uses borders to divide us, but capitalist exploitation recognises no borders.
The Manchester Martyrs were workers, radicalised by hunger and the daily brutality of empire. They understood a fundamental truth: oppression is not a flaw in the system; it is the system. Their execution was not a warning to the Irish people; it was proof of what empire does to those who dare to challenge its authority.
We stand today in solidarity not only with Ireland’s oppressed but with Britain’s working poor, migrants, tenants, and precarious workers—all crushed by the same capitalist machine. Our liberation is bound together. The interests of the Irish and British working classes are one. We are allies in a shared struggle against capital, empire, and hierarchy.
Our struggle is international, from Glasgow to Gaza. The same imperialist machinery that starved Ireland and executed the Martyrs today perpetuates a genocide in Palestine. The suffering of Gaza is empire laid bare. The same logic creates man-made famines, forces millions into poverty, and crafts laws to protect its own barbarism. From the Diplock courts in the Six Counties to the incarceration of Palestine Action activists in British jails—our solidarity is with all political prisoners in the dungeons of imperialism. But solidarity is not enough; we demand their release, from Ireland to England and everywhere! We are committed to overthrowing the very system that cages them.
Empire never ended; it simply rebranded. Today it hides behind stock exchanges, NATO summits, EU security frameworks, and the illusion of bourgeois democracy. The ruling class crosses borders freely—their wealth, their corporations, their influence moves without restriction—while they insist that borders must divide the rest of us. They weaponise race, religion, and nationality to keep us divided, because a united working class—Irish, British, Palestinian—is the one force they truly fear.
In the occupied Six Counties, the Stormont assembly functions exactly as designed: a colonial parliament implementing British rule. It is a place where constitutional nationalists administer policies from London while masquerading as advocates for Irish freedom. They do not challenge British power; they manage it. They are the local administrators of occupation.
South of the British-imposed border, the comprador class in Dublin has abandoned even the pretence of an independent Ireland, let alone the Socialist Republic proclaimed in 1916. They would rather align the 26-County state with EU militarism, NATO-interoperability, and the demands of multinational capital. They serve everything except the Irish people.
These institutions will not liberate us. These parties will not save us. The governments, North or South, cannot deliver justice because they are designed to protect property, not people.
Our class has never lacked courage—from the United Irishmen to the Fenians, from the heroic women of Cumann na mBan to the Hunger Strikers of 1981. What we lack today is working-class organisation powerful enough to reshape society at its roots. We must build a parallel power structure: not inside their parliaments of the rich, not by begging for scraps, but by organising our own democratic institutions. Workers’ councils, tenants’ unions, people’s assemblies, and networks of solidarity.
This is the path James Connolly and the Irish Citizen Army envisioned: a Workers’ Republic created by workers themselves, not granted by Westminster, Stormont, or Leinster House. Connolly knew liberation would come only when the working class, Irish and British alike, built its own institutions of power. This is the Socialist Republic Bobby Sands died for in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh—a republic of equality, dignity, and justice. Sands and his comrades did not hunger strike for a seat in a colonial parliament, but for the right of the oppressed to shape their own destiny. We honour them by completing what they began.
Our solidarity must be borderless. If empire recognises no borders in its repression, then we recognise no borders in our resistance.
The names Allen, Larkin, and O’Brien are not relics of the past. They are a call to action—to confront empire, capitalism, racism, and genocide.
Today, we declare that we are finished with:
- Austerity.
- Occupation.
- Governments that serve capital instead of people.
- Accepting the world as it is.
The struggle continues. Irish and British workers, united. From Ireland to Palestine, from Cuba to Venezuela—wherever empire shackles our class, our struggles converge. Not as nationalists, but as revolutionary internationalists.
We will continue until we build the Workers’ Republic, a Socialist Republic, a world rooted in equality and liberation. Not the world we inherited, but the world we win.
To paraphrase the Marxist Antonio Gramsci: The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: in this interregnum, a great variety of morbid symptoms appear. Together, let us be the midwives of the new world. Hasta la Victoria Siempre!
Tiocfaidh Ár Lá!
