NEWS FROM SAOIRSE (freedom). The Voice of the Irish Republican Movement. Republican Sinn Féin http://rsf.ie 223 Parnell Street, Dublin 1 229 Falls Road, Belfast

GREETINGS to Republican Sinn Féin gathered for your 98th Ard Fheis. This year rolls on by and individuals grow old, but principles and final goals never change. They remain, like our heroic dead, unchangeable and unchanged now and forever.

Young people, no doubt, think more of the present, but a review of the past will help them to face current issues and a future which they will have to make. The late Commander Thomas Maguire, issued a statement in 1986 which was clear and concise. The Irish Republic proclaimed in 1916 and ratified by the democratic vote of the Irish people in the General Election of 1918 has been defended by Irish Republicans for several generations. Many have laid down their lives in that defence. Many others suffered imprisonment and torture.

I am confident that the cause so nobly served will finally triumph. This great Apostle and Legendary figure stated that there was no difference between entering the Partition Parliament of Leinster House and the Partition Parliament of Stormont. Both institutions were established by the Empire of Hell aided and abetted by naïve hirelings and drenched in the blood of Irish Socialist Republicans. Reviewing the heroic centuries old, anti-Imperialist struggle of the past as it joins the present and runs into the future.

All you assembled today with your undaunted President, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh and his comrades are part of the heroic tradition of those who remained unbought, unbroken and unrepentant until they drew their last dying breath.

To name just a few: Tom Maguire, Michael Flannery, John Snee, Paul O'Dwyer, Paddy McLogan, Tony Magan, Tómas McCurtáin, Aidan Durkan, Mary McSwiney, Eoin McNamee, Maud Gonne McBride, Constance Markievicz, Charlotte Despard, Liam Cotter, Tom Falvey, John Joe Martin, Dáithí O'Conaill, Michael Quill and Gerald O'Reilly.

I have rambled on too long so I conclude with a few words on behalf of those who have been absent from the land that bore us for long years or decades and will never see our motherland again.

Wherever death may find us, it will be welcome if our battle cry has reached even one receptive ear and other voices join in our funeral dirge with the rattle of machine guns and new cries of battle and victory.

In conclusion, next Summer (2003) marks the 200th anniversary of the imperialist assassination of one of Ireland's great apostles, Robert Emmett, who died heroically for his country and with a smile. There will be many memorial gatherings and some may suggest that it is time Emmett's epitaph was written. I disagree, the revolution of power which he sought still awaits fulfilment. Only representatives of a free and united Irish socialist Republic are entitled to render to Emmett this final tribute.

Get western imperialism out of the Middle East, let the people of Iraq decide their own future and select their own leaders.

Dump Butcher Bush.

— George Harrison

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SAOIRSE -- Irish Freedom, 223 Parnell Street, Dublin 1, Ireland
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Web layout by SAOIRSE -- Irish Freedom November 9, 2002  Send links, events notifications, articles, comments etc, to the editor at: saoirse@iol.ie.