The following oration was delivered by party president Michael McCorry at the Workers’ Party’s 2025 Wolfe Tone commemoration in Bodenstown, Co. Kildare.

Comrades and friends,

We gather here today at Bodenstown, at the grave of Theobald Wolfe Tone, not only to honour the past, but to renew our commitment to the unfinished work of the United Irishmen. Tone’s vision was simple yet revolutionary: to break down the walls of sectarian division, to unite Protestant, Catholic, and Dissenter, and to build a republic founded on liberty, equality, and fraternity.

That vision remains unfulfilled. More than two centuries later, the Irish people still endure injustice, forced upon us not only by the British ruling class, but also by our domestic Irish capitalist class, as well as their counterparts in America and Europe. In order to challenge that, it is part of our task, as Tone declared, to “substitute the common name of Irishman in the place of Protestant, Catholic, and Dissenter.” We must also remember that, in the articulation of their politics, the United Irishmen did not simply stop at that most progressive understanding of Irish unity. Tone wrote that, and I quote, “the aristocracy of Ireland, which exists only by our slavery and is maintained in its pomp and splendor by the sale of our lives, liberties and properties, will tumble in the dust; the people will be no longer mocked with a vain appearance of a parliament over which they have neither influence nor control.” Is this quote, comrades, not something from which we can draw parallels today?

This perspective has always been a key tenet of Irish republicanism. It was carried forward from 1798 into 1803, as well as during the Fenian Uprising of 1867, where their proclamation declared that “the soil of Ireland, at present in the possession of an oligarchy, belongs to us, the Irish people, and to us it must be restored. In his 1916 pamphlet entitled The Sovereign People, Padraig Pearse said: “Let no man be mistaken as to who will be lord in Ireland when Ireland is free. The people will be lord and master.” James Connolly took these assessments and more to their logical conclusion, explicitly linking Irish republicanism to socialism.

At present, comrades, we face a housing crisis that, owing to the sell-off of publicly-owned housing and land, has robbed a generation of security and prosperous livelihoods. Families live in substandard conditions, young people are forced into emigration, while vulture funds and landlords make millions from public misery. We face a health crisis, where services are underfunded and overstretched, where healthcare workers, working in poor conditions to secure a wholly inadequate standard of living, are leaving the system and the country in despair, and where access to care depends too often on income rather than need. The background for these crises is a decade of austerity, imposed by governments who told us it was necessary, while banks, developers, and profiteers walked away unscathed. The result has been poverty, insecurity, and a cost-of-living crisis that forces working families to choose between heating and food, between paying the rent and paying the bills. Even today, when the country has supposedly recovered economically, this remains the case.

These crises are not accidental. They are the inevitable outcome of a system designed to protect the wealthy and powerful at the expense of the people. Wolfe Tone and The United Irishmen rose against the old order of privilege and exploitation – today, we must do the same.

Working people will not be rescued by charity from above, and economic wealth will not simply trickle down. Change will only come through organisation from below. That means strong trade unions, rooted in every workplace, defending wages, defending rights, and giving workers the confidence to fight back. And it means building a strong Workers’ Party, unashamedly on the side of the Irish working class – a party that fights for homes as a right, for healthcare as a service not a business, for dignity in our labour, and for a united and socialist Irish Republic that serves the interests of the many and not simply the few.

With all of this in mind, we must also remember, as the United Irishmen understood, that Ireland does not exist in a vacuum. We remember Tone’s internationalism. He looked to France, to America, to revolutions beyond Ireland’s shores, knowing that their own struggle was bound up with the struggles of the oppressed everywhere. Today, that spirit calls us to stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine, enduring bombardment, occupation, and genocide. Their cause is our cause. Our solidarity must be as global as the system that exploits and oppresses us.

Comrades, Bodenstown is not simply a place of remembrance. It is a place of renewal. When we gather here, we remind ourselves that Tone’s dream did not die with him. It lives in us, in our movement, and in every worker who dares to stand up and say “enough is enough.”

We honour Wolfe Tone not by mourning, but by fighting. By standing shoulder to shoulder in the workplaces, in the housing estates, in our workplace, on our streets. By rejecting sectarianism and division. By carrying forward the banner of unity, equality, and solidarity. We must do so by rebuilding a strong Workers’ Party very seriously, comrades. There is a need in Irish politics for a party such as ours, a party unashamedly in favour of class politics and on the side of working people, but it can only exist if those of us here today are committed to action. This means branches getting out into our communities, showing our neighbours that the Workers’ Party exists and is on their side, not just on the bigger political questions of the day, but also on small and local issues. Before we can convince the masses of our ideology, we must first build trust and reputation for our party. Each and every one of us here today must play a role in doing so.

Tone once wrote that he looked forward to the day when the common name of Irishman shall be a name of honour. Today, let us vow to add to that: when the name of worker is also a name of power.

Comrades, the best tribute we can pay here at Bodenstown is to organise, to fight, and to win.

Go raibh maith agaibh.