Comrades,

On behalf of the Ard Chomhairle of the Workers’ Party, I’d like to wish a Happy New Year to all working people, especially to the members, supporters and friends of the Workers’ Party.

2024 was yet another challenging year for working people in Ireland; the cost-of-living continued to negatively impact the lives of working families, the housing crisis carried on as our young people were forced to choose between the sky-high private rental market, living with their parents or emigration, and tensions around the issue of immigration continued to feature in news headlines.

Unfortunately, it appears that we will have to deal with these issues and more once again in 2025. In the south, a Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil coalition, likely with the support of a number of independent TDs, seems inevitable following the results of the most recent general election. This unfortunately means that we can expect business as usual in the new year. During the election campaign, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil acted as if they were not one of the same, despite having worked together in government for the best part of the last decade, and despite both parties sharing the same broad political vision. The notion that there are any significant differences between the two parties is beginning to fade away in the eyes of many, who have realised that they represent the same capitalist and landlord class, and believe in the same basic idea that Ireland’s ambition should stretch no further than to be but another subsidiary of the American empire. While Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil do not wish to rock the boat with regards to our internal affairs, which is to say that they are happy to accept the few crumbs of corporation tax that they need to maintain our shambolic economy and state, they have perhaps realised in 2024 that even their symbolic gestures of support towards Palestine, for example, will raise the eyebrows of their puppet masters in Washington. While the two historically largest parties might think that they are able to walk this tight rope while balancing a reliance on the United States with some sort of Irish sovereignty, it should be clear to the rest of us that any serious and meaningful implementation of the latter, and thus, our ability to improve the lives of the Irish working class, would seriously unsettle the status quo. This shows up the 26-county state for what it really is: a puppet state, first of British imperialism and now of American imperialism, unable to escape from the overreliance on imperialist powers on which it was established.

It was notable that, despite a modest increase in seats, Sinn Féin yet again appears to have no path to government. This is, in the foremost, because Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil would rather do business with one another than Sinn Féin. It does, however, beg the question of what an alternative government could look like the next time around: Sinn Féin themselves have already shown in the north that they are not above implementing policies that many of their supporters in the south would rightly criticise Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil for, while Labour and the Greens have shown themselves to be unprincipled parties of the left after their stints in government over the past decade. The Social Democrats, though unsullied by any coalition with Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil, have had their own controversy since the general election, namely around a TD and his profiting from the ongoing Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people. People Before Profit, in no small part due to the tensions around the issue of immigration, have come across to many working people in the south as a primarily socially liberal party. In other words, even if the numbers were there on the left, it is difficult to imagine that class politics would dominate the agenda of any alternative government.

In the north, the Protocol, legacy issues from the Troubles, and issues surrounding healthcare and infrastructure have dominated the agenda. The issue of the Protocol continues to see many unionists unhappy about what they view as a line of partition being drawn between the north and Britain down the Irish Sea. The Troubles Legacy Act, brought in by the previous Conservative government, has shut down historical inquests relating to deaths during the Troubles, leaving many families without closure. Though the current Labour government has committed to repealing key aspects of the legislation, many families and victims groups remain unhappy with the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery, which the government have indicated their intent to retain, unfortunately likely leaving a long road ahead before closure and true justice will finally see the light of day. Privatisation continues within the NHS. This is part of an ongoing ideological battle between those of us who defend the vision of the NHS, of a healthcare system that does not discriminate based on ability to pay, and those who wish to profit from the difference between life and death. In a similar vein, Stormont’s slashing of the one-off winter fuel payment, from £200 or £300 to £100, is yet another example of the neoliberal thinking that wishes to undermine the idea of the state caring for the welfare of the people.

26 years on from the Good Friday Agreement, the 2024 Westminster election, and the 2022 Stormont election, perhaps exemplify the legacy of the historic deal: yes, there is relative peace, but we remain a highly-divided society, with the fact that we have 9 nationalist MPs and 8 unionist MPs, almost an even split, and 35 nationalist MLAs and 36 unionist MLAs, making up almost 80% of seats in Stormont, illustrating that fact. The major failure of the Good Friday Agreement has always been that it has never moved anything beyond this uneasy peace. This may have been difficult to imagine during the Troubles, but over one quarter of a century later, we must attempt to move on even further. Our schools remain segregated, there are more peace walls in Belfast today than before the Good Friday Agreement and, truthfully, we remain as divided as ever. Our politicians spend so much time playing to their respective sectarian galleries that working people here are left worse off in many respects than our counterparts in the south or in Britain.

Internationally, 2024 has been a trying time for those of us with an anti-imperialist viewpoint. The ongoing Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people continues with the full support of the United States, the United Kingdom and NATO. Countries with governments that appear sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinian people, such as Ireland, seem to do little beyond offer symbolic gestures. The overthrow of the government in Syria by Islamist terrorists, or moderate rebels as they are referred to by the Western media, is a coup victory for the imperialist United States. Closer to their own shores, the economic blockade against socialist Cuba has continued, leading to an energy crisis in the country. The war in Ukraine, the ultimate cause of which was NATO’s drive at expansion and attempt to encircle Russia, continues on, with hundreds of thousands dying due to the refusal of the United States to tolerate a power existing outside of its dollar hegemony. With all of this said, 2024 has also seen the growth and coming together of anti-imperialist political forces across the world. The World Anti-imperialist Platform, established in 2022, has coordinated a number of activities internationally in 2024 and helped to establish links between like-minded communists across the world. Though we may be few in number at present, we are growing, and through proper analysis of the geopolitical situation and greater cooperation, we can build up an international anti-imperialist movement capable of extending solidarity across all of the world’s continents, learning from each other’s experiences and bettering our organisations together.

As is the case in many Western countries, there is little in the way of a significant class analysis of Irish politics from any of the parties represented in the Dáil, Stormont or Westminster. While some may view class as one out of many struggles, and perhaps even elevate it above most others, they fail to recognise it for what it truly is: the great uniter of the vast majority in our society. To take the immigration issue as one example, some on the left choose to view it not through the lens of class politics but through a left-liberal prism. It is not enough simply to reject racism and xenophobia, in our response as socialists, we must seriously analyse the cause of the growth of the far-right in working class communities, and adopt sensible, socialist policies that can deal not only with the issue itself but those that underpin it. The continued growth of the far-right, as seen not only in Ireland but also in Britain and Europe, cannot be tackled in any other way.

The Workers’ Party wishes to once again become a mass socialist republican party of and for the working class as we were in the past, and we are under no illusions as to the difficulties that lie ahead in order to achieve this. At present, there is limited support in Irish society for such a party, as demonstrated not only by our own results in the most recent local elections, but also by the results of others on the left. We must continue the process of rebuilding from the ground up, which requires spending considerable time and effort evaluating the issues of the day and our responses to them, while continuing to work in the working class communities in which our members and branches are based. As well as this, we will continue to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people and others fighting imperialism around the world, we will continue to partake in the conversation around what a united Ireland should look like, and we will continue to push for a fighting trade union movement alongside other like-minded groups and individuals.

We will enter 2025 with lessons learned and with the politics of Tone, Marx, Connolly, Lenin, Mellows, Garland, MacGiolla, Goulding, O’Hagan and others in mind, and commit ourselves once again to the cause of establishing a 32-county socialist republic on the island of Ireland. Once again, we would like to wish for a joyous and prosperous 2025 to all people of our class, the working class.

In solidarity,
Michael McCorry
President of the Workers’ Party