We serve neither Trump nor FF-FG Taoisigh but the Irish working class

Although Donald Trump's comments on Irish unity this weekend may have come as a surprise (and as an unpleasant shock to certain corners of unionism), one must consider what sort of united Ireland that Trump and his ilk would actually approve of. Regardless of their view, we must strive to build a 32-county socialist republic for the Irish working class.

Trump is a representative of the American capitalist class. Their ideal Ireland is a subservient one, where the corporate tax rate is so low that it can be exploited by multinational corporations such as Apple and Google, where our neutrality is done away with in favour of bulking up NATO's war efforts, and where we ultimately take our place as yet another suck-up state of questionable sovereignty in the American-led world order.

As is presently clear in the twenty-six counties, this set-up is not one that benefits the Irish people. The state, thanks to successive complicit Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael comprador regimes, might be a great little place to do business in, but not for working people to live in. Prioritising the wants of the international capitalist class has kept workers low down in the pecking order. While the multinational corporations get low taxes, the rest of us get crises of housing, healthcare, and cost-of-living.

Such a set-up, or indeed the extension of its jurisdiction, is not the end goal for those of us who wish to see a truly independent, united, and prosperous Ireland.

In his presidential address to the 1968 Ard Fheis, Tomás Mac Giolla stated that “it must be made clear that republicans do not ask the people of the six counties to come into the existing twenty-six-county state. We would not wish that fate on anyone”. Instead, Mac Giolla said that republicans ask the people of Ireland to join together in order to abolish both states, which serve the interests of imperialism, and to establish “a Democratic Socialist Republic for the whole island in which the workers who create the wealth decide how and where it is used”.

In Farmleigh House, Trump described Micheál Martin as “the right man to get [Irish unity] moving”. The reality, however, is that the Taoiseach and this government have made little effort to plan for the prospect of Irish unity. A Citizen's Assembly, for example, has yet to be called to attempt to resolve discrepancies between the two jurisdictions or to address broader political concerns that people might have.

A united Ireland offers the opportunity to build a state that is better than either of the two jurisdictions that exist at present, and now is the time to plan for it. For socialist republicans, this must mean pushing the interests of the Irish working class to the forefront of the debate, regardless of how any American president might view it, while still keeping our eyes on the ultimate prize of a 32-county socialist republic.