Why not the Good Friday Agreement?

People ask, ‘why not support the Good Friday Agreement’, ‘why not support a document that favours peace over war’, ‘why not support an agreement that creates a chance of peace for Ireland?’

The Good Friday Agreement is, yet, another agreement written up by the British Government, on their terms and signed by Irish representatives who claim to be fighting, through whatever means, to establish an 32 county Irish Republic which cannot happen under the current British and Irish Government rulings. Their rulings favour the rich and promise to protect property, wealth and natural resources from the working people of Ireland, the same people who built this country. We favour an Ireland where everyone works and everyone reaps the rewards from the country's wealth and natural resources.

The Good Friday Agreement grants a minority Unionist Veto over a united Ireland, it institutionalises Sectarianism and creates yet another stumbling block for the Republic and its supporters. All of this is made possible at the direction of the supporters of the Good Friday Agreement.

The supporters of the Good Friday Agreement have waved POW status for Republican prisoners, painting them as criminals and have sold out the Irish hunger-strikers of 1981 by supporting an agreement that has secured the criminalisation of their cause and the retraction of the demands fought for, through peaceful means and which led to their deaths. Supporters of the Good Friday Agreement seem to have forgotten that it is the hunger strikers of 1981 amongst others who brought our struggle to the attention of the world and gained international support for our fight for justice.

Those who stand against the Good Friday Agreement are standing for a nation built on equal rights, justice, true peace, the opposition of exploitation of all of its peoples and that the wealth and resources of Ireland be handed back, and with direct control, to the people of Ireland. Not to any church or any wealthy elite but to the working people with representation from an elected body, through democratic vote, within their communities.

The only way of achieving this is by completely opposing British and corporate Imperialism and building an Irish Republic that is a socialist state by definition. A state built by normal people for normal people. Like shop built by those who also use such shops, it will outshine those built by the wealthy. This is what is feared by the wealthy elite in Downing Street, Washington and Lenister house as it will topple those corrupt ‘leaders’ from their position of corrupted powers and this is also why such powers support the Good Friday Agreement as a 'peace agreement'.

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