In light of the recent constitution of Conradh na Saoirse Náisiúnta, Plaid Gomiwnyddol Cymru and Conradh na Saoirse Náisiúnta deem it necessary to clearly set out our shared principles and to outline the primary tasks and challenges facing our revolutionary struggles.

As communists and republicans in nations close to the centre of global imperialism we have both a common enemy and a common responsibility. In spite of its decaying form, the British state, once the head of a global regime of slavery, colonialism and exploitation, remains a key pillar of the modern imperialist system through its financial capital and its role as a partner of the United States. It is impossible to disentangle the modern British state from a series of historical processes rooted in imperialism and exploitation, both at home and abroad. The pre-modern royal English state, followed by the establishment of the early modern British state by the 18th century, was built by a series of agricultural, mercantile and later industrial and financial capitalists from different national backgrounds who were united together in service of exploiting both those in the imperial core and the colonial periphery. Whether English, Scottish or Welsh, those same capitalists wielded the institutions of the British state to subjugate and exploit the working and oppressed peoples of the world, expanding across Ireland and then later into the Americas, Asia and Africa in service of the accumulation of capital, on which our modern world was built and on which contemporary systems of domination and exploitation remain.

The imperialist nature of the British state is immediately laid bare by its continued colonial domination of Ireland, both through its direct occupation of the six counties in the north and its semi-colonial subjugation of the twenty six county state. Further, the very concept of British national unity has been, from its inception, a tool of the exploiters. It enabled the construction of a stable base for imperial expansion through the integration and reconciliation of various non-English political and economic interests into a unified state project, as well as the integration of white workers from England, Scotland and Wales into a cultural paradigm of Britishness that placed them at the top of a global racial hierarchy, while enabling them to enjoy the proceeds of imperial exploitation in the form of cheap manufactured goods from the periphery and strong public services. This legacy has continued to today, from the use of British airbases in the current imperialist assault on Iran to the RAF spyplanes used to aid the genocide of the people of Palestine.

Failure to base their struggles on a concrete understanding of this reality has been one of the chief sources of error for working class and revolutionary organisations across these islands, manifesting primarily in right opportunism. This can be seen in the form of economism within large sections of the labour movement, resulting in collaboration with British imperialism to increase workers’ wages without actually addressing the fundamental relation of exploitation between workers in the imperial core and global periphery, to the dismissal of the national question in Britain as well as in Ireland, which precedes the tailism and reformism of many ostensibly communist organisations. This trend, and its relation to a lack of comprehension of both imperialism and Britain’s role in it as part of a global system of domination and exploitation, has become starkly illustrated by the abandonment of internationalist and anti-imperialist principles by swathes of the modern British communist movement, whilst maintaining a dogmatic stance against progressive national movements in Britain or Revolutionary Republican organisations in Ireland.

As such, Plaid Gomiwnyddol Cymru and Conradh na Saoirse Náisiúnta recognise it as our absolute duty to wage an incessant and unified struggle against both British capital and that of the Irish comprador bourgeoisie. The fight for the self-determination in all spheres, for sovereignty over our labour and land, for our national languages and cultures, and against the homogenising and exploitative rule of capital, is the basis for our joint struggle. Further, we recognise our responsibility, not just to struggle for our own liberation but equally to strike at the core of the imperialist system strangling the globe. We hold every struggle against imperialism, colonialism and capitalism to be fronts in the same war for liberation, from Palestine to the Philippines to Latin America. We do not accept unprincipled and capitulationist calls for peace but stand for the victory of the oppressed over their oppressors. We assert the absolute right of the oppressed to resist by any means necessary.

Our task then, is to reconstitute the communist and republican movements in these islands on a revolutionary basis. This will necessitate a decisive struggle against revisionism and opportunism, a break with any illusions of a path to socialism and liberation that will not require open antagonism with the British and twenty six county states, and with the capitalist class interests of which they are an expression. The abandonment of the necessary conclusions of this basic fact, that the forces of capitalism and imperialism will not willingly cede power to the working class, has ultimately led to the current state of disorganisation and impotence afflicting much of the so-called left in our nations. Our task as communists must be to construct and consolidate independent organs of working class power and to unite them behind a common strategy aimed at the attainment of proletarian political power. Our strategy must be based in the concrete conditions in which we find ourselves. A strategy continually developed through study, class analysis and through constant reciprocal connection with the masses. Identifying the contradictions inherent in our societies and utilising them as a basis for revolutionary transformation.

Without this strategic class-based analysis we would inevitably fall into the mistakes that have come to characterise the left in the developed world. Without a common strategy and clear understanding of the state as a weapon of class rule, disparate movements rise and fall, at times achieving fragile concessions but unable to challenge the power of capital. The subordination of the strategic interests of our class to its immediate interests, resulting in repetition of past mistakes and economistic collaboration in an attempt to cling onto the crumbs of imperialism. A lack of connection with the masses leading to the tailing of an abstract idea of “the working class” manifesting in reactionary and chauvinistic political lines. We repudiate this. The fight against all forms of bigotry and oppression, against racism, misogyny, transphobia, homophobia and any manifestation of sectarianism or chauvinism is an integral part of our struggle. A fight that cannot be postponed or confined to the new society we are striving to build but one that must be carried out continually and uncompromisingly in the here and now, in every aspect of our practice.

Ultimately, Plaid Gomiwnyddol Cymru and Conradh na Saoirse Náisiúnta assert that our goals of national and social liberation cannot be achieved in isolation. The conditions of our people and of our struggles in Ireland and Wales cannot be separated from the international struggle against imperialism. In an attempt to extricate themselves from the present crisis of capitalism, the imperialists of the US and Europe are escalating the violence with which they struggle to maintain their dominance. It is in this context, the genocidal war against Palestine and across West Asia, the assault on resistance in Latin America, the inhuman exploitation of the peoples of Africa, that we must fight. As the British and twenty six county states actively participate in and abet these crimes, for the benefit of the same class of exploiters which rule parasitically over us at home, our task becomes clear. The questions of independent class organisation, of political power, must become both strategic and material priorities. It is our duty to identify the revolutionary forces within our societies and to unite and organise them for the struggle that the escalating crises of imperialism will necessitate. Our fight for social and national liberation can take no other form than the fight for independent, unified, socialist republics of Ireland and Wales, utilising the contradictions inherent in British imperialism to tear it apart, as part of the global war of the exploited against the exploiters.