On Saturday 10 May, Irish Neutrality League put on a 'Rally for Peace' in the Gresham Hotel on Dublin’s O’Connell St. Over 200 people attended.
The event was organised and chaired by the Irish Neutrality League (INL). Sara O’Rourke, speaking for INL noted that the group took its name from the Irish Neutrality League which James Connolly founded in 1914. The cross-party event featured independent Senators Frances Black and Alice-Mary Higgins, Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald, Sinéad Gibney Social Democrat party spokesperson for Defense, as well as Independent Galway TD Catherine Connolly, and People Before Profit’s own Paul Murphy.
NOW MORE THAN EVER NEUTRALITY MUST BE DEFENDED
The need for a popular grassroots movement against war and for Irish Neutrality has never been greater. We see more intense competition be great powers: the USA is desperately lashing out, under Trump, to stem its relative economic decline, the rising power of China, and the EU's dramatic ReArm Europe plan all make our world ever more war-prone.
Instead of resisting, the Irish government is playing along and calling for the abandonment of our neutrality against the wishes of the majority of the population.
The INL is launching a campaign to ensure that the government does not succeed in abandoning the Triple Lock – the need for three successful votes for military action: the Government, the Dáil and the UN – which ensure that more than 12 Irish troops cannot be sent on military mission without this vote.
CAMPAIGN RELENTLESSLY AGAINST A COMPLICIT GOVERNMENT
Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald ‘We need to campaign relentlessly on the streets, in our communities, on the airwaves, in the Dail, in the Seanad, and in council chambers.’
At the meeting calls for sanctions of Israel like the implementation of the Occupied Territories Bill were met with huge applause when representatives mentioned the ongoing slaughter in Gaza.
Paul Murphy referred to the open attacks between nuclear Pakistan and nuclear India, the US exploitation of the Ukraine conflict for minerals, the horrific Gaza genocide, noting that it is not just the US behind western imperialism.
Ukraine and Gaza means we are already living in a world of war. He noted how the current trade war between the US and China could change into open military conflict. In Europe military spending has increased annually for ten years. In the last year there was a 10% increase on military spending – money that could have been spent on social spending for housing or health.
Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and their supporters are complicit in Gaza through their illegal support of the US arms trade in Israel’s genocide and the use of Irish airspace for the transporting of weapons. Current government parties, Fianna Fáil included are today’s equivalent of the Redmondites in WWI , asking working people to go and fight for an empire that is not theirs.
PEOPLE POWER WILL WIN: ORGANISE FOR 14 JUNE
‘Ours is a very different vision. It’s that of James Connolly that We Serve Neither King Nor Kaiser. And what does that mean for us today? I think it means we serve neither Washington, nor Moscow, nor Beijing, nor Brussels: consistent opposition to all imperial blocs… the only thing that will stop them is People Power across the country.’
For a full video of all the speakers: https://www.youtube.com/live/41RFj9Cy2d0
Also featured are Liam Cunningham reading from Smedley Butler’s War Is A Racket, Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin sang 'Where Oh Where is our James Connolly?' Lisa O’Neill closed the event singing about Cork-born Mother Jones who helped end child labour in the USA and then two fighting anti-war songs.
The meeting agreed to publicise a march on Saturday 14 June 2025. See below.
