The starting point for any proclamation of revolution today is the primacy of human needs.

Everyone in Ireland has a need for food, for housing, for work, for healthcare and for education, for equality between the sexes and for a secure and sustainable environment.

Society should be organized to meet these needs. Instead state institutions are organized to defend profit, to defend capitalism, to defend imperialism, to impose harsh austerity and barbarism.

In 2016 we must defend the concept of a united Ireland - an Irish democracy. The sentiment for freedom among working people is not outmoded and should not be buried in a torrent of historical revisionism. A sectarian North and a subservient South are not solutions to the Irish question and doom workers to endlessly endure the carnival of reaction predicted by James Connolly.

However we cannot on the one hand ignore the unresolved national question nor can we simply retread the path of nationalist revolution. That’s not enough. A new state - a Workers Republic must be established. The working class needs to overcome high levels of oppression and its own fragmentation to build a working class party.

The history of the Irish freedom struggle tends to focus on the physical force tradition. Yet much more significant was direct action. The new Irish state was set up by a simple act of will by the mass of the people.

This is the method we must adopt today. An end to pleas for a fairer capitalism. If we need homes we must seize property. Empty factories should be occupied and brought to life. Public and natural resources should be under workers control.

The followers of James Connolly do not forget that the 1916 rising was part of an international working class struggle against imperialist war. Today again war and the fruits of war are everywhere. Democratic rights are swept aside, the poor are pushed towards starvation and the dogs of fascism stir again.

Capitalism is in decay everywhere. The reconquest of Ireland by the working class can only be undertaken as part of a battle across the globe, based on international solidarity.