Notes for Revolutionaries WOMEN
This is not a mans war but a peoples war and very, very much suffering has been borne by the women, be they mothers, wives, political activist or Volunteers and the men ought to remember that without the sacrifice of the women there would be no struggle at all.
IRA statement
It is a sure sign of the coming breakup of the planet when women take to leaving home and coming out in public.
Catholic priest in Ventry 1910
We are coming to a time when it will be recognized that every human person, distinguished from the animal world by God's gifts of wisdom and understanding, must, in the words of the Proclamation, 'be cherished equally'.
Maire Comerford
The worker is the slave of capitalist society, the female is the slave of that slave.
James Connolly
Women constitute half the world's population, perform nearly 2/3 of its work hours, receive one tenth of the world's income and own less than one hundredth of the worlds property.
United Nations Report 1980
History tells us that every oppressed class gained true liberation from its masters by its own efforts. It is necessary that women learn that lesson, that she realize that her freedom will reach as far as her power to achieve her freedom reaches.
Emma Goldman
Women are for the house while the man slaves 8 or more hours a day to create surplus value for the capitalist or landlord she must work extra hours to maintain not only herself but also her husband and children who cannot go to free nurseries or day-care centers because the surplus value sweated out by country's breadwinners is meant to make the imperialists, capitalists and landlord richer.
Clanta Roja
The development in Ireland of what is known as the women's movement has synchronized with the appearance of women in the industrial field and that the acuteness and fierceness of the women's war has kept pace with the spread amongst educated women of a knowledge of the sordid and cruel nature of the lot of their suffering sisters in the wage earning class.
James Connolly
We cannot allow the same state to evolve as in the past where women played a comparatively strong role in the Rising and Civil War but afterwards disappeared into oblivion, gaining little or nothing in the rights of women. We have only ourselves to blame if such recurs. It is our country ,and as women nationalists active in the struggle we must not halt at the half-way mark but follow through until we have asserted all our aims.
PRO Protesting POW's Armagh jail International Women's Day 1982
I've received military training and fought in battles. Men are my comrades but deep down they don't believe I'm really their equal.
Abir who joined Al Fatah in 1978
All the militants agree that women should be liberated, but if one asks a militant why his wife is at home, his wife is his wife after all. Women have begun to struggle against this mentality, but how long will it take to change it? Without this struggle Palestinian women could wind up in the same condition as Algerians; Algerian women are still kept in the home just like my mother, like my grandmother.
Algerian woman active in Palestinian resistance since 1967
For the revolution to triumph in its totality there must be emancipation of women. Women will never be emaciated without a victorious working class revolution.
Samora Machel
In Ireland the soul of womanhood has been trained for centuries to surrender its rights, and as a consequence the race has lost its chief capacity to withstand assaults from without, and demoralization from within. Those who preached to Irish womankind fidelity to duty as the only ideal to be striven after, were, consciously or unconsciously, fashioning a slave mentality, which the Irish mothers had perforce to transmit to the Irish child.
James Connolly
When you civilize a man, you only civilize an individual; but when you civilize a woman, you civilize a whole people.
Patrice Lamumba
YOUTH
Everyone, Republican or otherwise, has his own part to play. No part is too great or too small, no one is too old or too young to do something.
Bobby Sands
A people, a country, a movement that does not value its youth, does not deserve its future. The youth of our country, especially in recent times, have already won international recognition as dedicated and gallant fighters in the leading ranks of our revolutionary struggle. Their contribution is already manifest in the changed and changing fortune of apartheid rule in South Africa. They are already playing their part in giving shape to the South Africa of the future.
Oliver Tambo
The basic raw material of our work is the youth: in it we place our hopes and we are preparing it to take the banner from our hands.
Che Guevara
Those who rule this country today face a fierce and unrelenting enemy: the militant and disciplined youth of Ireland - a new generation which will not allow itself to be deprived of its birthright, to live in the land of their birth in freedom and justice.
Na Fianna Eireann, Easter 1981
This is the task of every generation, to take up the uncompleted work of the former one, and hand on to their successors an achievement and a heritage. Youth organizes this instinctively, and every generation will take a step in advance of its predecessor, putting by its prejudices and developing its truth.
Terrance MacSweeney
We must concentrate on youth, salvation of the country lies in this, both boys and girls. Fianna never got proper help or encouragement. Fianna ideal can save future. The reason for so many young soldiers going wrong is that they never had a proper grasp of the fundamentals. They were absorbed into Movement and fight - not educated into it. Hence no real conviction.
Liam Mellows
PROPERTY-CLASSES-CONSCIOUSNESS
We see the vices of the rich in so far as being considered as shameful that some are made honorable. Whence this but from the rich making laws? Property put before life. Property must be altered in some way.
Thomas Russell, 1792
One does not sell the ground upon which the people walk.
Tashunka Witko (Crazy Horse)
Ireland is the only pretext for England maintaining a large standing army, which, if need be, as has happened before, can be used against English workers after having done it's military training in Ireland. ...England today is seeing a repetition of what happened on a monstrous scale in ancient Rome. Any nation that oppresses another forges its own chains.
Karl Marx
No private right of property is good against the public right of the nation. But the nation is under a moral obligation so to exercise its public right as to secure strictly equal rights and liberties to every man and woman within the nation... Once more, no individual right is good as against the right of the whole people; but the people in exercising its sovereign right is morally bound to consider individual rights, to do equity between itself and each of the individuals that compose it as well as to see that equity is done between individual and individual... It is for the nation to determine to what extent private property may be held by its members and in what terms of the nations material resources private property may be allowed.
Padraic Pearse
Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly found, given and transmitted from the past.
Karl Marx
What is of decisive importance is that the party's political line must be the revolutionary line of the working class, one which embodies the latter's stand and view point. If the party deviates from the political line and viewpoint the revolution is bound to fail.
Franz Fannon
But nevertheless, here is the weak side of the imperialist enemy; they think that by eliminating a man physically they have eliminated his thinking - that by eliminating him physically they have eliminated his ideas, eliminated his virtues, eliminated his example.
Fidel Castro
The white man knows how to make everything but he does not know how to distribute it.
Sitting Bull
Working class consciousness cannot be genuine political consciousness unless the workers are trained to all cases of tyranny, oppression, violence and abuse. For this reason the conception of the economic struggle as the most widely applicable means of drawing the masses into the political movement... is so extremely reactionary and harmful in its practical significance.
Lenin
The struggle for Irish freedom has two aspects: it is national and it is social. Its national ideal can never be realized until Ireland stands forth before the world a nation free and independent. It is social and economic because no matter what the form of government may be, as long as one class owns as private property the lands and instruments of labor from which all mankind derive their substance, that class will always have power to plunder and enslave the remainder of their fellow creatures... The party which would lead the Irish people from bondage to freedom must then recognize both aspects of the long continued struggle of the Irish nation.
James Connolly
The 'stake in the country' people were never with the Republic. They are not with it now - until it wins. We should recognize that definitely now and base our appeals upon the understanding and needs of those who have always borne Ireland's fight.
Liam Mellows
We are also opposed to 'left' phrase mongering. The thinking of 'leftists' outstrips a given stage of development of the objective process; some regard their fantasies as truth, while others strain to realize in the present an ideal which can only be realized in the future. They alienate themselves from the current practice of the majority of the people and from the realities of the day, and show themselves adventurists in their actions.
Mao Tse Tung
Man is above all else mind, consciousness - that is, he is a product of history, not nature. There is no other way of explaining why socialism has not come into existence already, although there have always exploiters and exploited, creators of wealth and selfish consumers of wealth. Man has only been able to acquire a sense of his worth bit by bit, in one sector of society after another... And such awareness was not generated out of brute physiological needs, but out of intelligent reasoning, first of all by a few and latter by entire social classes who perceived the causes of certain social facts and understood that there might be ways of converting the structure of repression into one of rebellion and social reconstruction. This means that every revolution has been preceded by an intense labor of social criticism, of cultural penetration and diffusion.
Antonio Gramsci
Whatever class rules industrially will rule politically, and impose upon the community in general the beliefs, customs and ideas most suitable to the perpetuation of it's rule. These beliefs, customs, ideas become then the highest expression of morality and so remain until the ascent to power of another ruling industrial ruling class establishes a new morality.
James Connolly
What miserable slaves are the gentry of Ireland!... the very sound of independence seems to have terrified them out of all sense, spirit or honesty. If they had one drop of Irish blood in their veins, one grain of true courage or genuine patriotism in their hearts, they should have been the first to support this great object; the people would have supported them; the English government would never have dared to attempt the measures they have since pursued and continue to pursue; our revolution would have been accomplished without a shock, or perhaps without one drop of blood being spilled; which now can succeed, if it does succeed, only by the calamities of the most furious and sanguinary contest...
Wolfe Tone
Those who own your lands will make your laws and command your liberties and your lives.
Finton Lawlor
I have become more and more convinced - and the only question is to drive this conviction home to the English working class - that it can never do anything decisive here in England until it separates its policy with regard to Ireland most definitely from the policy of the ruling class, until it not only makes common cause with the Irish but actually tales the initiative in dissolving the union established in 1801
Karl Marx 1869
The development of the power of the modern state should teach us that the mere right to vote will not protect the workers unless they have a strong economic organization behind them, that the nationalization or municipalisation of industries but changes the form of the workers servitude whilst leaving the essence unimpaired; and that in the long run the forces of reaction will be able to dominate and direct its political powers.
James Connolly
Ideas and opinions are not spontaneously 'born' in each individual; they have had a center of formation, of irradiation, of dissemination, of persuasion - a group of men, or a single individual even, which has developed them and presented them in the current form of political reality.
Antonio Gramsci
I hold that it is bad as far as we are concerned if a person, a political party, an army or a school is not attacked by the enemy, for in that case it would definitely mean that we have sunk to the level of the enemy. It is good if we are attacked by the enemy since it means that we have drawn a clear line of demarcation between the enemy and ourselves. It is still better if the enemy attacks us wildly and paints us as utterly black and without a single virtue; it demonstrates that we have not only drawn a clear line of demarcation between the enemy and ourselves bit have achieved a great deal of work.
Mao Tse Tung
The ecclesiastical power in our country is united to the financial and political powers because all possess interests in common. The conformity of ecclesiastics lends support to insure the maintenance of these interests.
Fr. Camillo Torres
Our independence must be had at all hazards. If the men of property will not support us, they must fall; we can support ourselves by the aid of that numerous and respectable class, the men of no property.
Wolfe Tone
Rise with your class, not out of it.
John MacLean
The people, and the people alone are the motive force in the making of world history.
Mao Tse Tung
Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to loose but your chains.
Karl Marx
If people are to understand and to relate to revolutionary violence they must first be educated into an acceptance of the fact that there is no alternative, or that the alternative is less inviting than a fight.
George Jackson
In the long run the freedom of a nation is measured by the freedom of its lowest class. Every upward step of that class to the possibility of possessing higher things raises the standard of the nation in the scales of civilization.
James Connolly
Loyalism/Colonialism
If the north-east corner of Ireland is, therefore, the home of the people whose minds are saturated with conceptions of political activity fit only for the atmosphere of the seventeenth century, if the sublime ideas of all-embracing democracy equally as insistent upon its duties as upon its rights have as yet found poor lodgement here, the fault lies not with this generation of toilers, but with those pastors and masters who deceived it and enslaved it in the past - and deceived it in order that they might enslave it. But as no good can come of blaming it, so also no good, but infinite evil, can come of truckling to it. Let the truth be told, however ugly. Here, the Orange working class are slaves in spirit because they have been reared up among a people whose conditions of servitude were more slavish than their own. In Catholic Ireland the working class are rebels in spirit and democratic in feeling because for hundreds of years they have found no class as lowly paid or as hardly treated as themselves
James Connolly In these times of instability the political parties multiply their appeals to the left for calm, while on their right they scan the horizon, trying to make out the liberal intentions of colonialism.
Frantz Fanon
If the small coloniser defends the colonial system so vigorously, it is because he benefits from it to some extent. His gullibility lies in the fact that to protect his very limited interests, he protects other infinitely more important ones, of which he is, incidentally, the victim. But, though dupe and victim, he also gets his share.
Albert Memmi
Colonialism only loosens its hold when the knife is at its throat.
Frantz Fanon
The settler makes history and is conscious of making it. And because he constantly refers to the history of his mother country, he clearly indicates that he himself is the extension of that mother country. Thus the history which he writes is not the history of the country which he plunders but the history of his own nation in regard to all that she skims off, all that she violates and starves.
Frantz Fanon
Neo-colonialism derives its strength on the one hand from the economic and military potential of the metropolitan country, and, on the other hand, from the social, economic, and political bases of the native reactionary forces.
General Vo Nguyen Giap
So long as a viable nation is fettered by an alien conqueror, it necessarily directs all its efforts, all its aspirations and all its energy against the external enemy; so long as its internal life is paralysed in this way, it is incapable of fighting for social emancipation.
Frederich Engels
During the colonial period the people are called upon to fight against oppression; after national liberation, they are called upon to fight against poverty, illiteracy and underdevelopment. The struggle they say, goes on. The people realise that life is an unending contest.
Frantz Fanon
At the decisive moment, the colonialist bourgeoisie, which up till then has remained inactive, comes into the field. It introduces that new idea, non-violence. In its simplest form this non-violence signifies to the intellectual and economic elite of the colonized country that the bourgeoisie has the same interests as them. Non-violence is an attempt to settle the colonial problems around a green baize table.
Frantz Fanon
Internationalism
We mean to be free, and in every enemy of tyranny we recognise a brother, wherever be his birthplace, in every enemy of freedom we also recognise our enemy, though he were as Irish as our hills. The whole of Ireland for the people of Ireland - their public property to be owned and operated as a national heritage, by the labour of free men in a free country. That is our ideal, and when you ask us what are our methods, we reply: 'Those which lie nearest our hands!'
James Connolly
There are no frontiers in this struggle to the death. We cannot remain indifferent to what happens anywhere in the world; a victory of any country over imperialism is a victory for us, and likewise, a defeat of any nation is a defeat for all.
Che Guevara
The struggle for a socialist international revolution against imperialism is, therefore, impossible without the recognition of the right of nations to self-determination ... No proletariat reconciling itself to the least violation by 'its' nation of the rights of other nations can be socialist.
Lenin
Organisation
Each member of the guerrilla army, the people's army par excellence, must embody the qualities of the best of the world's soldiers. The army must observe strict discipline. The fact that the formalities of orthodox military life do not correspond to the guerrilla movement, the fact that there is no heel-clicking or snappy saluting, no kowtowing explanations to superior officers, does not, by any stretch of the imagination, mean that there is no discipline. Guerrilla discipline is within the individual, born of his profound conviction, of the need to obey his superior, not only so as to maintain the effectiveness of the armed group of which he is apart, but also to defend his own life.
Che Guevara
We shall judge the conduct of organisations not by what they say they are, but what they prove they are, by what they do, by their conduct.
Fidel Castro
Do not fix guerrilla Organisation. Tailor it to your needs.
Che Guevara
A revolutionary Organisation establishes itself through the action it takes. What makes an Organisation and gives it a reputation is its revolutionary action.
Carlos Marighela
I appeal to all old comrades to be up and doing. Those of you who have lapsed, return; those who have lost heart, cheer up; those who have heart, pull in the indifferent and stimulate dormant or defunct branches.
John Maclean
These liberation movements have proved that a people, in spite of the fact that they may be small in numbers, when they are organised they can impose their desires and wishes upon their enemies.
Rafic Khouri, PLO Armed struggle
You must, therefore, disorganise and untrain and undiscipline the enemy; and not alone must you unsoldier - you must unofficer it also; nullify its tactics and strategy, as well as its discipline; de- compose the science and system of war, and resolve them into their first elements. You must make the hostile army a mob ... force it to act on the offensive, and oblige it to undertake operations for which it was never constructed.
James Fintan Lalor
Ireland unarmed will attain just as much freedom as it is convenient for England to give her; Ireland armed will attain ultimately just as much freedom as she wants.
Padraig Pearse
We believe in constitutional action in normal times; we believe in revolutionary action in exceptional times. These are exceptional times.
James Connolly
Firstly, never play with insurrection unless you are fully prepared to face the consequences of your play. Insurrection is a calculus with very indefinite magnitudes, the value of which may change every day; the forces opposed to you have all the advantage of organisation, discipline, and habitual authority; unless you bring strong odds against them you are defeated and ruined. Secondly, the insurrectionary career once entered upon, act with the greatest determination, and on the offensive. The defensive is the death of every armed rising; it is lost before it measures itself with its enemies. Surprise your antagonists while their forces are scattering, prepare new successes, however small, but daily; keep up the moral ascendancy which the first successful rising has given to you; rally those vacillating elements to your side which always follow the strongest impulse, and which always look out for the safer side; force your enemies to a retreat before they can collect their strength against you....
Karl Marx and Frederich Engels, 1852
The December events confirmed another of Marx's profound propositions, which the opportunists have forgotten, namely, that insurrection is an art and that the principal rule of this art is the waging of a desperately bold and, irrevocably determined offensive. We have not sufficiently assimilated this truth. We our- selves have not sufficiently learned, nor have we taught the masses, this art, this rule to attack at all costs. We must make up for this omission with all our energy.
Lenin
Mao's approach to the theory of war as applied to his own peculiar situation - that of China - was simply to shift the emphasis customarily given to the fundamental components of previous military doctrine. Where the industrial nations stressed such tangible military factors as arms, logistics, and man- power, says Katzenbach, Mao looked to the intangibles: Time, Space and Will. Lacking the arms with which to confront well- equipped armies in the field, Mao avoided battle by surrendering territory. In so doing, Katzenbach, writes, he traded Space for Time, and used the Time to produce Will: the psychological capacity of the Chinese people to resist defeat. This is the essence of guerrilla warfare. Although Mao never stated it quite this way (writes Katzenbach), the basic premise of his theory is that political mobilisation may be substituted for industrial mobilisation with a successful military outcome. That is to say, his fundamental belief is that only those who will admit defeat can be defeated. So, if the totality of a population can be made to resist surrender, this resistance can be turned into a war of attrition which will eventually and inevitably be victorious... As for the time factor, Katzenbach observes: Mao holds that military salvation stems from political conversion. But, note: conversion takes time. So, Mao's military problem was how to organise Space so that it could, be made to yield Time. His political problem was how to organise Time so that it could be made to yield Will, that quality which makes willingness to sacrifice the order of the day, and the ability to bear suffering cheerfully the highest virtue. So Mao's real military problem was not that of getting the war over with, the question to which Western military thinkers have directed the greater part of their attention, but that of keeping it going. Time is required, not alone for political mobilisation but to allow the inherent weakness of the enemy to develop under the stress of war.
Extracted from 'The War of the Flea' by Robert Taber
It is important to remember that the guerrilla operations should be in harmony with the sentiment and aspirations of the people. The moment this harmony ceases, we get instead of a guerrilla war, terrorism and acts of vengeance, and these bring little benefit to the revolution....
Enrique Lister
The August Revolution, like people's revolutions in other countries, has taught the South Vietnamese revolutionaries that any revolution with a marked popular character must 'use both political and military forces to secure victory. Revolution being the uprising of the oppressed and exploited masses, one must adopt the revolutionary mass viewpoint to under- stand revolutionary violence which involves two forces - political and military forces - and two forms of struggle - political and armed struggle - and thereby to realise the offensive position of revolution when revolutionary situations are ripe.
Le Duan
The guerrilla fighter is primarily a propagandist, an agitator, a disseminator of the revolutionary idea, who uses the struggle itself - the actual physical contact - as an instrument of agitation. His primary goal is to raise the level of revolutionary anticipation, and then of popular participation, to the crisis point of which the revolution becomes general throughout the country and the people in their masses carry out the final task - the destruction of the existing order and (often but not always) of the army that defends it.
Robert Taber
Guerrilla warfare is not, as often thought, a small- scale war, a war conducted by a minority grouping against a powerful army. No, guerrilla warfare is war ,by the entire people against the reigning oppression. The guerrilla movement is their armed vanguard; the guerrilla army comprises all the people of a region or a country. That is the reason for its strength and for its eventual victory over whatsoever power tries to crush it; that is, the base and grounding of the guerrilla is the people.
Che Guevara
We must declare to the governments: we know that you are the armed power which is directed against the proletariat; we shall proceed against you by peaceful means where possible, and by force of arms if necessary.
Karl Marx
Government violence can only breed counter-violence. Ultimately, if there is no dawning of sanity on the part of the government, the dispute between the government and my people will be settled by force.
Nelson Mandela
The national political parties never lay stress upon the necessity of a trial of armed strength, for the good reason that their objective is not the radical overthrowing of the system.
Frantz Fanon
To lead the resistance we had to look after the strengthening of the army, while giving thought to mobilising and educating the people, broadening and consolidating the National United Front. We had to mobilise the masses for the resistance while trying to satisfy their immediate interest in improving their living conditions, essentially those of the peasantry.
General Vo Nguyen Giap
When we speak of the guerrilla fighter we are speak- ing of the political partisan, an armed civilian whose principle weapon is not his rifle or his machete but his relationship to the community, the nation, in and for which he fights.
Robert Taber
The guerrilla, who is of the people in a way which the government soldier cannot be (for if the regime were not alienated from the people, whence the revolution?), fights with the support of the non-combatant civilian populace: it is his camouflage, his quarter- master, his recruiting office, his communications network, and his efficient, all seeing intelligence service.
Robert Taber
War is a terrible thing but war is not an evil thing. it is the things that make war necessary that are evil. The tyrannies that wars break, the lying formulae that wars overthrow, the hypocrisies that wars strip naked are evil.
Padraig Pearse
War is justified, if necessity forces one to it; and to arm is a duty, if in arms lies one's hope.
Claudius Pontius
The tactics of guerrilla warfare must be subordinate to the strategy of the revolutionary war... Attack is the first principle.
Kwame Nkrumah
As long as Ireland is unfree the only honourable attitude for Irish men and Irish women is an attitude of revolt.
Padraig Pearse
Wars in every period have independent forms and independent conditions, and, therefore, every period must have its independent theory of war.
Clausewitz
People in revolt have a way of defying military precedent.
John Reed
During civil war the right to use violence belongs only to the oppressed.
Trotsky
It is better to die on one's feet than live on one's knees.
Dolores lbarruri (La Pasionara)
The great appear great because we are on our knees. Let us rise.
Camille Desmoulins
The guerrilla is the masses in arms.
Kwame Nkrumah
All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe that we are away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near. Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him.
Sun Tzu
If you want to know the theory and methods of revolution, you must take part in revolution. All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience.
Mao Tse-tung
The struggle must be well thought out, it must be mature but once it has begun it must be continued to the end; there can be no compromise, no middle terms, no peace that will only half guarantee the stability of a country; the victory must be total .
Che Guevara
It is necessary to be completely unsympathetic to abstract formulas and rules and to study with sympathy the conditions of actual fighting, for these will change in accordance with the political and economic situations and the realisation of the peoples' aspirations. These progressive changes in conditions create new methods,
Lenin
Guerrilla warfare, the special, and in our case the only form in which the armed liberation struggle can be launched, is neither static nor does it take place in a vacuum. The tempo, the overall strategy is to be employed, the opening of new fronts, the progression from lower to higher forms and thence to mobile warfare; these and other vital questions cannot be solved by the military leadership alone. They require overall political judgements intimately involved with the people both inside and outside the actual areas of armed combat.
Strategy and tactics, African National Congress
Combat is the climax of guerrilla life. Though each individual encounter may be only of brief duration, each battle is a profound experience for the guerrilla.
Che Guevara
The whole people must try to reform themselves during the course of the war. We must educate them and reform them in the light of past experience. Evil does not exist in guerrilla warfare but only in the unorganised and undisciplined activities that are anarchism.
Lenin
When we talk of revolutionary armed struggle, we are talking of political struggle by means which include the use of military force even though once force as a tactic is introduced it has the most far- reaching consequences on every aspect of our activities. It is important to emphasise this because our movement must reject all manifestations of militarism which separates armed people's struggle from its political context.
Strategy and tactics, African National Congress
The people are like the water; we must swim among them like fish.
Mao Tse-tung
Guerrilla warfare must always be dynamic, and maintain momentum. Static intervals are more detrimental to its success than in the case of regular warfare, as they allow the opponent to tighten his grip on the country, and give rest to his troops, while tending to damp the impulse of the popu- lation to oin or help the guerrillas. Static defence has no part in guerrilla action, and fixed defence no place, except in the momentary way involved in laying an ambush... Guerrilla warfare is a kind of war waged by the few but dependent on the support of the many. Although in itself the most individual form of action, it can operate effectively and attain its end, when collectively backed by the sympathy of the masses
Extracted from 'Guerrilla Warfare' (Lassell)
Foreword by Captain Liddell Harte
There can be nothing dogmatic about revolutionary theory. It is born out of each popular struggle.
George Jackson
If you are itching for a rifle, itching to fight, have a country of your own; better to fight for your own country than for the robber empire. You have been told you are not strong, that you have no rifles. Revolutions do not start with rifles; start first and get your rifles after. our curse is our belief in our weakness. We are not weak, we are strong. Make up your mind to strike before your opportunity goes.
James Connolly
The experience of the war, like the experience of every crisis in history, of every great disaster and every sudden turn in human life, stuns and shatters some, but it enlightens and hardens others.
Lenin
Revolutions do not begin with the thunderclap of a seizure of power - that is their culmination. They start with attacks on the moral-political order and the traditional hierarchy of class statuses. They succeed when the power structure, beset by its own irresolvable contradictions, can no longer perform legitimately and effectively. It is often forgotten that the state has often in the past been rescued by the moral-political order and the class hierarchy (authority) that the people still accepted.
Antonio Gramsci
People who refuse to stop fighting can never be repressed - they either win or they die - which is more attractive than losing and dying.
George Jackson
The forms of fighting had to be completely adapted, that is, to raise the fighting spirit to the maximum and rely on the heroism of our troops to overcome the enemy's material superiority.
General Vo Nguyen Giap
Armed struggle or organised violence is the natural outcome of a sequence of historical events that have matured to the point of impasse.
George Jackson
It is not guerrilla actions which disorganise the movement, but the weakness of a party which is incapable of taking such actions under its control. That is why the anathemas which we Russians usually hurl against guerrilla actions go hand in hand with secret, casual, unorganised guerrilla actions which really do disorganise the party... What we have said about disorganisation also applies to demoralisation. It is not guerrilla warfare which demoralises, but unorganised, irregular, non-party guerrilla acts.
Lenin
In every generation we have renewed the struggle, and so it shall be to the end. When England thinks she has trampled out our blood in battle, some brave man rises and rallies us again; when England thinks she has purchased us with a bribe, some good man redeems us with a sacrifice.
Padraig Pearse
No nation is conquered until its mind is conquered, until it accepts defeat. No nation capable, of how- ever futilely and impotently, denying with arms in the hands of even a few of its sons that it is conquered and submerged in its conqueror can be considered as having lost its existence.
James Connolly
All governments tell us they will never yield to force: all history tells us that they never yield to anything else.
John Strachey
If anybody today speaks of the Palestinian people it is because we have been fighting; because we have had thousands and thousands of martyrs; because we have taken our weapons and fought the enemy.
Rafic Khouri, PLO
It's a noble thing to die for your country. It's a useful thing to make your country's enemies die. it you cannot be noble be at least useful.
George Plant, executed by Free Staters in 1941
Such people (simple militarists do not understand that political strength is the basis of everything; the basis of military strength... To prepare an up- rising the principal task is to carry out propaganda among the people.
General Vo Nguyen Giap
Political power comes out of the barrel of a gun.
Mao Tse-tung
War is not a mere act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political activity by other means.
Clausewitz
In the course of revolutionary armed struggle it will be necessary at times to destroy some of the country's assets, such as bridges, crops, buildings, airfields and telephone and telegraphic networks... Once colonialism and neocolonialism have been totally defeated, and freedom attained, it will be comparatively easy, inspired by love of country, to rebuild what has been destroyed and for the people to advance to complete fulfilment
Kwame Nkrumah
Wherever death may surprise us, it will be welcome, provided that this, our battle cry, reach some receptive ear, that another hand stretch out to take up weapons and that other men come forward to intone our funeral dirge with the staccato of machine guns and new cries of battle and victory.
Che Guevara
Since the sole duty of revolutionaries is to make the revolution, we ask no one's permission to carry out revolutionary activities and we are committed to the revolution alone.
Carlos Marighela
in order to ensure the best climate for the success of an armed struggle, we believe it is necessary: - to have a single centralised leadership and a certain degree of decentralisation during the hostilities; - to link the armed struggle closely with political mass struggle; - to support the war by struggle in the towns, but to safe-guard the towns used as rear bases for the armed struggle; - constantly to conduct political work among the masses, in the enemy army, among the people of the country waging an unjust war, and among world public opinion; - to advance consistent and concrete proposals for ending the war on the basis of satisfying the people's national demands taking into account the specific demands of each section of society and linking them with the principle objective; - to utilize the contradictions between the enemy and his allies and to strengthen the alliance of the people with their natural allies outside the country. These are some of the lessons that can be drawn from the war in Algeria. Naturally, we do not presume to give some sort of recipe, inasmuch as the organisation and methods of waging the armed struggle are determined by the concrete conditions, the economic, social and national features of each country. However, these lessons born of the Algerian experience may perhaps be useful in other encounters with imperialism.
Bashir Hadj Ali
.... the guerrilla fighter, whatever his slogans or his cause; and his secret weapon, above and beyond any question of strategy or tactics or techniques of irregular warfare, is nothing more than the ability to inspire this state of mind in others.
Robert Taber
Revolutionary struggle in Ireland
IN CONVENTIONAL warfare success for an army is measured in terms of its military victories and its task is the military defeat of the opposing army. But, in revolutionary guerrilla warfare, success is measured in terms of the political defeats inflicted on the ruling regime by - through force of circumstances - limited military actions. And, because of the relationship between guerrilla activity and overall political developments, military action broadens outside of that framework of gun and land-mine attacks against enemy military personnel to include attacks on property (the commercial bombing campaign), on communications (telephone installations and transport services such as the cross-border rail- link), on the judiciary and prison officials, on enemy propagandists (Ross McWhirter and Sir Richard Sykes), and on the enemy's most prestigious figures (Lord Mountbatten, the Queen, and politicians, Robert Bradford, for example). Furthermore, the IRA has carried out morale- raising operations against enemy military and political targets both in Britain and on the European continent which are aimed at bringing to the attention of the world and the British people that there is a struggle against imperialism in Ireland.
These operations, particularly in England, are aimed at wearing down the will of the British to remain in Ireland and to creating a mood favourable to the republican demand for a withdrawal. Importantly, they break the wall of silence in Britain about what is happening in Ireland and can be summarised by that piece of scrawled ghetto graffiti, 'One bomb in London is worth a hundred in Belfast'. In the North of Ireland guerrilla attacks are aimed at weakening the confidence of the British government which supports loyalism and this sectarian state through military repression. And the political emergence of Sinn Fein as an electoral force has reinforced the revolutionary struggle by undermining the nationalist and collaborationist SDLP and overturned British propaganda on Ireland which for over a decade peddled the lie that the IRA had no support. During the course of the struggle one of the IRA's strong points has been its incredible will-to-win and the determination to continue despite all set-backs. This revolutionary condition of mind has ensured that whatever assaults have been made on the republican Organisation, whatever lack of weaponry and explosives, and, more importantly, whatever loss of comrades to jail or death, the Republican Movement has overcome all problems and went on the offensive again and again over a period of 13 years.
However, lack of sophisticated weaponry and regular supplies - not personnel within the war zone or the level of' repression - have been responsible for restricting the IRA to a relatively small operational guerrilla army, generally preventing it from engaging in more protracted or territorial engagements and from increasing the tempo of the war where the return in political dividends against the British would radically shorten the war. As a substitute for this material handicap the IRA in 1978 orientated the will of its Volunteers and the attitude of its supporters to the theory of the long war (truces or ceasefires do not enter into today's vocabulary); a grinding war of attrition against the British during the course of which would be released an ideological era - the flourishing of progressive thinking, the politicisation of the people, the youth and women, and the building of a solid revolutionary movement. The declaration of the long war was a fairly bold announcement. Coming as it did after a period of some demoralisation but also with an upsurge in operations across the six counties which reached a peak with the execution of Lord Mountbatten and the killing of 18 soldiers in August 1979, it was accepted by supporters as the cost of national liberation.
After its mode of operation, the next most distinguishing feature between a revolutionary soldier and a conventional soldier is in motivation and in political awareness. A republican soldier, having experienced repression and witnessed deprivation, is motivated by the patriotic desire for freedom and is out to help construct society along socialist principles. A soldier of a people's army is expected to understand and appreciate his actions and their political nature. Every IRA Volunteer is expected to be a political cadre, and thus make the IRA an armed political Organisation. IRA Volunteers, because they live with the people and among the people, are directly responsible to the people for their actions. Their level of support and shelter is dependent upon public approval for their actions.
COST
Since August 1969 the six-county state has been so unstable that, without the British government and military propping it up, it would have collapsed. However, the British government has long ceased to economically profit from its Irish colony - its presence in the North can be defined as political imperialism. Though the British presence is an inheritance from its plundering, colonial past, it has a strategic, global interest in maintaining its interference in Ireland. All the aims of republicanism - an independent, non-aligned, sovereign Ireland, a socialist republic - are opposed by Britain and indeed by successive Dublin governments which collaborate with Britain and have introduced joint laws to prosecute freedom fighters from the North. Britain wants the Dublin government to join NATO and Britain fears the effects the example of a socialist Ireland would have not just on its own population but on the European working class. The six-county state, which the Brits are propping up through the injection of 41,000 million annually, is economically dying. Its industries are old and ailing ones, and despite all the publicity about foreign investment, very few companies have been lured or lulled into the North. Though the British government would have to pay for the upkeep of its soldiers wherever they were based, there is an extra operational cost of around 4100 million annually. The RUC, UDR, courts and prisons, cost them another C200 million annually. The bombing campaign has cost the British state one billion pounds in compensation, so far, and claims for the last three years have yet to be processed. However, these costs are not that prohibitive, even during times of recession, to the British establishment. But the weakness lies in the hopelessness of their attempts to plug the continuous drain in morale, initiatives, 'solutions' and finance.
BOMBING
Bombing commercial targets is a means of struggle adopted by the IRA to successfully demonstrate the instability of the state. The British administration's credibility suffers, and its will to rule is undermined, by every bomb that breaches the 'security zones' and the 'security' that Britain supposedly guarantees. As the Northern Commander of Land Forces, James Glover, admitted in captured Document 37, "bombings expose the inadequacy of the Security Forces, and as Ian Paisley once admitted, "every bomb weakens the Union." Unfortunately, in war it is necessary to destroy parts of the state structures which affect civilians and not just the military, in order to topple the state, and this destruction can lead to much inconvenience for the people. For example, through the disruption of the civilian transport system. (In Zimbabwe, more than nine out of ten of the cattle-dips were destroyed - all the people suffered to some degree because of this - but the subsequent crisis in agriculture was a significant blow to the Salisbury administration. In Nicaragua and El Salvador the guerrillas there bombed important communications links and destroyed bridges and the transport system.) Commercial bombing well suits the IRA's adopted strategy of a long war of attrition. It is currently impossible for the IRA to solely direct all its resources against the British military. Personnel losses under such restrictive operations with present weaponry would risk the necessary delicate re-planning, re grouping and reorganising and would thus possibly jeopardise the whole liberation struggle. Maximum preservation of the revolutionary guerrilla army is essential. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that such a singular strategy (of a purely anti-military campaign) would mean the realisation of all of the factors instrumental in creating withdrawal.
PROPAGANDA
All IRA actions create propaganda and good propaganda raises the nationalist people's morale, puts Ireland on the world stage and demoralises the British government and its forces. Internationally the IRA is respected as a daring guerrilla Organisation which has taken on, and is giving a thrashing to, one of the most modern sophisticated armies in the world. The remote-control land-mine (the product of long experimentation), the close-up gun attacks in city and countryside, and the ability to rejuvenate after rounds of repression, has placed the IRA in an enviable position from the point of view of other national liberation armies. In this political war the IRA often does not even have to fire a shot to create insecurity and demoralisation within enemy forces! just the appearance of armed IRA Volunteers at Casement Park in Belfast in August 1979 had loyalists publicly squabbling with the colonial Northern Ireland Office. For not taking action the British administration was accused of ceding west Belfast to the Provisionals', and of dealing a blow to morale in Northern Ireland'. And the filming of the IRA in Carrickmore in Tyrone was raised in Westminster, with massive con- sequent exposure of the inadequacy of the occupation forces. By taking the war even beyond England, and into British army bases in West Germany, the IRA has demonstrated its operational capacity and has kept international attention focused on Britain's dirty war in Ireland. Propaganda is an extremely important theatre of war, and the British realise this. Through a widespread and expensive advertising campaign the British government attempted during the H-Block blanket men's protest to daub the Republican Movement as a 'criminal conspiracy'. But the heroic prison struggle by the women in Armagh jail and the men in Long Kesh's H-Blocks, culminating in the 7-month long hunger-strike of 1981 in which 10 brave men laid down their lives in defence of their political principles, overturned British propaganda and showed the world that a national liberation struggle was taking place in Ireland. During those seven months the nationalist community in Ireland went through convulsions of sorrow and anger, of pride and amazement, at the moral strength of the ten, tortured H-Block martyrs: Bobby Sands (IRA), Francis Hughes (IRA), Raymond McCreesh (IRA), Patsy O'Hara (INLA), Joe McDonnell (IRA), Martin Hurson (IRA), Kieran Doherty (IRA), Kevin Lynch (INLA), Thomas McElwee (IRA) and Mickey Devine (INLA).
POLITICAL
While the IRA carries out revolutionary armed struggle, it is the role of Sinn Fein to carry out solidarity and agitational work and open political resistance and defiance. Working away in spite of bannings, and with its members the subject of constant harassment, raids and arrest, and even assassination, it is Sinn Fein's task to capitalise on and consolidate the gains made by itself and the IRA The rejection by the bulk of nationalist people in the six counties of the Stonnont regime, the ramifications this created in the twenty-six counties, and the mass mobilisation of people into street campaigns, in rents and rates strikes and in resistance committees, plus the IRA's bombing campaign, brought down the loyalist parliament of Stormont in 1972 and ushered in the clearly visible, imperialist direct rule. Since 1972 Britain has attempted to fudge together several internal governments but on each occasion contradictions and the unwillingness of loyalists to even give minor concessions to the SDLP have caused these attempts to collapse.
The most recent British Assembly, whilst presenting the real danger of a return to Stormont rule, back-fired on the British when Sinn Fein contested the October 1982 elections and took 35% of the nationalist vote. In any revolutionary struggle the political organisation is always propagandising against the enemy; articulating the need for, and justification of, resistance; building itself up into a strong and sophisticated machine which can challenge collaborationist parties; and giving leadership to the people whether it be through itself, or in conjunction with a broad front. The IRA, which expanded from a defensive role in 1969/70 to today's operational guerrilla army, acts as a political catalyst, though it and its kindred support organisations obviously have potential as a major open political force, North and South. While the war has created and continues to create the political momentum, and, of necessity, monopolises most resources, republicans realise that the radicalisation it has released needs to take on its own momentum in the political field and outside of the ghettoes and towns of the six counties. The ethos and insularity of the twenty-six county state undermines the national desire for reunification. The ideological foothold of this state (presenting itself as 'a republic' which is under some sort of IRA threat), and the considerable cross-border collaboration, has made it extremely difficult for republicans to establish themselves politically (above and beyond the support which the IRA enjoys) in a climate where the majority of the people understandably consider the institutions of the state as 'legitimate', and are being bombarded with anti-republican propaganda.
Another problem which faced republicans, arising out of their electoral successes in the year of the hunger-strike, 1981, was whether or not it was possible to fight a war (which absorbs one's resources, financial and human) and successfully engage in elections to strengthen the public basis for the struggle and further destabilise the British occupation. Some republicans argued (correctly) that even if every elected nationalist representative in the North was a Sinn Fein person, that would still not remove the British - only through physical force, that created by the IRA, can the British be politically embarrassed to withdraw, so why waste money on elections. But, ran the other side of the argument, to establish the Organisation politically now (and through elections), or at least to contest elections even if the outcome was disappointing, was worth the short-term risk of some demoralisation and the long-term benefit of valuable political experience. All were agreedi upon the primacy of the armed struggle, that electoral contests are only one tactic, not a valid alternative or a placement to guerrilla warfare and this proposed strategy was crystalised in the 1981 ard fheis statement from Danny Morrison of 'going forward with an Armalite in one hand and a ballot box in the other'. So the problem which Sinn Fein faced was that while support from the oppressed nationalist people in the North was bedrock, there were other sections of the nationalist community who were only swung to the republican cause at times of crisis (during loyalist pogroms, the hunger-strike, for example) or after major acts of British aggression (internment, Bloody Sunday, British army/RUC killings, etc.) or who support the IRA on its military record but vote for other nationalist groups with established political credentials.
Also, because republican candidates would be committed to supporting the armed struggle they would be campaigning against opponents pleading a more 'reasonable', pacifist approach (even though such a position actually has protracted the bloody situation), against the nationalist middle class, the Catholic hierarchy and the media - a considerable array of opposition. The war in the North of Ireland is being fought in a modern, consumer society where the British media and their nationalist collaborators in politics and the Catholic Church, put through the moralist mill the results of every IRA shot fired or land-mine or bomb exploded. A similar analysis of British, violence never receives the same attention. Thus - unlike any other theatre of war where soldiers are not subjected to the tragic results of their acts upon the enemies' families - IRA Volunteers and their supporters are subjected to emotional blackmail (meant to distress and undermine republican will) by a largely one-sided hypocritical media machine Nevertheless, against this background Sinn Fein challenged the SDLP in elections to the new Stormont Assembly on October 20th 1982 - this move in itself forcing the SDLP to state that it, like Sinn Fein, would boycott the Assembly.
Sinn Fein mobilised thousands of activists, young and old, and fought a dynamic campaign on independence slogans, including resistance to, and rejection of, British rule. It won five seats and narrowly missed three others. These victories shook the British and their allies. The result showed that a considerable section of the nationalist people had not been cowed or beaten. Sinn Fein followed up its election campaigning by opening up other new advice centres and continuing with its ideological campaign of politiisation and representation, undermining the SDLP and building a revolutionary party. And on country roads and city streets the guerrilla war continued.
ENEMY
Militarily the Brits have at their disposal: 11,000 British soldiers stationed mostly in and around nationalist areas; 7,000 RUC men and women; 4,500 RUC reservists; and 8,000 UDR soldiers, 2,500 of whom are full-time. As they have not managed to defeat the IRA then why does the British government not pour in extra soldiers? One reason is that they are still trying to 'Ulsterise' their forces (that is, have RUC and UDR men in the front line) and this would go against that trend. So effective have IRA attacks been on the RUC and UDR that the British government has a continual problem (demonstrated by the massive recruitment campaign) maintaining these forces at strength, never mind increasing their numbers. (There are so many resignations within the UDR that almost every third or fourth 'UDR man' shot now turns out to have resigned within the previous six months.) Nevertheless, the British government would not let 'Ulsterisation' prevent them from bringing in more soldiers. But this in itself would present a problem. As the Brits have found to their cost, more troops often mean more targets for the IRA to shoot at, mean more Brits suffering demoralisation, mean more blatant repression than is politically 'acceptable'. Brit generals seem agreed that the 11,000 troops presently engaged in the war is the best number for optimum results.
CONTROL
Clearly, British governments do not yet want to rid themselves of the North; they know that the North is the key to political control of Ireland. They are aware of, and they fear, the socialist direction Ireland could take if it were free from imperialist bondage. They also fear the political repercussions in Britain which a defeat in Ireland could bring. Leading Tory spokesperson John Biggs-Davidson said a few years ago: "What happens in Londonderry is very relevant to what can happen in London, and if we lose in Belfast we may have to fight in Brixton or Birmingham. just as Spain in the '30s was a rehearsal for a wider European conflict so perhaps what is happening in Northern Ireland is a rehearsal for urban guerrilla war more widely in Europe, particularly in Britain" All present indications are that the British establishment remains committed to battling it out in Ireland, although radical changes within the Labour Party would lend credibility to and perhaps direction to the sentiment for a troop withdrawal (which has majority support, according to opinion polls). Meanwhile the war will continue and British soldiers will continue to be the cannon fodder in the struggle for the liberation of Britain's first and last colony. The British army have no idea where the next blow is going to fall or what it is going to cost them. The republican in jail by his sacrifice, brought revolution onto the streets and the Volunteer on the street just awaits the next opportunity to press the trigger or detonate the bomb.
Culture
You need not praise the Irish language - simply speak it; you need not denounce English games - play Irish ones; you need not ignore foreign history, foreign literature - deal with them from the Irish point of view. An Irish school need no more be a purely Irish-speaking school than an Irish nation need be a purely Irish-speaking nation; but an Irish school, like an Irish nation, must be permeated through and through by Irish culture, the repository of which is the Irish language.
Padraig Pearse
Besides, it is well to remember that nations which submit to conquest or races which abandon their language in favour of that of an oppressor do so, not because of the altruistic motives, or because of a love of brotherhood of man, but from a slavish and cringing spirit.
James Connolly
The language is at once our frontier and our first fortress, and behind it all Irish men should stand, not because a particular branch of our people evolved it, but because it is the common heritage of all.
Terence MacSwiney
You're dealing with a man who has a language. Find out what that language is. Once you know what language he speaks in, then you can talk to him. And if you want to know what his language is, then study his history. His language is blood, his language is power, his language is brutality, his language is every- thing that's brutal. And if you can't talk that talk, he doesn't even hear you. ou can come talking that old sweet talk, or that old peace talk, or that old non-violent talk - that man doesn't even hear that kind of talk. He'll pat you on your back and tell you you're a good boy and give you a peace prize. How are you going to get a peace prize when the war's not over yet?
Malcolm X
Literature is the shrine of freedom, its fortress, its banner, its character. in its great temple patriots worship; from it soldiers go forth, wave its challenge, and fight, and conquering, write the charter of their country.
Terence MacSwiney
Let a hundred flowers blossom, let a hundred schools of thought contend.
Mao Tse-tung
To fight for national culture means in the first place to fight for the liberation of the nation, that material keystone which makes the building of a culture possible. There is no other fight for culture which can develop apart from the popular struggle.
Frantz Fanon
Last words The English government having determined not to respect my rights as a French citizen and officer, and summoned me before a court martial, I have been sentenced to death... I have served the Republic faith- fully, and my death, as well as that of my brother, a victim like myself, and condemned in the same manner about a month ago, will sufficiently prove it.... I have sacrificed for the Republic all that man holds dearest - my wife, my children, my liberty, my life.
Wolfe Tone
I am going to my cold and silent grave, my lamp of life is nearly extinguished... I have parted with every- thing that was dear to me for my country's cause... I am ready to die though I have not been allowed to vindicate my character... I have but one request to ask ... it is the charity of silence. Let no man write my epitaph, for as no man who knows my reasons has the courage to justify my deeds, I want my story to be unwritten until other men in other times can tell the truth. When my country takes her place among the nations of the world, then, and not tiff then.... let my epitaph be written.
Robert Emmet, executed 1803
We went out to break the connection between this country and the British empire, and to establish an Irish Republic... Believing that the British government has no right in Ireland, never had any right in Ireland, and never can have any right in Ireland, the presence, in any one generation of Irish men, of even a respectable minority ready to die, to affirm that truth, makes that government forever a usurpation and a crime against human progress.
I personally thank God that I have lived to see the day when thousands of Irish men and boys and hundreds of Irish women and girls, were ready to affirm that truth, and to attest it with their lives, if need be ... We shall rise again!
James Connolly, executed May 1916
An hour ago I was informed that I was to be shot at eight o'clock this morning - as a reprisal. Well, I shall die for Ireland - for the Republic; for that glorious cause that has been sanctified by the blood of countless martyrs throughout the ages; the cause of human liberty. The Republic stands for truth and honour - for all that is noblest in our race. By truth and honour - by principle and sacrifice alone will Ireland be free. That this is so - that this is immutable - I am prepared to stake all my hopes of the hereafter... I have no regrets for the future of Ireland is assured.
Liam Mellows, executed December 1922
Iif instead of being so strong, our last cartridge had been spent and our last man was lying on the ground and his enemies howling round him and their bayonets raised, ready to plunge them into his body, that man should say - true to the traditions handed down - if they said to him: 'Now will you come into the Empire?' - he should say, and he would say: 'No, I will not.' That is the spirit which has lasted all through the centuries and you people in favour of the Treaty know that the British government and the British Empire will have gone down before that spirit dies out in Ireland.
Cathal Brugha, killed by Free Staters, 1922
To carry on, no matter what odds are against you, to carry on no matter what torments are inflicted on you. The road to freedom is paved with suffering, hardships and torture, carry on my gallant and brave comrades until that certain day.
Tom Williams, executed 1942
We must take no steps backward, our steps must be onward, for if we don't, the martyrs who died for you, for me, for this country will haunt us for eternity.
Maire Drumm, assassinated 1976
If they aren't able to destroy the desire for freedom, they won't break you. They won't break me because the desire for freedom, and the freedom of the Irish people is in my heart. The day will dawn when all the people of Ireland will have the desire for freedom to show. It is then we'll see the rising of the moon.
Bobby Sands, martyred 1981
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