Dissidents: Violent attacks are bound to continue

In a statement issued to mark the centenary of the Easter Rising, the group, which is opposed to the power-sharing arrangements at Stormont, declared: “The desperate efforts of revisionists and establishment nationalists to reconcile Partition with the Proclamation are a measure of their own failure to do so. No avenue was left unexplored as they sought to dilute, distort and physically demolish the core tenets of the Easter Week Rebellion.

“Partition is an imperialist relic.

“It created two sectarian statelets on either side of it, both of which continue to fail to serve the people of Ireland.”

The group referred to the recent Scottish independence referendum and the forthcoming Brexit referendum before issuing a direct appeal to the “English people.”

“As the question of sovereignty is to the fore within British politics, with Scottish Independence and a British exit from the EU looming large, we ask the English people why should the interests of the people of Ireland be vested in your Parliament and not in a sovereign Parliament of our own?” it asked.

The group said violent attacks against the state, like those carried out during the Easter Rising, are inevitable.

“The 1916 Rising was an armed expression of Irish sovereignty so expressed because a foreign power usurped that sovereignty. That state of affairs continues to this day making further such expressions inevitable.

“For republicans this inevitability cannot be taken for granted by presuming the mere act is sufficient justification in itself. A national struggle requires a national mind-set and a national dimension with the primacy of revolutionary politics affirmed.”