Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I have consistently made the point in this House that the two key factors in defeating the invasion will be, first, the resistance of the Ukrainian people and, second, the Russian anti-war movement. Today, I want to go into a small bit more detail on the question of that resistance. When James Connolly addressed members of the Irish Citizen Army at Liberty Hall in 1916 before marching to the GPO, he told them, in the event of victory, to hold onto their guns. He said that the people we are fighting alongside are out for political liberty but that we are out for social and economic liberty as well. I hope the Ukrainian people drive out the Russian invaders and I hope, when that is done, that the working people of Ukraine - a clear majority of the population - move to take control of their country, take control of its wealth and take control of its mineral and agricultural resources. In other words, I hope they achieve not just political liberty, but economic and social liberty as well.

This is an important point because there will be other forces interested in that wealth and those mineral resources and agricultural resources too. Obviously, Putin is one but there are also false friends of Ukraine in governments in Washington and London and in European Union capitals who front for big corporations - the oligarchs of the West, if we like - who would like a friendly government in Kyiv and easy and profitable access to those resources. Some of those governments are offering military hardware to the Ukrainian Government. No doubt people in Ukraine will take guns from wherever they can at the moment, but I would be very wary of the unofficial price tags that are being attached. All the more reason, in my view, that Ukrainian workers need to organise, and organise independently. The words of James Connolly in this city more than 100 years ago also have relevance for them there today.

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