People Before Profit's Shaun Harkin marks James Connolly anniversary with call for 32 country socialist republic

Mr. Harkin issued the call at the republican icon’s former home on Clondara Street on the Falls Road, on the anniversary of his execution on Friday.

The Derry PBPA candidate, who delivered the main address at a James Connolly Commemoration chaired by West Belfast MLA Gerry Carroll, said: “We can create a different kind of Ireland by uniting the struggles on either side of the border for justice and equality.

“We will work as Connolly did to unite the working class people on the Falls and Shankill; in Creggan and the Fountain. We are fighting for the same things as people in Dublin.

“As Connolly said over 100 years ago - the time for patching up the capitalist system has long passed; it must go.

“Onwards in the fight for a socialist Ireland.”

During the course of his address Mr. Harkin called for mass resistance to any attempts to harden the border; for an end to the “continuing use of internment in the North”; for the liberalisation of abortion legislation; and for the dismantlement of “two rotten, failed states” on either side of the border where “inequality, injustice and corruption are rampant” and “poverty wages are endemic”.