Republicans must reach out to unionists, who have been "abandoned" by the British government, dissident republicans were told yesterday (Sunday).
Speaking at Republican Sinn Féin's annual Wolfe Tone commemoration at Bodenstown, Co Kildare, Sean O Bradaigh – a brother of party president Ruairi O Bradaigh – said the Good Friday Agreement had failed to reassure either community in the north.
"In the six occupied counties, the nightmare of the nationalist people continues. In some areas, communities live in continual fear of attack," he said.
"The Stormont agreement has not brought reassurance to the unionist people either."
He said people were coming to realise they had been "misled by the hype" with which the agreement was put before them.
Mr O Bradaigh described it as "a sell-out" of Irish national rights which institutionalised sectarianism and which could not deliver justice and peace.
And in a direct appeal to unionists he said: "It is a fact that a previous generation of Protestants, and particularly dissenters and Presbyterians, found republicanism to be attractive.
"Many fought, suffered and died for it. It is time their descendants opened the history books and studied why this was so. Our task should be to help them to do this, now that so many of them feel abandoned by England."
Alluding to the Stakeknife revelations, he said the agreement had updated and secured English rule with the collaboration of "self-styled republicans".
Referring to Wolfe Tone as "the father of Irish republicanism", Mr O Bradaigh said RSF would continue, regardless of defections of recent years.
"We renew our republican vows here at the grave of Tone and we pledge ourselves... never to desist in our efforts until we have ended English rule in our country for all time," he said.
