Catalunya Independence Campaign is an Inspiration

In 2017, A Yes For Unity contingent visited Catalunya during the Independence referendum campaign as part of our International outreach, as a learning exercise to gather ideas on how lessons from the Catalonia independence campaign could be applied to the campaign for Irish Unity.

YesForUnity International Outreach

The most striking lesson we learnt from the experience in Catalunya was the sight of entire community involvement in the campaign. Men & women both young and old and even children were participating, whole streets, villages and towns, to every social and sporting club and organisation that you could think of. The independence campaign also crossed heavily into civil rights groups, meaning the LGBTQ community were involved to language and culture groups.  

Catalunya Independence Rally

Today the Spanish Supreme Court sentenced 9 of the Independence leaders to lengthy prisons sentences, in response the entire Catalunya region erupted. Hundreds of thousands of citizens took to the streets as soon as word spread of the verdict. This reaction was entirely spontaneous, it required no organisation. It was an example of what organised & politically educated working class communities are capable of.

Spontaneous protests erupted

The main objective of Yes For Unity is to build a similar working class grass-roots organisation, that crosses all the social boundaries that exist within our communities, to ensure the power base of the Irish Unity campaign remains within working class areas in an organised and politically educated manner. In turn leading to the post-partition structure of Ireland built around the needs of majority and not the few.

Yes For Unity send our solidarity to the people of Catalunya and demand the immediate release of all the political prisoners and exiles. 

Joe Matthews, YesForUnity, Vice National Organiser.