IN THE MINERS' strike young miners were the driving force in all the main actions of the This is not surprising. been the activist vanguard of every major struggle. Ireland is no exception. We reprint below the editorial of Republican News 14 April 1985, on the role of youth in Ireland.
THE SPIRIT of freedom which keeps the struggle for liberation alive is demonstrated most clearly by the young members of the Repbulican Movement.
They have borne the brunt of the oppresion of British occupation in the North and the injustice of poverty and repression in the South.
In every phase of the fight for freedom, before and since commemorate that Rising this weekend, we should be conscious of the ongoing contribution which youth is making, The Roll of Honour on the centre-pages of this paper carries the many names of Fianna and young Volunteers of the Irish Cumman na mBan who died on active service.
In the H-Blocks and Armagh the average age of the prisoners is 25 years, and a significant number of these young prisoners have been in jail from the age of 17 or 18.
Besides those young people who have made the munate sacnnice in the cause of freedom and those who languish in prison for the same cause, it should be remembered that day-to-day harassment in the six counties is directed primarily against Not that harassment stops because in the South, where young working-class people are maligned as trouble-makers and thugs, suffer similar harassment from the gardai. Such harassment is bound to increase now with the peration of the Criminal Justice Act, which was designed primarily to deal with the 'Bugsy Malone' syndrome invented by a sensationalist media.
The consumer society offers little of nothing to youth but is quick to condemn those misguided young people who act outside the norms of society to obtain the material goods that they have been brain-washed into believing are essential.
Despite this, even in the South, struggle does not have the same relevance and where sustained media propaganda lad the rewriting of history by the establishment attempts to twist the truth, young people have re:' jected this insidious pressure.
Youth were to the forefront in supporting the hunger 2|11 forefront as Sinn Fein's electoral workers.
Massive unemployment South has produced a groundswell of understandable resentment and political cynicism amongst zany youne peoble. Ihe establishment's answer kas been try through encouraging emigration or through deadcar training schemes.
It must be the task of Sinn Fein in the twenty-six counties to channel these young people into disciplined revolutionary political activity which has clearly-stated meaning them.
Republican youth in the six counties have shown the determination and commitment to br*g about real change in Ireland.
In this International Youth Year, we salute our young activists.
Youth have Easter Week 1916, young men and and can make in the ruture.
Republican Army and at the border, where the immediate been to the North and and dissipate this resentment