NEW IRELAND ÉIRE NUA
The Rising of the Moon BY GERRY ADAMS
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without external influence and without partial or total disruption of the national unity or territorial integrity ...”
hen the Sinn Fein Féin leadership began developing our peace strategy in the 1980’s, one of our primary objectives was to get others to support self-determination. In 1987, the party published ‘Scenario for Peace’ which said: “The Irish people have never relinquished their claim to the right to self-determination. What has been in contest is the right of the Irish people, as a whole, to selfdetermination and their freedom to exercise that right.”
Four years later in 1992, Sinn Féin published ‘Towards a Lasting Peace in Ireland’ which said: “Peace is not just the absence of war but is also establishing conditions which will ensure a lasting peace. This means eradicating the root cause of the conflict by gaining national self-determination, which in turn lays the foundation for justice, democracy and equality – the safeguards of lasting peace.”
The following year during the Sinn Féin/SDLP talks, the issue of self-determination was at the heart of our conversation. “Sinn Féin accepts self-determination to mean a nation’s exercise of the political freedom to determine its own economic, social and cultural development
Self-determination was also at the heart of the dialogue between myself and John Hume. In our first joint statement issued on 23 April 1993, we accepted that the most pressing issue facing the people of Ireland and Britain was the question of lasting peace and how it can
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