Labour leader Brendan Corish delivered his New Republic speech
On Saturday 14th of October 1967, in his address to the Labour party Annual Conference in Liberty Hall, party leader Brendan Corish outlined his “New Republic” vision for Ireland, opening with what became a slogan, “the seventies will be Socialist”.
Then General Secretary of Labour, Brendan Halligan, recalled in 2018:
When he rose in Liberty Hall to address the 1967 Annual Conference of the Labour Party, Brendan Corish was about to deliver what was later described both as a manifesto and as a sermon.
But whether sermon or manifesto, it was about to shock the assembled delegates. It’s true they were anticipating something special. So,too the media. But what they got went beyond all expectations and has since been included in an anthology of the fifty “Greatest Irish Speeches”, and rightly so.
The address opened like a thunderclap with five words that reverberated around Liberty Hall and have since gone into political folklore: “The Seventies will be Socialist”.
Brendan Halligan, A Noble Adventure: The New Republic Speech in Retrospect