2018-12-30

State Papers, Sinn Féin & Federalism

The last days of December traditionally bring the release of state papers after the 30-year embargo. Accordingly, the last couple of days saw the release of hundreds of previously secret government files dating from 1988 in Dublin and Belfast. [Read More…]

2018-12-17

Interview with new Saoradh chairperson Brian Kenna

At their third Ard-Fheis (AGM) on 17/18 November in Dundalk, Co Louth, the Irish republican party Saoradh elected a new chairperson. Brian Kenna from Dublin succeeded Davy Jordan from Co Tyrone who chaired the party since its formation two years ago. [Read More…]

New RSF President: But who is Seosamh Ó Mhaoileoin?

Republican Sinn Féin, the oldest of the anti-Good-Friday-Agreement groups that emerged from the Provisionals, appointed a new president. The announcement of Seosamh Ó Mhaoileoin came as a surprise to many for he is a largely unknown figure within Irish republicanism. [Read More…]

Why ex-IRA bomber is wrong to take a uniform approach to PoW status

Former Provisional Shane Paul O’Doherty argued in this newspaper last week that republican inmates didn’t qualify as prisoners of war. Here, historian Dieter Reinisch says O’Doherty’s view is at odds with British Government policy throughout the 20th century.
 
In an article published in this newspaper on January 5, Shane Paul O’Doherty argued that “captured (IRA) combatants could never qualify as prisoners of war” because they “did not conduct military operations according to the laws and customs of war”. [Read More…]

Radicalization in Prison: Historical Lessons for Today’s Challenges

On May 29, Benjamin H. shot four people dead in the Belgian town of Luttich. [Read More…]

Dreaming of an “Irish Tet Offensive”: Irish Republican prisoners & the origins of the Peace Process

January 30 2018 marked the 50th anniversary of the launch of the “Tet offensive” in 1968 by North Vietnam forces and the National Liberation Front against the South Vietnam Army and the US military presence.
 
The offensive not only facilitated the changing public opinion in the USA on the Vietnam War and heralded revolutionary unrest throughout the world in 1968, twenty years later, the idea of a Tet-like offensive resurfaced in Ireland.
 
This piece will argue, however, that rather than a credible scenario, it was a wide-spread myth among the Irish Republican prisoners’ population that facilitated the departure of the IRA from Armalite to the ballot box. [Read More…]

A German view on James Connolly

In the past three or so years, hundreds of books on almost all aspects of the 1916 rising have been published. It is hard to keep track of the wide range of topics and qualities. [Read More…]

A Fatal Attack in Dundalk, Racism and Irish Republicanism

A stabbing by an Egyptian teenager that left a Japanese man dead and two Irish men injured has reignited debates on immigration in Ireland. Irish Nationalist sentiments all too often turned into anti-Muslim racism as news spread that the attacker was a former asylum seeker to the United Kingdom who migrated to Ireland through the British North. [Read More…]

Irish Identity in British Prisons

The fact that Irish Republican prisoners are held in British prisons in the North of Ireland causes conflict for the Northern Ireland Prison Service. Irish Republicans are Irish Nationalists, thus, their national identity is suppressed during their imprisonment in the British State. [Read More…]

So how many Cumainn na mBan are actually out there?

I recently stumbled over following sentence on a widely read Irish blog: “Cumann na mBan (CnamB) has been subject to several splits down through the years.” This comment was made in response to claims that Cumann na mBan “never split.” This is an assumption I also regularly repeat in my own writings on the organisation. The sentence that Cumann na mBan had “several splits down through the years” suggests that various organisations have emerged from the Cumann na mBan tradition. [Read More…]