“Sands, Bobby. Anti H-Block/Armagh Political Prisoner, 30,492”. These words of election returning officer Alastair Patterson, became in 1981 the live televised public proof of the power of republican voters. Bobby Sands was elected MP for Fermanagh-South Tyrone 43 years ago on 9 April 1981. We republish two unique first-hand accounts of the events that led to Sands victory from Jim Gibney and Danny Morrison. Free article

Éirí Amach na Cásca – The 1916 Easter Rising – First published in Éiri amach na Cásca, The Easter Rising 1916, by Republican Publications, April 1986 Free article

A serious inaccuracy in the Irish Times concerning the burial of Frank Stagg has been corrected by Danny Morrison. In its obituary of Frank’s brother the late Emmet Stagg, former Labour Party TD, the newspaper omitted the hijacking and burial of Frank’s body by the Fine Gael/Labour government and gave the wrong location for that first burial. Free article

An Phoblacht would have been helpless without its drivers. They delivered the paper all over Ireland in challenging dangerous conditions. Earlier this month we were saddened to learn of the death of Thomas McGuigan, one of these valiant republican road warriors. Free article

March 1st marks the 43rd anniversary of the beginning of the 1981 hunger strikes. An Phoblacht will be opening our archives which house a unique repository of articles and photographs from the hunger strike period. In the coming weeks we will be profiling these pieces along with new insights into this critical period in the history of republican struggle. Free article

Writing in his latest blog, Declan Kearney said that the future of Palestine demands that the democratic world finally acts decisively in support of people's fundamental, national and human rights. Free article

39 years of electoral representation by Mid Ulster MP Francie Molloy is ending this year as the Sinn Féin veteran announced his decision not to stand in the next Westminster elections. In his own word Francie marks out key events in his long career standing up for the rights of Northern nationalists. Free article

THE late 1980s saw an escalation in the use of death squads by the British regime in the Six Counties. Since the start of the 1970s, the British Army and the RUC had manipulated loyalist paramilitary organisations as part of their counter-insurgency strategy. The aim was to terrorise the entire nationalist population, killing Catholics solely because of their religion or perceived political allegiances and, where possible, assassinating leading nationalists and republicans. Free article

IN JANUARY 1994, the armed conflict in the Six Counties was at a critical stage. The previous year had seen the deaths of 84 people in the war and, while there was some political movement, it was by no means clear that a peace process could be put in place to end the armed conflict and to address its root causes. Free article

Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, General Secretary and co-founder of Palestinian National Initiative (PNI), describes the recent events that have occurred at the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza as a scandal. Free article