THERE IS NO DOUBT that legacy issues arising out of the conflict need to be addressed if we are to move forward as a society. Free article

IN STORMONT in September, a collective of women launched a document on dealing with the past. Entitled Gender Principles for Dealing with the Legacy of the Past, it suggests mechanisms to ensure that women and men can participate in any processes on an equal basis. Free article

WHILE the failure of the far-right National Front in France to win any of the regional assemblies in that country in the second round of voting was greeted with widespread relief, there remain fundamental questions – not only for Europe but for the European Left as well. Free article

LAURA CRAWFORD AND PAUL FOX were killed on active service in Belfast on 1 December 1975. Danny Morrison – the novelist, former IRA prisoner and Editor of An Phoblacht/Republican News – was asked to speak at the commemoration for Laura at the Women’s Garden of Remembrance, Roddy McCorley Club, Glen Road, on 21 November 2015. We reproduce Danny’s tribute as it depicts the background to the conflict that these young republicans were thrust into and which cost their lives and of so many others. Free article

CUTS TO PUBLIC SERVICES, job losses, dismantling of the welfare state, and political disregard for the special circumstances of the North are the distinctive hallmarks of the present British Government’s agenda. Free article

IN ST ENDA’S COLLEGE in Rathfarnham one January evening in 1916, Pádraig Pearse, in conversation with Desmond Ryan, described how he had persuaded James Connolly not to act alone with the Irish Citizen Army but to wait and join the insurrection planned by the Military Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Free article

CÉ GO GCLOISEANN muid a lán baoth-chaint faoi phrionsabail chómhsheasaimh an Aontais Eorpaigh, níor dhearnadh aon phlé sna meáin Éireannacha faoin raic mhor idir an Iodáil agus an Ghearmáin mar gheall ar an Rúis, smachtbhannaí agus soláthar gáis. Free article

IN their annual Christmas show of solidarity with Basque political prisoners, members of the Belfast Basque Solidarity Committee posted Christmas and New Year cards to the prisoners and called on the Spanish state to start releasing prisoners. Free article

LEGAL DISCRIMINATION against former political prisoners must be ended, the Director of Coiste na nIarchimí, the republican ex-prisoners’ support group, has said. Free article

“POLITICAL EX-PRISONERS face legal discrimination every day of their lives,” said Michael Culbert, Director of Coiste na nIarchimí, the republican ex-prisoners’ suport network. “The war is over yet for former political prisoners the legacy of their convictions is still being used against them.” Free article

“BREXIT” – the partial disengagement or even full withdrawal by the British state from the EU (and formal repeal or significant erosion of human rights protections) – has hugely negative implications for Ireland, North and South. Free article

ACKIE COLGAN of Ballintoy became the last fisherman of Carrick-a-Rede the day he took over from his uncle, Alex McNeill, in a boat that had seen better days. He was a young man in his mid-30s and fishing was in his blood. It was a natural progression and it should have continued for another 1,000 years, from one generation to the next. Instead, in September 2002 the boat was winched up from the sea onto the shore of the rock-island for the last time. After 31 years it was over. Free article