IN RECENT MONTHS, the Sinn Féin leadership has said unambiguously our party is committed to guaranteeing parity of esteem for both British and Irish identities. Free article

New Mayor of Belfast, Sinn Féin Councillor Máirtín Ó Muilleoir, talks to An Phoblacht Free article

A CROSS-COMMUNITY FORUM organised by the PSNI and attended by representatives from unionist and loyalist parties and organisations, Sinn Féin, the SDLP and church and community figures was held in Wales on Monday 20 May in advance of the marching season in the North of Ireland. Free article

ON the 15th anniversary in May of the Good Frday Agreement referendum, republican ex-prisoners hosted a cross-community conference in the Linen Hall Library in Belfast. Free article

THE past few weeks have seen two important events in the Peace Process. Free article

While the issues are difficult and complex, we will address them in a positive and constructive manner. We are in resolution mode Free article

I AM GRATEFUL for the invitation to the respond to the interesting article published recently in An Phoblacht by Sinn Féin National Chairperson Declan Kearney concerning what he termed “a new framework for the unfinished business of the past”. Many of the issues raised in Declan’s article resonate with themes which myself and others have been discussing over the past year and more. In particular, Declan raised the questions of ”justice and truth, whether that can be achieved separately, simultaneously, or not at all; the practical implications of either or both in terms of judicial or non-judicial procedures; effective truth recovery mechanisms and how to secure them with maximum participation and co-operation”. Free article

COLIN PARRY, I was told at meetings of senior Sinn Féin figures in Belfast and Dublin involved in the ‘Uncomfortable Conversations’ initiative chaired by Declan Kearney, was prepared to give an interview to An Phoblacht. Free article

LIVING in this part of the Empire or the north-eastern counties of Ireland was, in the early 1990s, a very daunting experience. Our jails were full of young men and women serving long and dreary prison sentences in a truly vindictive prison regime. The forces of ‘law and order’ were busy declining to comment on issues of national security while skulking in the corner as they no doubt planned to secure the ‘democratic wish’ of their paymasters in London by bold action against bolder citizens. The place was in many ways at a crossroads. The war, for want of a better word, was at a stalemate and 4,000 souls were in their graves, the vast bulk from working-class backgrounds while it became clear to those who really mattered that this level of ‘acceptable violence’ could be maintained in perpetuity. Free article

SECTARIANISM is both a by-product of British colonialism in Ireland and the cement used to embed the partition of Ireland and provide the ethos of the new Northern state just over 90 years ago. Free article