FRANK STAGG’S SISTER, Rose, and her two daughters were among the special guests at the very first Dublin ’81 Committee commemorative meeting of 2011 on Saturday 12th February, the exact anniversary 35 years ago of the death on hunger strike of this brave IRA Volunteer in an English prison.
The event in the Ballybough Community Centre, attended by almost 200 people and honouring... Free article

THE WONDERS of the modern newspaper industry being what they are, I have to write this before polling day and you’ll be reading if afterwards. By now you’ll know how well Sinn Féin did and how badly Fianna Fáil dropped. We’ll all know whether Fine Gael has accomplished the previously thought impossible and formed a single-party government.
At which point Pa Carney has sworn he... Free article

THE success of our colleagues in the 26 Counties will undoubtedly have a positive impact on Sinn Féin’s electoral performance in the month of May in the Six Counties, Taoiseach.
As you know, there will be Assembly elections and district council elections in the North on the 30th anniversary of Bobby Sands’s death on hunger strike. Will Fine Gael or Labour – or Fianna Fáil for that... Free article

BA é Breandán Ó Béacháin a dúirt, tráth, gurb é an chéad rud ar chlár aon ghrúpa nó pháirtí in Éirinn ná an scoilt. Is dócha go raibh Fianna Fáil ag fanacht le tamall ar a scoilt féin ach sna toghcháin seo tá an scoilt i ndiaidh tarlú cheana féin idir an méid damáiste a rinne Fianna Fáil thar na blianta agus gliceas na niarrthóirí atá ann anois, ag maíomh nach raibh baint ar bith... Free article

Heart of Darkness

g BY LAURA FRIEL

I LEARNT a new word recently. It was a word I’d never needed before. But I need it now. “Peonage – a system by which debtors are bound in involuntary servitude to their creditors until their debt is paid.”
It’s what is currently being advocated for the ordinary people of Ireland. No other word better defines a proposal that condemns the South’s... Free article

THE European United Left/Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL) Group in the European Parliament – of which Bairbre de Brún is a member – has criticised the European Union’s 2020 strategy as the sort of “anti-social policies” that have contributed to the crisis rather than solutions.
GUE/NGL President Lothar Bisky (Germany) was critical of the strategy:
“Clearly it had not come up with... Free article

BY THE TIME you read this article, the election will be over, the posters will be down and the negotiations for the next government well under way.
Whatever the overall result, Sinn Féin will have had a good election. We will have increased our vote across the state. We will have a stronger Dáil team determined to hold Enda Kenny’s austerity government to account.

DESCRIBED by some media as “a Who’s Who of Left-leaning Londoners” opposing the Conservative/Lib-Dem Govern-ment’s Budget cuts, the 2011 Progressive London conference on Saturday 19th February was launched by “‘once and future Mayor” Ken Livingstone and heard Sinn Féin Assembly Economy spokesperson Mitchel McLaughlin.
They were joined by over a quarter of London’s Assembly... Free article

MITCHEL McLAUGHLIN has hit back at SDLP criticism of the Assembly Draft Budget, accusing it of being “devoid of imaginative thinking”.
“The only manifestation of the SDLP’s ‘Hokey Cokey’ relationship with the Executive that is visible so far is it is increasingly identified as an ally of the UUP/Tory Party,” Mitchel McLaughlin said.
He added:
“The SDLP’s spokespersons seem to... Free article

IN the late 1980s, the British police and judicial system came under intense national and international scrutiny as the framing of Irish people for offences they did not commit was exposed in the media and in the courts. The best-known of these frame-up victims were the Birmingham Six.
Irishmen Billy Power, Paddy Hill, John Walker, Gerry Hunter, Hugh Callaghan and Richard... Free article