Melbourne’s eight-hour day monument stands opposite the Trades Hall – reputedly the oldest trade union building in the world. I found myself there tracing the footsteps of my granduncle Gus, a trade union activist in the city from the 1930s to 1960s. The monument honours the world’s first successful battle to secure an eight-hour working day in 1856. Its design symbolises the demand, first associated with textile manufacturer and social reformer Robert Owen, for “Eight hours labour. Eight hours recreation. Eight hours rest.” Free article

New Year’s message from Sinn Féin President Mary Lou McDonald TD Free article

Grace McManus has worked as an advisor with the Sinn Féin Seanad team for over two years, and was elected in the Bray East area in the last local elections. Here she gives an insight into the working life of a new Sinn Féin councillor. Free article

Sinn Féin Finance Spokesperson has hit out at Fianna Fáil Leader Mícheál Martin after comments he made to the media this morning saying that now is not the time for an Irish Unity Poll.

Martin said that the proposal of a border poll runs the risk of raising tensions in the North of Ireland, and called for the integration of public services in the meantime.

The Fianna Fáil leader... Free article

Sinn Féin MLA Conor Murphy has expressed disappointment that the DUP have tonight failed to do a deal to restore power-sharing. Free article

Writing in a personal capacity MANDATE Communications Officer David Gibney, outlines the economic and social foundations that need to be built for a truly just, equal and democratic Ireland to be become possible. Free article

In May 1918 British Army Field Marshal John French was appointed Lord Lieutenant and Supreme Commander of the British Army in Ireland. He had previously held the positions of Commander-in-Chief of the British Home Forces and, at the start of the First World War, Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force in France. Free article

There is nothing inevitable about Irish unity. How many movements in history have wrongly predicted the obviousness of their desired outcome? How many political struggles end in failure? Achieving the unity of this island remains a formidable challenge; the obstacles are still huge. Free article

No One Shouted Stop: Death of an Irish Town was the 1988 title of Irish Times journalist John Healy’s seminal book dealing with the decline of Charlestown, a town in East Mayo familiar to anyone who has travelled the N17 from Sligo to Galway. The book was particularly concerned with this case study of social and economic degeneration in the west, but also the destructive impact of emigration on the vitality of rural communities more generally. Free article

THE month between 16 November and 17 December 1984 saw the deaths of a Sinn Féin member at the hands of unionist gunmen and of five IRA Volunteers in action against the British crown forces in Counties Antrim, Fermanagh, Derry and Armagh. It was one of the most intense and tragic months of the conflict. Free article