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

50 years ago today the nationalist community of Derry took to the streets to defend their community from an RUC supported loyalist assault. The resulting Battle of the Bogside was a catalyst for nationalists across the Six Counties to rise up and defend their civil and national rights. Free article

Mitchel McLaughlin, a Derry youth in 1969, who progressed on to be a Sinn Fein MLA, National Chairperson of the party, the first Sinn Fein Speaker of the Assembly and this year’s Le Chéile honoree recalled the events of August 1969 in his native city for An Phoblacht in 2009. Today we reprint Mitchel’s article. Free article

Sinn Féin President Mary Lou McDonald gives her take on Fintan O'Toole's proposal to abandon abstentionism. Free article

Pearse Doherty writes on the economics of a united Ireland and tackles myths around the subvention. Free article

On Friday 26 July, republicans from across London gathered in the London Irish Centre, Camden, for the formal launch of the ‘Terence MacSwiney Commemoration Committee [London]’. Free article

Full speech by Sinn Féin President Mary Lou McDonald in the MAC, Belfast, on talks to restore power-sharing, Brexit and Irish unity. Free article

Writing in his latest blog for An Phoblacht, Sinn Féin National Chairperson Declan Kearney said fundamental change in British policy is required to end the political deadlock in the north. Free article

BY the high summer of 1969, the Six-County state was like a powder keg ready to explode. The events of a few weeks in July and August were to change the course of Irish history. Free article

President of Sinn Fein Mary Lou Mc Donald deeply regrets the news of the death of Cormach Murrihy in New York last week. Free article