Jim Gibney recently interviewed former republican prisoner Joe McKenny. Here he tells the extraordinary story of a man who spent eleven years in English jails before his transfer to Portlaoise Prison in the Irish midlands as a result of the Peace Process and who was over 7O years of age when he was finally released. Joe McKenny's story gives an intriguing insight into life for northern nationalists from the 1930s and to the early days of the resurgent IRA in the early 1970s Free article

2006 marks marks the 90th anniversary of the Easter Rising of 1916. The run up to this anniversary has seen the 26-County Government, spurred on by the re-popularising of republicanism in general, and rising support for Sinn Féin in particular, announce the reinstatement of the state commemoration of the Rising. Free article

Republicans need to be generous and imaginative in their approaches to the unionist community. Dialogue and engagement is the route to a shared future and republicans will necessarily be in the vanguard of this process. Free article

Irish traditional music is heard, respected and enjoyed today on electronic media and in live performance all over the world but it was once the object of snobbery and derision in this country. Free article

In an article first published in Múscail last February, Caolfhionn Ní Dhonnabháin argues that the current appallingly low level of female participation in parliament and positions of power in the 26 Counties, must be viewed against the backdrop of partition and the subsequent development of the Free State. Free article

Yes comrades it is indeed THAT time of year again. Most of us are looking forward to the break, Christmas dinner and the whole show. There is, of course, one amongst us who hates this entire time of year. Republicanism's own resident Scrooge can't help himself at Christmas. He hates it and every year he lets us know why. Free article

There are those refusenik republicans who look on Christmas as an irritable hurdle to be endured and never enjoyed, all because they can't understand why such a frivolous undertaking should stop them from important, nay vital, work at the revolutionary coal face. Free article

• This news feature is funded by the European United Left/Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL) Free article

These were the chilling words used by a Blanket man to describe the conditions in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh during the infamous Blanket Protest. Words, which 30 years on still send a shiver down the spine of those who reads them. The H-Blocks will no doubt hold this imagery for many who lived through these times. But perhaps most will remember it as the place where, in 1981 led by Bobby Sands, ten men died on hunger strike. Free article

Books worth buying this Christmas Free article