MORE CRACKS have appeared in the ranks of the Labour Party as their TDs followed Fine Gael in railroading through a deeply unfair and regressive Budget. Free article

SURVIVORS and families of the victims of the Miami Showband massacre in 1975 are to sue Britain’s Ministry of Defence and police authorities over the relationships between the British Army, the RUC and the unionist death squad killers. Free article

DECLASSIFIED official Whitehall documents revealed in a new book by former BBC correspondent Anne Cadwallader show that successive British governments knew that members of the British crown forces were involved in unionist killer gangs responsible for the deaths of 120 people yet failed to act. Free article

EIGHTY TOWN COUNCILS across the 26 Counties are being scrapped by Environment Minister Phil Hogan in what the Fine Gael/Labour Government claims is an attempt to reform local government. But Sinn Féin says the move is an attempt to centralise power. Free article

LIZ GILLIS meets me in The Patriots Inn, which sits in the shadow of Kilmainham Jail, on the south bank of the River Liffey. Free article

THE scourge of fuel poverty continues to affect all levels of society, particularly the old and infirm. Free article

THE RAFTERS of the historic Mansion House in Dublin were ringing on 23 October with fighting words from Irish and North American trade union leaders at a rally organised by Sinn Féin to mark the 1913 Lockout under the banner ‘In Common Cause Against Austerity, 1913-2013’. Free article

PINNED to the Leinster House office door of Sinn Féin Workers’ Rights spokesperson Senator David Cullinane is the front page of the Mandate Trade Union newspaper Shopfloor with a withering criticism of the Fine Gael/Labour Government’s austerity Budget. Free article

ANNE MARIE FITZGERALD has made history for Sinn Féin in Mid Tyrone by being elected first citizen of the Omagh District. And more history was made on Omagh District Council at the meeting when it elected two female councillors to the top two posts — Anne Marie as Chairperson and Omagh Town representative Sorcha McAnespy as Vice-Chair. Premium service article

THE London Irish Centre was packed out by 400 people on 19 October for the ‘Towards a New Ireland – A New Phase of the Peace Process’ conference, hosted by Sinn Féin. 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

IN OCTOBER 2011, I sat with a resident in one of the doomed Priory Hall apartments discussing the need for a public campaign in support of the families who were at that moment being evacuated from their homes. Free article