The launch of Sinn Féin’s candidates for the upcoming local, EU and Mayoral elections was held on 28 April in Dublin’s Helix theatre. The sunny day was in sync with the mood of the hundreds of Sinn Féin candidates and supporters who attended the event. We cover the keynote address of Mary Lou McDonald, along with reports from the canvass provided by EU candidate Kathleen Funchion who is running in Ireland South, Maria Doherty on the election trail from Milford, Donegal, and Kevin O’Hara who is running in Conamara South, Galway. Free article

The 1974 Dublin Monaghan bombings and the 1981 Stardust tragedy were both seismic events in the last half century. In both cases the political establishment behaved shamefully and frustrated the search for truth by the survivors and the bereaved of these tragedies. Free article

When the British government first announced its intention to legislate on how we deal with our past, it was abundantly clear that the intention was cover-up and letting British state forces and their proxies off the hook for crimes committed here. Free article

Francie Molloy joined the Republican Clubs in 1967 aged 16, beginning a nearly 60 year odyssey in republican struggle. He has been a street activist, community defender, an election director for Bobby Sands in Tyrone, and a builder of the Sinn Féin team and organisation in Mid-Ulster. Francie was elected a councillor in 1990, an MLA in 1998, and an MP for Mid-Ulster in 2013. After the announcement that Francie would not contest the next Westminster election, we asked Jim Gibney to interview the republican veteran. Below, we have Jim’s take on a life lived in struggle. Free article

Retrieving James Connolly from the ‘mouldering records of the past’

“I continued to listen to their talk and there was mention continually of somebody named Connolly. Connolly says so and so. Connolly does not agree with that. Connolly’s point of view is this, and so on. Then when I had an opportunity, I asked who was this Connolly. ‘He is a very smart fellow,’ I was told”.

From:... Free article

In historical terms the death of Michael Gaughan marks a halfway point between our time and the end of the Civil War, the consolidation of Partition and of the two partitioned states. Like so many of his generation, Michael Gaughan was to live through the tragic legacy of Partition as it manifested itself in the outbreak of armed conflict in the North in 1969 and he was one of the many young people who once again stepped forward into the ranks of the Irish Republican Army. Free article

Former Sinn Féin councillor Tom Hartley explains the long campaign to transform Belfast City Hall into an institution that reflects all strands of Belfast’s political history. Free article

Periodically, articles appear and comments are made about what is glibly referred to as the ‘cost’ of Irish Unity. What usually follows is an attempt to reduce the reunification of Ireland and the long overdue restoration of the right of the people of Ireland to self-determination, to an accounting exercise. Free article

The key involvement and contribution by many Irish women in the revolutionary period is being reclaimed. Maeve Arbuckle profiles Cumann na mBan Commander Julia Morrissey Free article

I worked across from a Community Garden for years, but it wasn’t until I retired that I noticed it was there! That was five years ago when I popped in to see what was going on behind the green railings. One session later of weeding our potato plot and I was hooked. Free article