TWO YEARS after the epic 1981 H-Block Hunger Strike in which ten young republicans died, there was another epic event at Long Kesh that dealt a huge blow to the Thatcher regime in Ireland. This was the escape of 38 IRA prisoners from H-Block 7 on Sunday 25 September 1983. Free article

One hundred years ago this month many families in Ireland were in mourning in the aftermath of the tragic Civil War. But even after the war officially ended more people were plunged into grief and last weekend several generations of a wide family group gathered to recall one of the less well remembered fallen of that time - Harry McEntee of the IRA’s Dublin Brigade. Free article

Thomas McElwee, at the age of 23, was the tenth man to join the 1981 Hunger Strike. From Bellaghy in south Derry, he was imprisoned in 1976 after a premature bomb explosion in which he lost an eye. Free article

By August 1923 there were over 11,000 Republican prisoners in Free State jails and prison camps, the vast majority of them interned without trial. The Civil War was over but the Free State government showed no sign of releasing prisoners, instead that month it passed another Emergency Powers Act to give itself more legal powers to detain citizens. Free article

IRA Volunteer Kieran Doherty, TD for Cavan/Monaghan, died at 7:15pm on Sunday 2 August 1981, the day after Kevin Lynch’s death. Kieran had joined the hunger strike one day before Kevin Lynch and survived one day longer. Free article

He spent 71 days on hunger strike from 23 May 1981. He died on 1 August 1981. Free article

The annual National Hunger Strike Commemoration will be held in Cork City for the first time ever this year on Sunday 27 August. Sinn Féin’s National Commemorations Committee is urging people from all across Ireland to attend this event. Free article

Sinn Féin TD Aengus Ó Snodaigh remembers Volunteer and former Portlaoise Prison hunger striker Gerry Quinn who died recently. Free article

17 July is the 225th anniversary of the execution of United Irish leader Henry Joy McCracken. We republish here an article by Aengus Ó Snodaigh first published in 1998. Free article

THE death of IRA Volunteer Martin Hurson on 13 July 1981, after 46 days on the Hunger Strike, was unexpected. The suddenness of his death, coming only five days after that of Joe McDonnell, came as a shock since two other Hunger Strikers – Kieran Doherty and Kevin Lynch – had been almost a week on hunger strike ahead of Martin. Free article

“We are the generation who are going to deliver on what Neil ‘Plunkett’ O’Boyle and so many others gave their lives for”. These were the words of Sinn Féin TD for Donegal Pearse Doherty speaking at a centenary dinner in Motherwell commemorating Donegal and Newmains republican Neil ‘Plunkett’ O’Boyle. Free article

Chris Hazzard and Mick Murphy visited the grave of United Irishman Tom Dunn. Chris gives context to importance of Dunn 225 years since the 1798 rebellion. Free article

At a recent lecture on Ernie O’Malley by the historian and Sinn Féin Councillor Mícheál Mac Donncha, I was chatting with Belinda Nugent from the O’Malley/Russell Cumann and I mentioned that my Granda Michael Smyth knew Ernie O’Malley and was instrumental in his famous escape from Kilmainham Gaol in 1921 along with Simon Donnelly and Frank Teeling. Free article

On the 225th anniversary of the 1798 rebellion Joe Dwyer delves into an overlooked part of early Irish republican history – that of republicans in Britain and the allies they found there. Free article

In the days before the coronation of Charles III, indigenous leaders and other representatives from 12 Commonwealth countries, former British colonies, issued a joint call on the new monarch to formally apologise for British imperial crimes and to make reparations by redistributing the wealth of the British crown and returning artefacts and human remains to their rightful owners. Free article