THURSDAY, 21 MAY 1981, witnessed the deaths of two more Hunger Strikers. Raymond McCreesh passed away at 2:30am. That evening, Patsy O’Hara died. The deaths of Raymond and Patsy – who had started the strike on the same day, died on the same day and were born within a fortnight of each other in February 1957 – marked a critical escalation in the prison struggle as well as the struggle outside the prisons walls. Free article

Forty years after the killing of IRA Volunteer Séamus McElwain, former political prisoner, Sinn Féin MLA and republican activist Seán Lynch reflects on the man he knew, the conflict they lived through, and the political path that followed. Free article

The death of Francis Hughes at the age of 25 on hunger strike in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh saw not the end of a legend but a new chapter in what was, by any measure, the story of one of the most fearless and tenacious guerrilla fighters of the 20th Century and of the Irish Republican Army. Free article

Sinn Fein MLA Gerry Kelly gave the main oration to a gathering of over 1,000 people in Scotstown, Co. Monaghan, to honour IRA Volunteer Séamus McElwain on the 40th anniversary of his death in a British SAS ambush. Free article

Easter 1976 marked the 60th anniversary of the 1916 Rising with the armed conflict ongoing in the Six Counties while in Dublin the Fine Gael/Labour Coalition government turned its back on both the North and on the heritage of Easter 1916 which it once claimed.

The 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising had seen extensive State commemorations but in 1976 there were none. Sinn Féin... Free article

Gerry Adams remembers Terry 'Cruncher' O’Neill. He was ‘an incomparable singer of Irish songs of resistance’, and ‘a hard-working activist’ who was ‘a huge part of the growth of Sinn Féin in North Belfast following the Good Friday Agreement’. Free article

When six escaped Fenian prisoners in Western Australia climbed on board a whaling ship called the Catalpa in April 1876 it was the culmination of efforts that had spanned two continents, an entire ocean and nearly three years. It is one of the most remarkable stories in the history of Irish Republicanism. Free article

For one hundred years now Irish Republicans have worn the Easter Lily emblem to mark the anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising and to pay tribute to all those who died for Irish freedom in every phase of struggle. In 1926 it was the women of Cumann na mBan who initiated what was to become the enduring symbol of Irish Republicanism. Free article

Between 1976 and 1981 the prisons in the Six Counties became front lines in the struggle for Irish freedom with an intensity and for a duration never seen before in Irish history. This stemmed from the attempt begun 50 years ago by the British government to brand Irish Republicans prisoners as criminals. Free article

Gerard Shannon, author of the first ever biography of Rory O'Connor, speaks to An Phoblacht's Mícheál Mac Donncha. Best remembered for his execution by the Free State government with Liam Mellows, Joe McKelvey and Richard Barrett on 8 December 1922, Rory O'Connor was a key member of the IRA leadership from 1917 on, though mostly out of the public eye. Free article

Derrin Ó Brádaigh tracks the links between Frank Stagg’s hunger strike 50 years ago and the Palestinian activists who spent 73 days on hunger strike this year. Free article

Irish Republican Frank Stagg was in a battle for his rights and against brutal English prison conditions from the day of his arrest in Coventry in 1973 until the hour he died in Wakefield Prison on 12th February 1976. His death after 62 days on hunger strike had been preceded by efforts in Ireland and Britain by campaigners, including his family, to win his demands and to save his life. Free article

50 years ago this week Proinsias (Frank) Stagg was on the last days of his hunger strike. His protest was to demand an end to the inhuman treatment to which he had been subjected as an Irish Republican prisoner in English jails, and for repatriation to a jail in the Six Counties. His family and comrades had campaigned tirelessly for him but the British Labour government proved totally intransigent. Frank came from a Republican family in County Mayo and his elder brother Joe was foremost in the campaign. Here we republish an article by Joe first published in ‘The Irish Prisoner’ by the Prisoners’ Aid Committee in 1977.  Joe Stagg died in November 2015.  Free article

Eoghan Mac Cormaic spoke at the annual Seán Sabhat Commemoration this year. Below we include his full oration, where he saluted ‘the selfless bravery’ of volunteers in the 1950s who were a bridge in revolutionary struggle. Free article

Veteran activist, Volunteer and republican prisoner Ronnie McCartney died recently. Danny Morrison gave the funeral oration, and we publish the whole text here. Free article