After warning that the July 12 conflict was “only a wee taster” of
future protests, the anti-Catholic Orange Order and its loyalist
supporters have said they will make weekly bids to march through the
nationalist Ardoyne community in north Belfast.
Pressure is growing on the religious orders that ran the Magdalene
laundries to reverse a decision not to compensate those girls and women
who lived and worked for them under slave labour conditions.
Sinn Fein will call for a Yes vote in the referendum to abolish the
upper house of the Dublin parliament on October 4th, saying the Seanad
[Senate] is “elite” and “out of touch”.
An account of one of the first revolutionary acts of the 1916 Rising,
the Howth gun-running in Dublin, and the subsequent Bachelor’s Walk
massacre, also in Dublin, 99 years ago this week.
As Ireland’s only corruption trial collapsed this week with a
businessman and three implicated councillors cleared, Fintan O’Toole
explains why an inquiry is needed into why a regime of impunity on
corruption and fraud persists in the 26 County state.
After a week of the most intense loyalist violence, a decision by the
Parades Commission to reroute another planned march by the anti-Catholic
Orange Order has been welcomed as good news.
Former US peace envoy Richard Haass has returned to the north of Ireland
to constitute a new discussion group on parades and flags from the main
parties at the Stormont Assembly.
An American student held after he visited a penpal in Hydebank women’s
prison was released on Monday after a total of nine days in the hands of
the PSNI police.
The Republican Network for Unity (RNU) have strongly condemned the
actions of the 26 County Garda police during the funeral of former
republican prisoner, Seamus McKenna, this week.
The announcement of a conservation order around the buildings where the
last stand of the 1916 Easter Rising took place has been followed by
appeals for the entire battlefield site to be preserved.
The Sinn Fein Mayor of Belfast has said he is happy to use the title of
‘Lord’ and other royal aspects of the post in order to show observance
of the things unionists “hold dear”.
When Richard Haass arrives to try to
square the circle he will need to realise that the only way to bring
the Orange Order to heel is to hit them where it hurts - in their pockets.
Loyalists rioted for a fifth evening in a row last night over the
failure to permit a sectarian march through the nationalist Ardoyne area
on north Belfast.
A total of eighteen mass sectarian rallies are being held today across
the Six Counties, marking the height of the Protestant marching season
and the most difficult and dangerous period of the year for Catholics.
A desecrated statue of the Virgin Mary has come to symbolise the hatred
displayed by loyalists this year in their intimidatory ‘Eleventh Night’
bonfires.
The family of a man blown up by a booby-trap device which the British
Crown forces allowed to remain hidden in a flat have said they had been
victims of lies and evasion.
The families of 11 people killed by the British Army in west Belfast
more than 40 years ago have called for an independent panel to
investigate the deaths.
Commentators and media are already looking toward the centenary of the
1916 Rising, but there has been much less comment so far on the centenary
of the 1913 Dublin Lockout.
Abortion is to become available in the 26 Counties in strictly limited
circumstances following a final vote on highly contentious legislation
early this morning.
A decision by the Parades Commission that a return parade by the Orange
Order should not pass the Ardoyne shop fronts in north Belfast on the
Twelfth of July has been widely welcomed.
A giant steel wall was erected around the Short Strand enclave in east
Belfast this week in an unprecedented military operation to seal off the
nationalist enclave ahead of one of a number of sectarian Orange Order
parades.
The Six-County assembly at Stormont will be recalled from the summer
recess on Monday morning after a DUP councillor made serious
allegations of political interference against her own party’s minister,
Nelson McCausland -- but the DUP appear to have successfully suppressed
any debate by issuing a ‘petition of concern’.
A Sinn Fein assembly member has said that comments by former Ulster
Unionist Ken Maginnis during a TV documentary on Margaret Thatcher
confirm the British government has operated a ‘shoot-to-kill’ policy in
the North.
The memory of Cromwell and Parnell, Larkin and Connolly were raised this
week amid protests over bank repossessions and increased threats to
mortgage-holders across Ireland.
The most unsettling aspect of the Anglo Irish Bank tapes is not the executives' swearing, greed or arrogance, according to Fintan O'Toole. It's that we know they were right to assume they could get away with anything.
For understandable reasons most of the publicity about petrol bombs
flying over interface fencing is focused on east Belfast’s Short
Strand. It’s not the only place where there is tension, of course.