There has been a shocked reaction across Ireland and abroad to news that an Irish language nursery school due to open in East Belfast has been forced to relocate as a result of loyalist pressure.
July 31, 2021
There has been a shocked reaction across Ireland and abroad to news that an Irish language nursery school due to open in East Belfast has been forced to relocate as a result of loyalist pressure.
Victims groups have said international action is needed to put pressure of the British government to change course on its planned law of impunity for war crimes committed by its forces in the north of Ireland.
The decision of an appeal court in Dublin to uphold a “cosmopolitan” extradition of a Dundalk republican to Lithuania, a country he has never visited, has been condemned by justice campaigners.
The 26 County Minister for Foreign Affairs has been accused of misappropriating public funds after he quietly created a highly paid job and awarded it to a political ally after she urged him to do so.
The unionist paramilitary UDA are a focus of the impunity bid being planned by the British government, it has been alleged.
New figures suggest that none of the north’s Six Counties has an outright unionist electoral majority.
A look back at a dark week forty years ago when two Irish republican hunger-strikers succumbed within 24 hours of each other.
Johnson and Lewis have ensured by their duplicity that the legacy issue will remain unresolved. It will continue to dominate much of the political discourse in the North.
July 24, 2021
The British government has said it will “take time” to consider its options after a judge called for an inquiry into state actions in connection with a bomb which was allowed to detonate on a street in Omagh, County Tyrone in August 1998, killing 29 people.
A damning report by the North’s Police Ombudsman on state collusion in the 1993 murder of Damien Walsh shows why the British government wants to “lock the doors of the courts” to those still fighting for justice in unresolved conflict cases, according to lawyers in the case.
Victims of British state atrocities in the north of Ireland have made clear their opposition to Tory plans to ban legal actions related to the killings.
The European Union has rebuffed a move by the London government to renege on Brexit and the protocol which could see it reimpose a hard border through the north of Ireland.
A factory worker whose 1972 murder was blamed on the IRA was shot dead by the British Army, newly uncovered military documents reveal.
Former Fine Gael leader John Bruton was “as good a taoiseach as we are likely to get”, according to a senior British civil servant in 1997.
The Irish National Invincibles were a splinter group of the IRB who had
five members hanged and buried in Kilmainham Gaol in 1883 for an attack
in which two senior British civil servants died. A campaign is underway
for their reinterment.
The time to set a firm date for a referendum on Irish unity is now. The legal requirement for a border poll as envisioned in the 1998 Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement needs to be embraced and facilitated by the Irish and British governments.
July 17, 2021
The British government’s move to block official investigations into its history of war crimes in the north of Ireland has unleashed unprecedented anger at a historic act of British bad faith.
The ‘festival of hate’ around the anti-Catholic July 12 marches across the North every year may be rechristened the ‘festival of stupidity’ after two giant bonfires toppled over into a crowd and two others resulted in serious injuries to bonfire builders.
SDLP leader Colum Eastwood has said he has received death threats after naming a former British soldier who has faced multiple murder charges over his involvement in the Bloody Sunday massacre.
The annual Twelfth of July parades, the highlight of the summer marching season by the Protestant Orange Order, passed with relatively little incident this year despite the weekend of bonfire mayhem which preceded it.
Sinn Féin’s Deputy First Minister in the north of Ireland was among a group of dignitaries who were the subject of a loud protest in Dublin on Saturday, July 10 as they took part in a wreath-laying ceremony for British soldiers.
The British Labour Party leader Keir Starmer is facing pressure within his party after he said he would campaign for the north of Ireland to remain under British rule if there was a referendum on reunification in his lifetime.
A round-up of comments and reactions in the wake of the British announcement of its intention to introduce legislation to end investigations into state killings related to the conflict in the north of Ireland.
Anyone reading yesterday’s British government command paper, ‘Addressing the Legacy of NI’s Past’, should be warned to keep a suitable receptacle nearby to contain the disgusting product of the nausea this exercise in hypocrisy, doublethink and colonial condescension will induce.
July 14, 2021
British Direct Ruler Brandon Lewis has today announced a unilateral statute of limitations in the Westminster parliament to end all conflict-related prosecutions, including all killings perpetrated by the British Crown forces and loyalist death squads.
July 12, 2021
Despite large numbers of offensive and provocative displays at loyalist ‘Eleventh Night’ bonfires, a weekend of the sectarian events passed without serious trouble, easing tensions ahead of anti-Catholic marches later today by the Orange Order.
July 10, 2021
The PSNI police have won a judge’s backing for their decision to ignore Stormont Ministers in relation to a violent loyalist bonfire gang.
Loyalists held a protest parade in South Belfast on Thursday evening against the post-Brexit Irish Protocol. Many wore masks in a gangster style as they walked behind a traditional loyalist flute band.
A brother of one of those shot dead on Bloody Sunday has secured High Court permission to challenge the decision to drop murder charges against a former British soldier accused of taking part in the massacre.
In a major campaign of loyalist intimidation, flags have appeared all over towns and cities in the north of Ireland, three to a lamppost in many places.
A series of tributes to the ten Irish men who died on hunger strike in 1981 have been appearing around New York City in recent months.
A device believed to be a military grade British listening device has been found in a working class housing estate in Lurgan, County Armagh.
An account from 1981 of the background to Martin Hurson’s fast to the death, after forty-six days on hunger strike, 40 years ago this week.
The announcement that Bloody Sunday prosecutions have been halted cast a shadow over Derry that contrasted with the bright skies of June 15, 2010, when it appeared that the victims would be treated properly.
July 9, 2021
A by-election in the constituency of Dublin Bay South has been won by
Labour’s Ivana Bacik in a vote which saw Fianna Fáil suffer its worst
ever election result and saw Fine Gael shut out of the constituency for
the first time in its history.
July 3, 2021
The families of victims of killer British soldiers will continue to fight for justice after Crown prosecutors announced they are discontinuing proceedings against the only soldier to face charges for the 1972 Bloody Sunday massacre, as well as those soldiers involved in the murder of 15-year-old Daniel Hegarty.
An attempt to reignite the Drumcree parade dispute could be the next move by loyalists seeking to escalate sectarian tensions over Brexit.
Unionists have been outraged by a Belfast High Court ruling that Brexit implicitly repeals part of the Acts of Union, which legislated for the annexation of Ireland by Britain in 1800 following the defeat of the United Irishmen rebellion two years earlier.
The DUP has lost its status as the largest party in the Belfast Assembly as the party continues to disintegrate following the affirmation of Jeffrey Donaldson as the new party leader.
The British government’s proposed Legacy Bill has been denounced as “totally unacceptable” as a campaign ramped up this week to demand London “honour its own word” and respect people’s “basic human rights”.
An appalling vista has opened up for policing in the north of Ireland after the PSNI reportedly ignored a confession that a 14-year-old mixed-race Catholic boy, Noah Donohoe, was abducted and murdered in a loyalist area of Belfast.
An account of the brave life of Joe McDonnell, who died on hunger strike against the criminalisation of republican prisoners, 40 years ago this week.
We have Irish governments with no sense of the history of their own land, no imagination, no sense of history and no vision for the future, as the historic Moore Street base of the 1916 Rising remains derelict and sealed off from the public.
July 2, 2021
Anger and disbelief have greeted a decision by Crown Prosecutors to summarily collapse cases against those involved in the Bloody Sunday massacre and the Operation Motorman atrocity, both perpetrated by the British Army’s Parachute Regiment in Derry in 1972.