Léargas

Michelle O'Neill, mise agus Martina Anderson arriving for All-Island Brexit conference in Dublin Castle on Friday morning Two weeks from today – Thursday March 2 nd – the electorate of the North will be going to the polls. The future of the political institutions, and of the Good Friday Agreement, the allegations of corruption within the RHI scheme, and the need for integrity and respect within those institutions, are for Sinn Féin the core themes of the election campaign. So too is the issue of Brexit. At a very well attended and successful United Ireland conference in Dublin three weeks ago, I warned that Brexit would destroy the Good Friday Agreement. That it was a hostile action by the British government. British sources were quick to dismiss my concerns. The Irish government was also dismissive. Why? Because each time the Taoiseach Enda Kenny speaks to or meets the British Prime Minister Theresa May she assures him that the British are 100% behind the GFA. And he a...

Supporting victims February 4 th 1992 was a Tuesday. It was also a typically cold though dry day. Martin McGuinness and I left the Sinn Féin office at Sevastopol Street, just off the Falls Road, around 12.30pm. It was a dangerous time. Sinn Féin offices were being regularly targeted for raids by the British Army and RUC. Following a south African arms shipment a few years earlier, facilitated by British intelligence, the UDA, UVF and Ulster Resistance were now well armed with high-powered assault rifles, RPG’s, hand grenades and pistols. The impact of this weapons shipment, which the British knew about from their senior agent Brian Nelson in the UDA, and from other agents in the north, as well as in South Africa, was significant. In the three years prior to receiving this weapons shipment the loyalist death squads had killed 34 people. In the three years after the shipment they killed 224 and wounded countless scores more. There was also a dramatic rise in the number of Sinn Féin...

For the first time footage from August 1968 of the first ever civil rights march in the North was released last week by RTE. The very short 31 second clip is an old grainy black and white film. It shows civil rights marchers arriving in Dungannon from Coalisland to be met by RUC men. In one shot it shows Gary Lennon being served with a notice from the RUC not to enter the Market Square. The report features men, women and children marching and holding banners in protest at discrimination in housing. There were about 2,000 on the march. It is a potent reminder of the institutionalised abuses of the Orange state and of the courage and determination of the many ordinary men and women who decided to challenge it in the 1960’s. I joined Sinn Fein in the mid 1960’s as a teenager. It was then a banned organisation under the Special Powers Act. The Republican Clubs were initially established to circumvent the ban on Sinn Fein. They were also banned. In early January 1967 I took part in a m...