Léargas

Some of the negotiating team hard at work I was at most of the engagements with the DUP leadership for over a fortnight before the Special Ard Fheis on February 10. As is now widely accepted Mary Lou, Michelle and the rest of our team  reached a draft agreement with them to restore the political institutions. There were still some matters to be signed off on but essentially we had reached that point in a negotiation where it was make your mind up time. That was before the Ard Fheis. The DUP Leader went off to consult with her party. A few days later she pulled the plug.  Gregory Campbell, the sole DUP representative sent out to defend his party, made a big deal of the Ard Fheis and my stepping down as Uachtarán. We were looking for a wee going away present for me he told BBC's The View. Not so. I had signalled up the Ard Fheis to Arlene Foster as a big event over a week before. Given the progress we were making I didn't want her blindsided.  Both Mary Lou and I told h

Many years ago when I was an Assembly representative for West Belfast RG and I were the tenants of room 316 in Parliament Buildings up at Stormont. If you’re looking up the steps at the front of the building it’s the room with two windows between the pillars on the right side. It’s a large office – bigger even that the one I ended up with in Leinster House. It has a magnificent panoramic view of the Stormont estate and across the Belfast landscape to the Black Mountain, the ‘Murph and West Belfast.   In November 2010 I announced my intention to stand down from the Assembly and Westminster and to seek the Sinn Féin nomination to stand for the constituency of Louth in the upcoming February general election. It was a big step for me and for the party but it was a necessary part of our long term strategy to build Sinn Féin north and south. A few months later the good people of Louth elected me with a resounding mandate. And two years ago myself and Imelda Munster, were elected to

This has been a funny old week – at least for me. It is a week of ‘lasts’. After 35 years it is my last week as Uachtarán Shinn Féin. Wednesday was supposed to be my last occasion for ‘Leaders’ in the Dáil but I was at Stormont and so missed that. I attended my last meeting of the party’s National Officer Board and last week I chaired my last group meeting in Leinster House of TDs, Seanadóirí and party staffers. After 40 years last Saturday should have been my last attendance at an Ard Chomhairle (National Executive) meeting but I missed it because I was in the talks at Stormont. I was there at the end of a phone but conference calls aren’t the same. On Saturday, at the RDS in Dublin, where I announced my decision last November to step down as President, a Sinn Féin special Ard Fheis will begin at 1pm. When it opens I will be Uachtarán Shinn Féin. When it concludes I will be one of thirteen thousand party members and Mary Lou McDonald will be the new Uachtarán Shinn Féin. A new

Stephen McConomy There are lots of connections between the struggles in Ireland and Palestine. We share an affinity for freedom and sovereignty. And in both places the British Government has played a divisive and repressive role. The shaping of the law to allow states to kill, imprison, torture, demonise, marginalise and oppress a community have been part and parcel of our joint experiences over many decades. Senior British military figures and at least one former RUC Chief Constable, Ken Newman, learned their trade in part in the Middle East region. The north was also a laboratory for the British state. New and ever more sophisticated surveillance technology, the gathering and holding of intelligence on citizens, the recruitment of agents and informers, the use of collusion and the running by British agencies of counter gangs were all a part of this. The case this week of UVF agent Gary Haggarty is a case in point. The deployment of rubber and plastic bullets were a pa