By Manus Lenihan  On the night of 5-6 December 1921, five men piled into a taxi at Downing Street, London, and set off for their lodgings in a state of shock. The British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, had just issued a dramatic threat. Five months of peace talks had suddenly narrowed to a take-it-or-leave-it choice with an arbitrary deadline: ...

By Sean Burns The hunger strikes of 1980-81 and the events preceding them, was one of the many horrific chapters in the Troubles, and arguably helped create a new spiral of conflict and violence lasting for more than a decade. The Thatcher government’s decision to allow ten prisoners to slowly starve themselves to death was a barbaric and callous act, ...

Reviewed by Seán Burns This year marks the 50th anniversary of the formation of the Provisional IRA. This new book, One Man’s Terrorist: A political history of the IRA, is therefore a timely study of this movement. Seán Burns looks at the book and the lessons that can be learned for today. Napoleon once said, “History is a fable agreed upon”. In ...

One hundred years ago this month, workers downed tools and took over their workplaces and towns. What began as a hunger strike in prison grew into a general strike against British Imperialism that pointed in the direction of socialism and workers’ power. Manus Lenihan gives an account of these colossal events.  One hundred years ago revolution was sweeping across Ireland ...

By Peter Hadden (first published in August 2009) August 1969 was a turning point in the history of Northern Ireland. It was then that the Labour Government of Harold Wilson took the decision to send troops onto the streets, first of Derry, then of Belfast. The measure was presented as temporary – troops were needed, they said, because, with riots ...

By Kevin McLoughlin, first published in December 2016 in the Socialist Party’s book Ireland’s Lost Revolution, The Working Class and the Struggle for Socialism The 1916 Rising was the start of a revolutionary process that engulfed the whole of Ireland, North and South, for a number of years, in which the working-class movement reached a level of unity and political ...

Article written by Peter Hadden in 2008  Death on the rock of Gibraltar – 20 years since SAS killing of three IRA volunteers It is twenty years since the execution style killing by the SAS of three IRA members in Gibraltar. In Northern Ireland these deaths sparked a brief but particularly bloody upsurge in violence. Over the next thirteen days ...

By Kevin Henry The rise of Jeremy Corbyn in the Labour leadership contest marks a very welcome political upheaval in British society. It is a clear rebuff to the idea that society has moved to the right and that the austerity agenda has mass support. Enthusiasm for anti-austerity message Over 50,000 have attended his rallies and hundreds of thousands have ...

Recent killings create new crisis in Stormon

By Daniel Waldron Recent documentaries have once again thrown light upon the murky world of collusion between the British state and paramilitaries in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. According to a report by Lord Stevens, State forces ran thousands of agents within both loyalist and republican groups, some of whom became – in the words of former Police Ombudsman Nuala ...