Ireland's political and cultural magazine
1. The Classified Garda Files. The information provided by the brothers, John and Pat Barry, confirms that the Garda (Irish police) had a checkpoint at the gate of Classiebawn castle in August 1977. Garda security appears – by some accounts – to have been downgraded in 1979, shortly before Mountbatten was murdered by the Provisional […]
By Joseph de Burca. Introduction to Village’s online pamphlet on the Colin Wallace Affair. The Tory Government of Boris Johnson is routinely accused of deceiving the House of Commons. Many British commentators behave as if this is a new low in their democratic history. Yet, there is nothing unusual about the situation. […]
Via violence to contempt to abstentionism to normalisation perhaps to government. By Dan Haverty. It is difficult to exaggerate the magnitude of Sinn Féin’s electoral performance in the Irish general election. Once the political wing of the paramilitary Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), Sinn Féin took down a political establishment that had been in power […]
Sinn Féin’s exciting economic and social agenda needs to be weighed against its ambivalence on violence, its cultism and its environmental weaknesses. By Michael Smith. Village believes equality of outcome, sustainability and accountability are the most important policies. So how does, now rampant, Sinn Féin fare under these criteria? Of course Sinn Féin has been attacked for […]
Ireland’s largest party of the left may soon have us at last, whether we like them or not By Rory O’Sullivan Gerry Adams, the President of Sinn Féin from 1983 to 2018, published five Audacity of Hope-style books – part-autobiography, part-political manifesto – during the most intense phase of the peace process in Northern Ireland. […]
After the abortion-repeal referendum, there is momentum for change in the North, though DUP-dependent Theresa May has indicated she will not not facilitate it. It has made reluctant bed-fellows of DUP traditionalists and Catholic moral conservatives. DUP Assembly Member Jim Wells has had the DUP whip withdrawn for openly criticising the party leadership. “I’m anti-gay […]
Harris asleep Young Simon Harris seems to think the women of Ireland will stay loyal to him if he just puckers up and adopts the mantra that it was all an honour and done for Mná na hÉireann. The night before the referendum he tweeted in what is being seen as a ‘Song of the […]
Republicanism is fragmenting. That was seen on Easter Sunday, when at least eight Republican groups held commemorations on Belfast’s Falls Road. At protests in the North, it is common for various ‘dissident’ groups to have more presence that mainstream Sinn Féin. That party has a much smaller activist base than a decade ago. Paradoxically, as that […]
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With the new Dáil term beginning today, any new post-election alignment could be terminal for Micheál Martin’s leadership.