“On the night of Saturday, 4th December 1971, along with the other internees in Cage 3 at Long Kesh, I heard the awful news about the murderous attack on McGurk’s Bar. Within the Kesh then, there were many internees from North Belfast, and the tension as we tried to...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG7HYSH4GnA&feature=relmfu Extracts from Bobby Sands’ hunger strike diary appear in a new book edited by, among others, the Academy-Award winning actor, Colin Firth. ‘The People Speak’ is also part of a multimedia project which...

There were white-line pickets held across republican areas of Belfast today in memory of Bobby Sands who died thirty one years ago. Other events over the weekend include a parade in Tyrone by Dromore Memorial Committee. In 1981 Dromore was then part of the...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEkZP0GLuZc On this the 31, anniversary of the death on hunger strike of Bobby Sands, his friend and comrade, former IRA prisoner Colm Scullion from South Derry, recalls first meeting Bobby while on remand in Crumlin Road Jail. Colm had...

Forty years ago Ireland was convulsed by the British army murders of fourteen civil rights demonstrators on the streets of Derry on a day that became known as Bloody Sunday. The march was organised by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) which had...

  Former republican prisoner Jim Gibney here reviews and praises a new book about the struggle waged by Irish prisoners incarcerated in British jails throughout the recent conflict: When the Balcombe Street men walked into the 1998 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis, they were...

A print bearing a quote from Bobby Sands was unveiled in Belfast City Hall last Thursday, 8th December, by the former IRA leader of the blanket men, Brendan ‘Bik’ McFarlane. The print is a copy of a canvass painted by muralist and former republican POW Gerry ‘Mo...

Hugh Doherty is a former IRA POW who was sentenced to 30 years imprisonment after his and his comrades’ arrest in London in 1975. Now a successful artist, samples of Hugh’s works are currently being exhibited in the new Culturlann gallery on the Falls Road. In this...

Dozens of books have been written about the political fall-out from the 1981 H-Block hunger-strike and Margaret Thatcher’s criminalization policy that preceded it. Several have been written from the perspective of the prisoners and hunger-strikers themselves. A...

  Jim Gibney writes about a unique reunion of former prisoners – those who took part in the protest for political status in Armagh Jail and the H-Blocks between 1976 and 1981: There have been many episodes in the conflict over the last fifty years when republicans...