Ireland

BY PATRICK COCKBURN Photograph Source: Baldeadly – Public Domain I was walking one day at the height of the Troubles in the 1970s with a friend in South Armagh close to the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. My friend, who was from the area, commented that it had great potential for tourism and was not as dangerous as people imagined “though you have to keep a look out for trip wires.” He was referring to real physical trip wires attached to giant roadside bombs which made South Armagh the most dangerous place for British soldiers in the whole of Northern Ireland. This era has long gone and the 300-mile-long land border that snakes between the North and the Republic has ceased over the past 20 years to be a place of bombs and fortifications. ...

BY PATRICK COCKBURN Photograph Source: Sean MacEntee – CC BY 2.0 Northern Ireland specialises in political watersheds after which nothing will supposedly ever be the same again. In the wake of the Assembly election, one British newspaper even compared the emergence of Sinn Féin as the single largest party with the Easter Rising of 1916, citing the WB Yeats poem about all being “changed, changed utterly, a terrible beauty is born”. It is certainly something of a turning point when Sinn Féin becomes the first nationalist party in the history of Northern Ireland to win more votes and representatives than the largest unionist party. This is so significant because the Northern Irish statelet was created 101 years ago specifically in order to guarantee a unionist and...

The Irish Revolutionary was executed in Kilmainham Gaol on this day in 1916.Clarke was born at Hurst Castle, on March 11th 1858., Milford-on-Sea, Hampshire, England, opposite the Isle of Wight, to Irish parents, Mary Palmer and James Clarke, who was a sergeant in the British Army.In 1865, after spending some years in South Africa, Sgt. Clarke was transferred to Dungannon, County Tyrone, Ireland, and it was there that Tom grew up.In 1878, at the age of 20, he joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) following the visit to Dungannon by John Daly, and by 1880 he was the leader of the local IRB circle, but later that year, following an attack on the RIC, Clarke fled to the USA.In the United States Clarke became involved in the Fenians, in 1883 under the alias of "Henry Wilson", Clark...

irishrevolutionariesThe Irish Revolutionary died on hunger strike in Long Kesh on this day in 1981.Robert Gerard Sands was born on March 4th 1954 to John and Rosaleen Sands in Abbots Cross, Newtownabbey, County Antrim, outside North Belfast.Sands was the eldest of four children. His younger sisters, Marcella and Bernadette, were born in 1955 and 1958, respectively. He also had a younger brother, John, born in 1962.After experiencing harassment and intimidation from their neighbours, the family abandoned the development and moved in with friends for six months before being granted housing in the nearby Rathcoole development.Bobby went to school in the local Stella Maris, he played left-back for the local team also called Stella Maris, the team had both Nationalists and Unionists playin...