Oh! star of Erin, queen of tears, Black clouds have beset thy birth, And your people die like morning stars, That your light may grace the earth. – "Stars of Freedom," 1981 By IRA volunteer Bobby Sands, M.P. H-Block, Long Kesh Prison Camp Watching Bobby Sands die in 1981, much of the world realized, finally, that the young IRA soldier and hunger striker was a freedom fighter, … [Read more...] about Wild Irish Women: A Most Sorrowful Mystery
Gerry Adams
Reflections on the Good Friday Agreement
Signed on April 10, 1998, the landmark Good Friday Agreement helped to bring to an end the 30 years of sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland known as the Troubles. Twenty years on, Deaglán de Bréadún looks at how the agreement came about, the American role, and the current state of play. In the early 1990s, the blood-soaked contest between the Irish Republican Army … [Read more...] about Reflections on the Good Friday Agreement
Gerry Adams Announces Retirement
Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Féin and one of the most formidable figures in Irish nationalist politics for nearly 50 years, announced at the Sinn Féin party conference in November that he plans to retire in 2018, ceding control of the party he has led for 34 years, and making way for a new generation of Irish republicans to come to the fore. “Leadership means knowing when it … [Read more...] about Gerry Adams Announces Retirement
Northern Ireland Undergoes Historic Election Shift
For the first time in history of Northern Ireland there will be a nationalist majority in the national assembly at Stormont. A short 10 months after the previous Northern Ireland Assembly election, the citizens went to the polls again in March. Sinn Féin, the second-largest party in the North had triggered the election in protest over a scandal involving Arlene Foster, the … [Read more...] about Northern Ireland Undergoes Historic Election Shift
Gerry Adams: A Period of Change
In 1991, Irish America magazine published one of the first interviews with Gerry Adams. (As far as we can tell, Playboy was the only other American magazine to interview Adams before that.) In March, of that year, as the 75th Anniversary of the 1916 Rising loomed and violence continued on both sides in Northern Ireland, Patricia Harty traveled to West Belfast to interview the … [Read more...] about Gerry Adams: A Period of Change