A feud between two Loyalist paramilitary groups has brought British troops back to the streets of Belfast. Fighting between the Ulster Defense Association (U.D.A.) and the Ulster Volunteer Force (U.V.F.) erupted in August after the U.D.A. organized a parade of uniformed and masked men carrying U.D.A. banners down the Shankill Road in military formation. This demonstration was … [Read more...] about News from Ireland: Loyalist Feud Erupts in N. Ireland
The Troubles
Hibernia: South Armagh
A tourist haven? Tommy Makem thinks so and he held a festival there to prove it. ℘℘℘ June, 2000. A bus packed with American tourists pulls out of Newry and takes the road to South Armagh. On one side it passes a British army observation post, currently being dismantled. On the other, a large poster advertises the first Tommy Makem International Festival of Song, which is … [Read more...] about Hibernia: South Armagh
Hibernia: O’Neill Was
a Key Figure on North
New papers show influence with Reagan.
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Newly released files from the Reagan White House papers show that the Irish-American president was persuaded by a personal appeal by then House Speaker Thomas "Tip" O'Neill to intervene in the Northern Ireland issue.
The Boston Globe, which surveyed the files under the Freedom of Information Act, revealed that following … [Read more...] about Hibernia: O’Neill Was
a Key Figure on North
Gerry Adams
The Leader
Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Féin, is the most well-known Irish politician outside the island of Ireland. As a civil rights activist in Northern Ireland in the late sixties, a victim of Britain's oppressive internment policy in the seventies, and a purported I.R.A. member, Adams' life story reflects the evolution of the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland. The following excerpt is … [Read more...] about Gerry Adams The Leader
The Bearing of the Green
Some thoughts on being Irish-American. As a proud Irish-American, I begin with a simple assumption: there is no way to precisely define that elusive, complex human category called the Irish-American. The tools of sociology are as inadequate to the task as the forms of the Census Bureau, and the jeweler's art of the lexicographer can't come close to an answer. This should … [Read more...] about The Bearing of the Green