Longkesh Inside Out

Interesting letter in the Irish News from my old friend Trevor Ringland, reproduced here without further comment:

The deaths of 11 people In Ballymurphy during August 1971 were a tragic consequence of the events that led to the army being deployed on our streets. I sincerely hope the families are successful in their quest to establish the truth about what happened. Read more »

The on-mic/on-the-record commentary was bad enough – but what was whispered on the sidelines of Thursday’s Stormont talks was all the more telling.

“Shit show” was one summary. “Complete bollocks” another. “Bloody awful” yet another two word put down of this all-party meeting with Secretary of State Karen Bradley.

When you think things are as bad as they can be on the political hill, they just get worse. Read more »

The tourism industry in Northern Ireland has been flourishing in recent years – visitors from around the world flock to the Giant’s Causeway, Titanic Belfast and filming locations for TV series Game of Thrones.

But there’s another side to the tourist trail. Troubles-related conflict tourism is booming as thousands queue up to visit places they’ve seen on TV or read about in books. Read more »

The ‘disappearance’ of a widowed mother of 10 remains one of the most shocking IRA killings of the Troubles. In this extract from a new book, Patrick Radden Keefe of The New Yorker inquires into the Price sisters’ role in her death

Jean McConville was 38 when she disappeared and had spent nearly half her life either pregnant or recovering from childbirth. She brought 14 children to term and lost four of them, leaving her with 10 kids ranging in age from Anne, 20, to Billy and Jim, the sweet-eyed twins who were six. Read more »

If you can’t see a problem, then you can’t fix it; and if you can’t see, or won’t accept, that you are part of that problem, then the route out of that predicament becomes all the more challenging to navigate.

After almost 650 days without government on the political hill at Stormont, the question is shifting – no longer when a functioning government will be restored but, rather, if it will be restored. Read more »

The week from the 23rd to the 30th October 1993 saw twenty four people lose their lives in one of the bloodiest weeks of the ‘Troubles’.

The killing started with the Shankill Bomb on the Saturday and there were other killings during the week, before concluding with the Greysteel Massacre on the following Saturday. Read more »

Statement by Ed Moloney, former director of Boston College Oral History Archive:

The judgement by the Belfast High Court today upholding the PSNI-Boston College action to confiscate the tapes of interviews given by the project’s republican co-ordinator and principal interviewer, Anthony McIntyre comes as no surprise to those of us who have witnessed this process since it began over seven long years ago. Read more »

IT WAS the horror 25 years ago which was the catalyst for a series of tragedies that brought the peace process back from the knife edge. Bimpe Archer hears how, even in the darkest days after the Shankill Bomb, compassion flowed across the sectarian divide.

“WE BELIEVE it was the beginning of the end of what was called the Troubles – the madness had stooped so low it couldn’t get any lower.” Read more »