I am indebted to Derry Kelleher for supplying a reasonably complete file of Nuacht Naisiunta which was an internal newsletter produced by Sinn Fein in their Gardiner Place office from September 1969 up to 1976, when it tailed off. Its initiation was as a result of the August 1969 crisis in the North. I will be making this available to those concerned with researching this period of republican politicisation, via the existing Workers Party archive, if this proves to be appropriate, or perhaps via the Linen-hall Library.

The initiation of Nuacht Naisiunta was an indication of a realisation on the part of the leadership that they had a long way to go before the membership, all over Ireland, could be got to understand the unfolding events in the North in its complex political context, rather than in a simplistic irredentist military mode. It was, viewed in retrospect, a rearguard action against the Fianna Fail supported 'provisionalisation' process, which was aimed primarily against the role of political republicanism in exposing of the dependence of Fianna Fail on shady property deals and political corruption.

I have scanned the United Irishman for the year 1969 as an addendum to this, and given some flavour of its content below. At the time of writing (September 2001) it is not in microfilm, so that taking extracts from it is a high-cost operation. I mark with an asterisk * some entries which seem to me to be of key relevance and would perhaps be worth a visit by future researchers.

The first issue is undated, but it was probably around September 1 1969, and its content was related to the Callaghan visit. It contains:

• a statement from Frank Gogarty backtracking from the misunderstood demand for 'direct rule from Westminster'; they wanted Westminster to intervene to clear up the mess and to impose reforms on Stormont;
• an admonition to the Irish Labour party to drop the 'direct rule' demand;
• a call to the Trade Unions in the North to distance their members from what was identified explicitly as a genocidal attack;
• a call for support from the Arab nations;
• the text of a letter written to Home Secretary Callaghan which re-iterated the demands for the disarming and disbanding of the B-Specials and the disarming of the RUC, an amnesty for those who had defended their homes and manned the barricades, release of political prisoners, an end to the Special Powers Act, and the implementation of the basic demands of the NICRA: one man one vote, outlawing religious discrimination, impartial electoral boundaries, proportional representation etc. The letter was signed by James Gallagher, provisional secretary of the Republican Clubs Northern Executive; it also contained the demand that their existence should be legalised.

This contact and location subsequently became 'Provisional'.

It was noted that the Defence Committee was in process of becoming a mini-government, and contacts were being established with similar bodies in Belfast; Malachi McBirney and Paddy Devlin had spoken to a Bogside meeting on behalf of the Belfast people.

Bernadette Devlin was admonished for going to the US without consultation, and for coming out with the 'direct rule' demand. The strategic options were discussed, 'direct rule' from either Dublin or London being dismissed, in favour of an 'interim arrangement in the national interest'.

The 'all-out war' concept with intervention by Jack Lynch's Army was dismissed as being at best liable to give a 29-county Free State, labelled the 'Fennell/Bunting Solution'. It was regarded as preferable to hold out with the 'mini-republics' until substantial political reforms were granted along the lines of the Civil Rights demands.

"In order to make Irish-oriented politics practical in the 6 Counties we would need (1) PR at all elections (2) the right to secede the whole 6 Counties from the UK should a majority wish it, and (3) the right to make trade agreements. Under such a system the days of Unionism would be numbered. They know it; that is why they oppose even ordinary civil rights. If secession were constitutional the whole 'disloyalty' element would be removed..."

The foregoing situation approximates what currently exists under the Good Friday Agreement, RJ May 2001.

The sale of the United Irishman was urged; Liam McMillan had been released but Malachy McGurran was still held, on a charge of possession of illegal documents. Yet UVF men were out on bail on arms charges.

There was a Sinn Fein Coisde Seasta statement calling for the removal of the Rome Rule threat implied by Article 44 of the Constitution. It was noted that this call was beginning to be broad-based. They also opposed talks of 'federation' of Britain and Ireland which were beginning to be voiced by Dublin and London politicians, with in effect re-opening of the Treaty talks.

Condolences were sent to Vietnam on the death of Ho Chi Minh.

The closure of the Seafield Gentex factory in Athlone was noted, and trade union action was called for; issues like factory closures and housing for the people were not to be forgotten due to Northern pressures.

Goulding's IRA Statement

In the September 16 1969 issue there is a lengthy analysis of the 'Solidarity' ad-hoc group which originated from meetings at the GPO during the August crisis week. It is noted that the call for intervention by 'Jack's Army' has ceased to dominate. There is now an address, 94 St Stephen's Green, and a phone. There is a steering committee of republicans, trade unionists and other radical groups.

A meeting was held in Jury's on September 14, and a limited consensus was achieved, along the lines that

(a) it is still strictly a civil rights issue, though Britain is responsible and the national question underlies it, and

(b) the religious-sectarian aspect of the 1937 Constitution should be amended.

People named as being present included Rev Terence McCaughy of Citizens for Civil Liberty, Barry Desmond and Justin Keating (Labour TDs), Ivan Cooper and Bernadette Devlin MP, Tomas Mac Giolla, Seamus Costello and Micheal O Riordain. This was a broad-based centre-left grouping.

This was a challenge to the 'Direct Rule' demand which was now associated primarily with Conor Cruise O'Brien and Noel Browne. The Labour Party was thus not monolithic in support of the latter position.

On the North it was urged that the barricades must stay; Chichester Clarke was resisting the 'political demands', though promising reforms such as a points system for housing. The key demands, eg reform of the RUC, remained. There was a guarded welcome given to the Cameron Report, which had actually commended the role of the republican clubs in the Civil Rights movement. They objected to smearing of the young left agitators as 'international conspirators, and to the 'puffing up' of John Hume.

The issue concluded with references to the Dublin Housing Action Committee, Citizens Advice Bureaux, and the Ground Rents issue.

There is a substantial change of emphasis in Issue #4 dated September 23 1969 with topics like the Galway fish-in and a new Cumann in Sligo on the front page. Dublin homeless were jailed. On the North it was noted that the barricades had mostly come down, due to the combination of the British Army and the Catholic clergy. The Citizens Press, which the NICRA published, was commended and support urged for its Covenant campaign. Open UI sales and political activity were called for.

The Solidarity group was seen as presenting scope for doing spade work towards a Constitutional Referendum on Article 44, contacting Protestant communities tactfully, bearing in mind the negative effect of the Ne Temere decree in generating ghetto-consciousness.

The indication here is that the Solidarity group is becoming evanescent; the foregoing looks somewhat aspirational.

The 'Federation' concept is decoupled from the 'British Isles' dimension and the concept floated at the level of devolution of Connaught away from total Dublin top-down control.

There were hints here at constitutional reforms of the 26 Counties such as to make a transition to an all-Ireland solution seem more acceptable and less threatening to Northern Protestants.

The Northern crisis took front-page priority again for #5 on September 30 1969: the Citizens Defence Committees had re-erected the barricades; the Republican Clubs were urged to meet and establish their own identities, and to help to make the Defence Committees truly representative of the community as a whole.

This good advice I suspect was largely ignored on the ground; Head Office was not enough in touch; republican activists tended to prefer their 'defence committee' type roles, and to ignore the need to stoke up their collective political consciousness. This led to the domination of the defence committees by the type of Fianna Fail-like people cultivated by Captain Kelly. Not enough social-republican spade-work had been done. I picked up this impression during the time on several occasions with trips North. RJ May 2001.

The remainder of the Nuacht was taken up with the Conradh, the Land League, Housing Action and fisheries; the Common Market began to make an appearance as an issue to think about.

Issue #6 on October 7 1969 was almost totally dedicated to various issues in the 26 counties: tenants, fish-ins, the Land League in Meath, Dublin housing and the Vietnam war all figure. A meeting in Dungarvan on the North was addressed by Tomas Mac Giolla and others, which attempted to put the current Northern issue in the 'national liberation' context. The Oliver Craven club in Newry had successfully got someone reinstated in his job, after a period in Crumlin Road jail.

The same is the case for issue #7 on October 14 1969; we have the Athlone factory closure, the rates campaign, the GAA, Anti-Apartheid, Irish language rights and wages issues; there was however a short reference to the Hunt Report, but the thrust was on the need for similar civilian police authority in the South.

One gets the impression here that the lines of communication with the Northern leadership people, and their contacts on the ground, were becoming eroded through the Defence Committee system, under increasingly proto-Provisional and Blaneyite influence.

Issue #8 on October 21 1969 opens with the Hunt Report, using the text of a speech given by Tomas Mac Giolla in UCD. He was critical of the Report, which appeared to concede the NICRA demands, but in fact side-stepped them, with reforms which were nominal and cosmetic. McGurran and McArt were still imprisoned, despite the Special Powers being supposedly abolished.

The ban on the Republican Clubs had been upheld on appeal the the Lords. The local courts however were not willing the sentence those accused of membership.

Other activities featured were the inland fishing rights campaign, the ESB construction workers strike at Ringsend, and an appeal to Cumainn to gather ground rent data; there had been little response to this. There was a feature based on student republican club publications.

Issue #9 on October 28 1969 opens with an accusation that the Fianna Fail leadership were actively engaged in colluding with the British in a scheme for a Federal Union of 'these islands'. The source of this was, it seems, statements by Terence O'Neill and Eddie McAteer, along the lines of 'a little United Nations in the British Isles'. There was an attempt to trace this back to the Lemass-O'Neill meeting. Fianna Fail were challenged to decouple themselves from this concept.

The Republican Trade Union Group was showing signs of concern with the effects of the Free Trade Agreement. The Housing Action Committee was attacking Kevin Boland, then Minister for Local Government, for failure to deliver affordable social housing. There was evidence of Land League activity in Galway, and the extension of the Housing Action agitation to Galway.

It was noted that the Northern Committee of the Irish TUC at its meeting on October 22 had demanded the reorganisation of the RUC and the abolition of the Special Powers Act. Republicans were urged to seek TU support for the release of McGurran and McArt.

Issue #10 on November 5 1969 quoted a letter to Callaghan from the Strabane Committee of the NICRA regarding the imprisonment of 'Mr Francis Card and Mr Malachy McGurran'. It calls on the Clubs to campaign for the release of their members, and goes on '...it should not be taken as automatic that Republicans should be jailed and nothing can be done about it...'.

An explosion at Bodenstown was recognised as a crude provocation aimed at generating reprisals. A Donegal land agitation was reported. Support was sought for a Vietnam War march. A visit to NATO by General Mac Eoin was condemned.

There was a reference to the November issue of the United Irishman which showed up how there was a move on foot under Fianna Fail influence to take over the NICRA, with the aid of funds from wealthy businessmen, key actors being Seamus Brady and Hugh Kennedy.

Issue #11 on November 11 1969 continued with the 'Fianna Fail attempt to take over the NICRA' saga. It seemed that Hugh Kennedy, described as a 'Fianna Fail plant in the Citizens Defence Committee in Belfast', was taking over the editorship of the Voice of the North from Seamus Brady. The perception was that £400 per week was being contributed by the Haughey-Blaney-Boland consortium '...to help in harnessing Civil Rights to the Fianna Fail star..'. Republicans were urged to sell the United Irishman to counter this subversive ploy by the 26-county Establishment.

Further political action was called for the release of McGurran and McArt, this being a focus for the Special Powers issue. The northern issues however were slipped to the back pages, the front page being given to the O'Briensbridge-Montpelier school closure issue. Members were warned against journalists seeking interviews on national issues; they were urged to stick to local issues.

The foregoing includes an indication that HQ was uneasy about the ability of local republicans to express national policies with any consistency, in a situation increasingly dominated by the Fianna Fail proto-Provisional position. RJ May 2001.

Issue #12 on November 18 led with a critical note on the Building Societies, and a note 'as Gaeilge' critical of the way they were handling the Irish-language programme 'Feach'. It reported on Republican participation in an anti-Vietnam War march, with Tomas Mac Giolla speaking. The Housing Action squatting in Waterloo Road was noted. A special pilgrimage to the grave of Wolfe Tone was projected for November 23. Regional conferences to elect regional members for the incoming Ard Comhairle, under the revised regionalised constitution, were announced. The full Ard Comhairle would be elected at the coming '1969' Ard Fheis, planned for January 1970. The regional meetings would double as educational conferences, to update members on the developing Northern situation. Tom Mitchell was reported as speaking at the Edentubber commemoration, to the effect that the UDR was simply a re-naming of the B-Specials and the Hunt reforms were a sham.

The Wolfe Tone commemoration oration was reported in Issue #13 on November 24; the occasion was the 171st anniversary of his burial, and it was a response to the blowing up of the grave-stone, as reported earlier. Liam O Comain, secretary of the 6-county Republican Executive which united the Clubs, recalled the guiding principles of Presbyterianism, civil and religious liberty, the rights of the common man and true democracy. He reminded his audience of the simultaneous foundation of the Orange Order and Maynooth College, in response to the threat of non-sectarian democratic unity. There was however an explicit nod in the direction of the use of force to dislodge Britain, though in a projected context suggesting unity of Catholic and Protestant workers.

Other matters treated include a Trade Union Group statement, the Galway fisheries protest, the Connemara 'Chearta Sibhialta' movement, a Strabane demonstration for the release of Card and McGurran, and a defence of the RTE programme exposing money-lenders, which had been attacked by Minister for Justice, Mr O Moráin. It was suggested that the money-lending fraternity was extensive and influential in the local management of the Fianna Fail vote in working-class areas.

Thus not only was political left-republicanism exposing the top-level corruption fuelled by developers' land deals in local government, but also the mafia-type local control system for the urban Fianna Fail working-class vote. One can, in retrospect, understand the viciousness with which the Haughey group at the top moved to marginalise the influence of politicising republicans. Not only were they opening up the possibility of real reforms in the North such as to enable cross-community democratic politics to unite working people, but in the South they were exposing how democratic politics was being subverted by moneyed mafias. We had touched many raw Fianna Fail nerves.

Issue #14 on December 2 1969 opened with a report of a series of Limerick Sinn Fein meetings organised in the region for Bernadette Devlin. There were meetings at Ennis, Nenagh, Tipperary, Cashel and Thurles. She then flew back from Shannon to prepare questions for the next weeks Westminster session, including the issue of the McGurran McArt imprisonment.

It is noteworthy that the only leading republicans to be imprisoned where those who were in the lead of the politicisation process; this supports the long-standing Greaves hypothesis that there was an influential back-room group in the Home Office which actively wanted to encourage the re-emergence of a sterile non-political military IRA. They arrest McGurran, but not Mac Stiofain.

"It is evident that the Irish people have adopted Bernadette as a figurehead, whether they agree with her or not. In her speeches she stressed, correctly, the Lynch-Wilson machinations and the danger of a Federal fraud. She also stressed the need to build an all-Ireland movement with social-revolutionary objectives, so as to help persuade the Northern people that national unity under Fianna Fail was not the issue..".

She was '...complimented on doing a good job of combining agitational work with the occasional use of the parliamentary machine so as to express its inadequacy....' (and was) '...developing her ideas away from the rather arid doctrinaire student socialism and towards a more national-rooted revolutionary tradition...'.

I attended the Thurles meeting. She drew a crowd. I remember thinking at the time the meeting lacked political focus. She concentrated on the conditions of the working people in the North, and the need for social reform. These meetings were a bottom-up Limerick initiative and I conjecture that they might have been part of the internal grass-roots Sinn Fein campaign against parliamentary abstention with a view to influencing the coming Ard Fheis. They had little relevance to the actual Northern situation.

Other items mentioned in this issue included reports of Cork meetings explaining the Northern situation, Galway land agitations, plans for pickets on the British Embassy at the time of the McGurran/McArt trial on December 4, calls for Cumainn to send in report of events, and a note on censorship.

Issue 15 on December 9 was the last before the January Ard Fheis; its content is scrappy and marginally significant; work on preparing the Ard Fheis would have dominated the office, and people presumably had little time for Nuacht Naisiunta. There was however a response to a kite flown by Quentin Hogg, the British Shadow Home Secretary, in Trinity College, who proposed 'three-level dialogue (ministerial, parliamentary and executive) between Stormont, Dublin and Westminster, in the form of a 'dry run' for future European integration. This 'federal' concept was rejected with a call to '...clear up the mess... in the Six Counties by (a) imposing a Bill of Rights on Stormont (b) imposing PR in elections (c) granting explicitly the right of democratic secession, so as to make all-Ireland politics non-subversive, and then withdraw completely from any further interference in Irish affairs...'.

This indicates, the key influence being probably Coughlan, that strategic Head Office thinking was still in terms of the need to sustain the momentum of the NICRA, despite all the Fianna Fail machinations in the North and the increasing domination of local politics there by 'defence committees' and the like.

The release of McGurran was noted. An episode involving an encounter with the Donegal Mafia was reported; local SF members picketed a Fianna Fail dinner with slogans relating to housing and unemployment, and the Criminal Justice Bill, which had been introduced as a weapon against the Housing Action movement.

The United Irishman in 1969

April: 1000 Specials were called up arising from the Castlereagh explosion, which turns out to have been an RUC special branch job, a provocation to justify the existence of the Specials. The IRA claims a role in a Meath land dispute. * There is a critical analysis of how the PD works which exposes the fact that it has no consistent membership, election or policy development procedures; it is all done ad-hoc with whoever happens to be there. * Michael Farrell and Kevin Boyle are elected to the NICRA executive, and as a result some of the older leadership, who had been counselling caution, resign; these were Kevin McAnerney, Fred Heatley, Betty Sinclair and Ray Shearer. See also the abstracted Greaves Diaries for 1969 on this matter. There is a survey of County Cavan; there is an article on policy regarding foreign fishing-boats; agriculture policy and small-farmer co-operation; the Poacher's Guide; in the 'Who Owns Ireland' series: the Building Societies.

Note the tendency for the IRA to give itself a quasi-political role; this was a source of tension between the present writer and Goulding; it interfered with the programme of subsuming all political activity into an activated and disciplined Sinn Fein. But Goulding, feeling the pressure from Mac Stiofain and co, felt he had to 'keep the lads happy' with quasi-military activity having a political flavour; this was an ongoing and increasingly intense internal contradiction in the republican politicisation process.

May: Wilson sends 500 extra troops to Northern Ireland. This was presumably a response to the Castlereagh deception. The Silent Valley event is covered, and identified as another loyalist provocation event. The 1939 story continues. Forestry. Fermanagh county is analysed, in the county series. There are reports of Easter statements; Derry Kelleher spoke in Dublin, Goulding at Burntollet, Sean Keenan in Derry. It turns out that the disbanding of the Sligo Cumann was because they had prevented the Connolly Youth from parading at the Easter event.

June: The UI is to be sold in the North, flouting the ban. The Galway IRA claims a land war action. The Palestine situation is analysed. Civil Rights: What Next? This article from internal evidence was probably from Anthony Coughlan; it talks of 'putting Westminster on the spot' and calls for Westminster to legislate, under pressure from the Irish in Britain. Kelleher begins a series on ideologies. This appeared subsequently as his 'Republicanism, Marxism and Christianity' pamphlet. The Citizens for Civil Liberties in founded in Dublin. A new EEC threat is noted. RJ reviews the Dorothy Robbie play about Constance Markiewicz, produced in Greystones. Housing Action demonstrations.

July: There is a letter from Betty Sinclair critical of the June 'Civil Rights' article, though on minor points, like the use of the word 'reformist'. The 'Belfast Letter' notes that an attempt to run a cross-community Connolly Commemoration was ghettoised. Farrell, McCann and Toman oppose the flying of the tricolour as being 'bourgeois'. Kelleher on ideology writes about Teilhard de Chardin. O Caollai writes about the Connradh. A fish-in article is headed 'Reconquest'. The Zambia situation is analysed. Mac Giolla's Bodenstown speech is given. We get the Barnes McCormack background story; this is part of the 1939 series. There is a call for the Orange parades to assume the status of folk festivals; it is noted that we too object to Rome Rule and Article 44 of the Constitution.

There is no sense here of awareness of acute danger signals from Belfast; the present writer went to Belfast and observed the 1969 12th of July in Belfast at first hand; I enquired about the personalities depicted on the banners, and no-one knew who they were. I enquired 'why Finaghy' hoping to get some sense of history, but was told 'because the Orange Order owns the field'. I got talking afterwards to some who had walked, and they enthused about having gone to Dublin for the Horse Show, and met with Brendan Behan. There was no sense of impending pogrom, fuelled by any burning sense of political grievance at grass-roots. This reinforces my impression that the August pogrom was planned and engineered top-down by some ultra-'loyalist' core-group associated with the RUC and the B-Specials, continuing the momentum of the Silent Valley affair, with the objective of provoking the IRA into military confrontation.

August: Headline 'The North Began': this was ambiguous, as it referred back to the IRB welcoming the Larne guns as a signal to arm. There was a call from Derry for UN troops to defend them from the RUC and the B-Specials. McCann defends his attitude to the Tricolour. Dublin Housing Action. Ground Rent campaign. The Barnes McCormack funeral is reported: this was addressed by Jimmy Steele and amounted to a Provisional call to arms. The Devenny death in Derry, consequent on the April RUC attack on people's houses, increased the tension. More about Zambia. Kelleher on ideology. Neutrality and the EEC. Beach access at Brittas.

There was no sense of giving a lead to people, what they should do in the event of a pogrom, though the Derry call was the beginnings of what might have been a good policy. Goulding had had warnings of an impending pogrom from O Bradaigh and Mac Stiofain; according to O Bradaigh he had told an all-Ireland meeting of OCs that it was up to the British to impose reforms on Stormont, including the disbanding of the Specials and the disarming of the RUC, which they would be forced to do if a pogrom was visibly started by the local Crown 'forces of law and order' and it was exposed and known to the world; politically the Dublin Government should demand this, and call on the UN to intervene. This, if true, was an exact reflection of what Anthony Coughlan was saying at the time, as I recollect it. It was 'theoretically correct', but far from credible to the people on the ground who were at the receiving end of the pogrom, and needed guns to defend themselves and their houses.

Goulding had, apparently, bought (currently and in detail from Coughlan, and earlier in principle from the present writer and the Wolfe Tone Society) the essence of the Civil Rights political approach, but did not know how to motivate people to act upon it in the presence of a military-type threat from the 'loyalist' Establishment. It should have been possible to break through to the British Government, under Wilson who already was beginning to be aware of the RUC and B-Specials problem, in such a way as to pre-empt the pogrom. Why did this not happen? Perhaps further analysis of the Greaves diaries will throw light on this.

September: the main headline is 'Blame Britain!' and the main political threat is seen as the Dublin government being maneuvered into a 'federal solution' in which in effect they whole of Ireland would come back into the UK. Dublin is called upon to take a hard line with Westminster. The need for leadership in the 'defence enclaves' is recognised, and the slogan is 'defend the enclaves until Civil Rights is imposed on Stormont. The Civil Rights demands are given as: one man one vote, end discrimination in jobs and houses, disarm and disband the Specials and disarm the RUC, abolish Special Powers, introduce Proportional Representation, and grant the right to secede and join the Republic should the people so decide. Note that this is more or less what currently exists under the Good Friday Agreement. The overall strategy is 'no direct rule, impose Civil Rights on Stormont, PR elections under UN supervision' and it looks as if the Coughlan influence is continuing. There is however an IRA statement published, signed by Goulding: the IRA has been mobilised and is at the service of the defence committees; the Dublin Government should be prepared to use the Free State Army, and should seek UN Security Council support; there should be 32-county elections under UN supervision.

Mac Stiofain attributes this statement to the influence of Coughlan, I think mistakenly, and certainly for the wrong reasons. More likely it was Goulding attempting to hold the Army together, and give it a political role, though it had the negative effect of apparently justifying the RUC's world-view in which the IRA existed as a military threat, which view they had been feeding the British, fortified by events like the Silent Valley deception. They could say to the British, 'now you see, I told you so'. The fact that Goulding signed the statement himself suggests political motivation; he wanted to reassure the defence committees that their immediate needs had not been forgotten, while keeping the overall thrust UN-oriented.

October: Britain is seen as fomenting a civil war so as to be able to come in as the saviour, and impose an all-Ireland federal deal (a 'federation of these islands'). The UN approach is half-hearted. Faulkner's new local government proposals are denounced as a new gerrymander. There is a promotional review of Coughlan's pamphlet 'The Northern Crisis, Which Way Forward?' published by the Solidarity group against the 'abolition of Stormont' call. The main British objective is seen as federation of Ireland with Britain in the projected EEC context. The trail was blazed with the Free Trade Agreement. Economic resistance issues: ground rents and fishing. There is a mention of a dispute in Nusight involving Anne Harris and Vincent Browne, over a letter by the former on the role of the IRA.

November: We have here the exposure of the 'Haughey, Blaney and Boland' (HB&B) attempt to take over the Civil Rights movement; it is not clear whether it is Government or Fianna Fail; there is money involved. They plump for FF; Brady and Corrigan are involved; what is role of Lynch? O'Neill and McAteer issue jointly a statement calling for a federation of these islands, a re-invention of the old 'Home Rule All Round' concept from the 1900s, though with Partition. The role of the Republican Clubs in support of the Civil Rights is highlighted, in defence of the political role, and in answer to those who were saying 'where were they?' when the people needed defence from pogroms. Extensive quotes from Connolly and Pearse. Unemployment in the Falls Road. Feeny and Nusight.

December: Special Powers is the target: McGurran and Card. Corrigan, Brady and FF gold. Civil Rights for small farms. Donegal survey. HB&B. There is a review by RJ of Bernadette Devlin's book; policies attributed to Farrell, McCann and Toman. The EEC threat. Building Societies. Land Leagues.

The year ends with a confused rearguard action, on the part of the paper, to re-assert, somewhat half-heartedly, the political republican agenda, in the context of the impending Ard Fheis.

Some navigational notes:

Copyright Dr Roy Johnston 1999