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Showing posts from March, 2017

McGuinness was not part of my movement

Since the death of Martin McGuinness on Tuesday my Facebook newsfeed has hardly been without a picture of him for a minute, many of these pictures are intended to be glowing tributes and show him looking like a great statesman or a young radical Republican, many more are pictures of him shaking hands with the British Queen or standing outside the steps of Stormont with Hugh Orde the RUC Chief as McGuinness notoriously proclaimed Republicans to be “Traitors to the Island of Ireland” It has been a few days now of the same thing repeated ad nauseam about this man, and a few days of high emotions in Republican circles as differing accounts of who and what Martin McGuinness was come to the surface. How did I react? I didn’t! I didn’t make a conscious effort to ignore the death of the former British Deputy first minister in Ireland, I just simply felt nothing.  As a chatterbox with an opinion on near on everything, my silence led various people to privately contact me to ask wh

Women - Know your place!

So Here goes my first blog! What even is a blog? Apparently it is short for weblog, I thought I would open with an interesting fact to beguile you into being interested in what I have to say, and now that I have your full attention the topic of this blog is women and the challenges they face in Irish Republicanism.  I have been involved in Irish republicanism in some form or another properly since I was around 17, I grew up in a traditional Irish Republican home, and for me it was the norm and continues to be. It was never really a question I asked myself did I want to get involved in politics, it just naturally happened, no one in my home thought it strange and although my father would have been more involved politically than my mother, my mother  is as passionate about her country as him , as are my sisters. I grew up in a household with 3 sisters, my mother and with my father being the only male. Long and detailed political discussions are the norm around our kitchen tabl