Fownhope’s Heart of Oak Society traces its roots to the age of friendly societies, when communities provided their own safety net. Its anniversary celebrations reveal a tradition still very much alive, says MARK SEDDON
SOMETHING strange occurred in the spring of 2017. An election was held. The parliamentary arithmetic aligned in an unprecedented fashion. And lots of people in England were rudely awakened to the fact that we continue to maintain a colony in Ireland.
Don’t get me wrong. I sympathised with people, especially women, who felt fearful about the prospect of ultra-reactionary Ulster Loyalists holding the balance of power in Parliament. But a part of me was a bit like “seriously libs, have you only just noticed these numpties?”
For whilst the degree of Loyalist power at Westminster was a novelty, the people of the Six Counties have, for many long years, been subjected to the moral and political bellenditude of the Democratic Unionist Party and similar political forces.
AARON SMITH discusses why the Protestant diaspora are still part of Yeats’s ‘Indomitable Irishry’, and an integral part of any future united Ireland.
A new group within the NEU is preparing the labour movement for a conversation on Irish unity by arguing that true liberation must be rooted in working-class solidarity and anti-sectarianism, writes ROBERT POOLE
The independent TD’s campaign has put important issues like Irish reunification and military neutrality at the heart of the political conversation, argues SEAN MacBRADAIGH
On the centenary of the birth of the anti-colonial thinker and activist Frantz Fanon, JENNY FARRELL assesses his enduring influence


