The Starry Plough (Irish: An Camchéachta) is the newspaper of the Irish Republican Socialist Party, first published in 1975, the year after the party was founded by Seamus Costello. It took its name from the plough-and-stars banner of James Connolly’s Irish Citizen Army, a deliberate signal of the IRSP’s effort to fuse the republican and socialist traditions in a single movement.
The paper has been the party’s main political voice ever since, carrying the movement’s analysis of the conflict in the North, its electoral and prisoner campaigns, and its internal debates. Its history was anything but smooth: publication was often interrupted by the pressures the organisation laboured under, from the assassination of Costello in 1977 to the feuds and splits of the following decade, and the run reflects the prominence the movement reached during the 1981 hunger strike, in which its associated INLA prisoners took part.
The Irish Republican Digital Archive holds almost 100 issues of The Starry Plough, beginning with the first issue of 1975 and continuing into the 2000s, the most comprehensive publicly accessible digital collection of the paper and among the most visited sections of the archive.
1975
1976
 The Starry Plough (January 1976) (3) |  The Starry Plough (February 1976) (3) |  The Starry Plough (March 1976) (3) |
 May |  June |  The Starry Plough (September 1976) |
 December |
1977
 January (2) |  The Starry Plough (May 1977) |  The Starry Plough (September 1977) |
 The Starry Plough (October 1977) (2) |  Seamus Costello (1) |  The Starry Plough (December 1977) |
1978
 January (2) |  February (2) |  March |
 August (2) |  The Starry Plough (November 1978) |  The Starry Plough (July 1978) |
1979
1980
 February (2) |  March (6) |  July 1980 |
 The Starry Plough (September 1980) (2) |  November (2) |  1980 Hunger Strike Special (2) |
 The Starry Plough (December 1980) |  The Starry Plough (April 1980) |
1981
1982
1983
 The Starry Plough (August 1983) (2) |  The Starry Plough (September 1983) (2) |  The Starry Plough (October 1983) (2) |
 The Starry Plough (Nov/Dec 1983) (2) |
1984
1985
1987
1988
1989
1990
1999
2001
2002
 Feb/March 2002 |  April/May 2002 |  June/July 2002 |
 The Starry Plough (Oct/Nov 2002) (2) |  The Starry Plough (August/September 2002) (3) |  The Starry Plough (Dec 2002/Jan 2003) (2) |
2003
2004
2005
2006-2011
(1) Donated by Colm Mistéil
(2) Donated by @irish_republican_archive
(3) Donated by Jason McLean
© Irish Republican Digital Archive. Historical documents are presented for educational and research purposes only. We do not endorse or promote any views expressed in the material. Some content may be politically or historically sensitive. [Read full disclaimer]
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