By the early 1990s An Phoblacht/Republican News was the established weekly newspaper of the Provisional movement, the product of the 1979 merger of the Dublin An Phoblacht and the Belfast Republican News. Appearing every week, it carried the movement’s account of the conflict, its political and electoral activity, its prisoners, and its wider concerns, and it is the closest thing the period has to a running republican commentary on its own affairs.
The years gathered here, from 1991 to 1997, was among the most eventful in the movement’s history. These were the years of the long turn toward politics: the secret talks, the Downing Street Declaration, the IRA ceasefire of 1994, its breakdown at Canary Wharf, and the renewed ceasefire of 1997 that opened the way to the Good Friday Agreement. Week by week, the paper recorded all of it from the republican point of view, moving with the movement from the rhythms of war to the uncertain language of peace.
The Irish Republican Digital Archive holds over 100 issues from across these six years, which is the fullest publicly accessible run of the paper from this period online. Read in sequence, they offer a uniquely close view of how the movement saw, and explained, its own passage from armed struggle toward the political settlement that followed.
1991
In 1991 the IRA carried its campaign to the heart of London with a mortar attack on Downing Street, while the first tentative talks under Peter Brooke tested the ground for a settlement. The paper tracked both the war and the faint stirrings of a process that was still years from maturity.
1992
A year of political setback and continued violence: Gerry Adams lost his West Belfast seat at the 1992 election even as Sinn Féin pressed its case, and the killing went on across every side. Heavily represented in this collection, the 1992 issues show a movement holding its course while the search for an alternative quietly gathered pace.
1993
Perhaps the pivotal year of the decade, 1993 saw some of its worst violence, including the Shankill Road bombing and the loyalist killings that answered it, set against the emergence of the Hume–Adams dialogue and, in December, the Downing Street Declaration. The issues from this year trace the movement at the hinge between war and the possibility of peace.
1994
The defining year. On 31 August 1994 the IRA announced a complete cessation of its military operations, halting its long campaign and opening a new and uncertain phase. The paper’s reporting across 1994 charts the movement’s approach to that decision and the transformed landscape that followed.
1995
The first full year of the ceasefire was one of cautious hope and mounting frustration, as the promise of the cessation ran up against the deadlock over the decommissioning of IRA weapons. The year’s issues capture a movement adjusting to politics without war, and to the slow, contested business of building a settlement.
1996
The fragile peace broke in February 1996 when the IRA ended its ceasefire with the bombing at Canary Wharf in London, and the year that followed mixed renewed violence with continued political manoeuvring ahead of all-party talks. The paper reported the collapse and the uncertain search for a way back.
 APRN (06 June 1996) |  11 July 1996 |  07 March 1996 |
 APRN (17 October 1996) |  APRN (18 July 1996) |  15 February 1996 |
 26 September 1996 |  APRN (22 February 1996) |  APRN (12 December 1996) |
1997
A change of government in London, Sinn Féin’s strongest electoral showing yet, and the renewed IRA ceasefire of July 1997 together cleared the way for the party’s entry into the talks that would produce the Good Friday Agreement the following year. The final issues here catch the movement on the edge of a new era.
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