This glossary is a comprehensive guide to the publications represented in the archive: the newspapers, magazines, journals, bulletins and newsletters of the Irish republican tradition, from the closing years of the nineteenth century to the present day. Every title listed here is one of which the archive holds at least one issue, and in most cases a substantial run. The entries are arranged alphabetically, each with a short description and a link. Follow the link beside any title and you will be taken directly to the issues of that publication held in the archive.

The titles gathered here span well over a century of republican print. They reach back to The Shan Van Vocht of 1896 and the papers of the revival generation, take in the press of the Easter Rising and the Civil War, and run forward through the long decades of the modern conflict to the Anti GFA papers of the 2000s. They cover the full breadth of Republicanism: the national organs of the Provisional and Official traditions, the Irish Republican Socialist Party, Republican Sinn Féin and the 32 County Sovereignty Movement, set alongside the papers of People’s Democracy, the Connolly Association and the wider socialist-republican and civil rights left.

What sets the collection apart is not the well-known papers but everything around them. Beside the national papers sit the things that rarely survive at all: the newsletters of local cumainn in Belfast, Derry, Limerick and the border counties; the handmade journals produced inside the prison cages; the bulletins of the hunger-strike and anti-internment campaigns; the women’s papers of the movement across the better part of a century; and the solidarity titles printed for the Irish and their supporters in Britain, France, Germany and the United States.

For many of these, the issues recorded here may be among the only ones in public circulation anywhere.

A Woman’s Voice — Browse documents on archive

A Sinn Féin publication, its first issue appearing in May 1988 with Mairéad Farrell on the cover. Farrell, a republican prisoner who had been O/C of the women in Armagh and a prominent voice on the prison protests, had been shot dead by the SAS in Gibraltar that March, and the paper appeared in the period when republican women’s politics was an increasingly distinct strand within the movement. The archive holds issues from 1988 and 1989.

An Claidheamh Soluis — Browse documents on archive

The weekly newspaper of Conradh na Gaeilge (the Gaelic League), first published on 17 March 1899 and named for the “Sword of Light” of Gaelic myth. Eoin MacNeill was its first editor, from 1899 to 1901, and from 1903 to 1909 it was edited by Pádraig Pearse, under whom it played a prominent part in the Irish Literary Revival, carrying original work in both Irish and English alongside cultural commentary. Primarily a vehicle for the language revival rather than a political organ, it nonetheless became closely bound up with advanced nationalism: it was here, on 1 November 1913, that MacNeill published “The North Began,” the article that called for a nationalist volunteer force and led directly to the founding of the Irish Volunteers. It continued under various titles until 1931.

An Eochair — Browse documents on archive

An Eochair, “the key,” was a bulletin of the Official republican prisoners held in Long Kesh, published in the middle years of the 1970s under the slogan “The Key to True Freedom – Socialism.” Its pages mixed prison news with the movement’s wider left-wing politics, international solidarity, and contributions from the prisoners themselves.

An Glór — Browse documents on archive

The paper of the Republican Socialist Youth Movement, the youth wing of the Irish Republican Socialist Party, dating from 2007. Founded in 1974, the IRSP is the political voice of the republican socialist movement, alongside its military counterpart the INLA, and its youth movement used An Glór, “The Voice” in Irish, to carry that politics to younger supporters. It should not be confused with An Glór Gafa, the republican prisoners’ magazine listed above.

An Glór Gafa / The Captive Voice — Browse documents on archive

A magazine written entirely by Irish republican prisoners and produced and distributed outside the jails by Sinn Féin’s POW Department. It was started in the Maze H-Blocks by Brian Campbell, together with Laurence McKeown, to encourage prisoners’ poetry, short stories and essays. The first issue appeared in 1989, and though intended as a quarterly it was rarely published more than three times in any year. It ran to 26 issues before closing in 1999. Alongside prison-campaign updates it carried political and historical analysis, fiction, poetry, satire and artwork, and is regarded as an important record of the political and educational life of the prison population — including a substantial body of writing by women prisoners.

An Phoblacht (1925-1937) — Browse documents on archive

The first paper to bear the title, it first appeared on 20 June 1925 as the official organ of the IRA, under the editorship of Patrick Little. Little was succeeded by Peadar O’Donnell in 1926, under whom the paper became markedly more progressive, with contributors including Frank Ryan and Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington. It campaigned on the Land Annuities, against repression North and South, played a part in defeating the Cumann na nGaedheal government in the 1932 election, and fought the Blueshirts. Following de Valera’s suppression of the IRA in 1936 it was banned, reappearing only briefly in 1937 during the debate on the new constitution. The title was later revived by the Provisional movement in 1970.

An Phoblacht (Cork, 1960s) — Browse documents on archive

A separate paper that revived the title in the mid-1960s. It was published by the Cork-based Irish Revolutionary Forces, a group of former IRA members and activists seeking a more leftward and activist line, and ran for some fourteen issues between 1965 and 1967. Produced and widely distributed in Cork, it was scathingly critical of the IRA leadership for refusing to take action in the North and for concentrating on social and economic questions while neglecting British rule in the Six Counties. The tension it generated with the IRA spilled over into raids and armed counter-raids, including the seizure of the group’s newsletter from its printer. It is distinct from both the 1925-37 paper and the 1970 Provisional one.

An Phoblacht (1970–1979) — Browse documents on archive

The Provisional movement’s paper in its first incarnation, before the 1979 merger. Founded in Dublin in February 1970 by the veteran Belfast republican Jimmy Steele in the immediate aftermath of the Sinn Féin split, it supported the wing led by Ruairí Ó Brádaigh that became the Provisional IRA. It began as a monthly and, in this early period, circulated mainly in the South, running in parallel with the Belfast-based Republican News, which served the Northern movement. The two papers reflected a North–South division that was increasingly seen as reinforcing partition, and that concern led to the first combined twelve-page edition of An Phoblacht/Republican News on 27 January 1979, the point at which this standalone run ends and the merged title (covered separately) begins.

An Phoblacht / Republican News — Browse documents on archive

The title reaches back to earlier republican papers, including an An Phoblacht of the 1920s and 1930s; it surfaced again in 1966 as the paper of a small Cork-based IRA splinter group, before being refounded in Dublin in February 1970 by Jimmy Steele in support of the wing that became the Provisional movement. A companion Belfast paper, Republican News, was established the same year. To counter the partitionist effect of running two separate papers, the first combined twelve-page An Phoblacht/Republican News appeared on 27 January 1979. It became the principal newspaper of the Provisional movement, with regular features such as the “War News” column reporting IRA operations. It carried both names until the 2000s, when it reverted to An Phoblacht and moved to monthly publication, before ending its print run in 2017 to continue as an online news service.

An Réabhlóid — Browse documents on archive

A journal of People’s Democracy, the socialist republican organisation that had grown out of the Northern Ireland civil rights movement after its founding at Queen’s University Belfast in 1968. By the 1980s, the decade this title dates from, People’s Democracy was a Trotskyist body holding that civil rights could be won only through a 32-county socialist republic, deeply engaged in the H-Block and Armagh prisoners’ campaign and standing candidates against the constitutional parties. An Réabhlóid, its name the Irish for “The Revolution,” continued in the line of the organisation’s earlier papers, Free Citizen and the Unfree Citizen, carrying that same socialist republican analysis into the 1980s.

Anti-Internment News (1970s) — Browse documents on archive

A bulletin of the campaign against internment without trial, introduced in the North on 9 August 1971 under Operation Demetrius, which saw hundreds detained without charge. The mass resistance that followed, rent and rates strikes, civil disobedience and protest marches, culminated in the Derry march of 30 January 1972 that ended in Bloody Sunday. Anti-Internment News carried the campaign’s reporting of arrests, conditions in the camps and the case against internment to a wider readership.

Beir Bua — Browse documents on archive

The newsletter title of the 32 County Sovereignty Movement, used in particular for the movement’s local cumann (branch) bulletins, alongside occasional national issues. The name is a traditional Irish republican salutation meaning roughly “be victorious.” Where The Sovereign Nation served as the 32CSM’s main national paper, Beir Bua worked at branch level, carrying news of local activity, commemoration notices and the movement’s political analysis from districts around the country. The 32CSM had been founded in December 1997 by republicans opposed to Sinn Féin’s acceptance of the peace process and the Good Friday Agreement.

Borderline — Browse documents on archive

A local Sinn Féin paper for the West Monaghan and South Fermanagh border area, its first issue appearing in April 1983 and further issues coming out occasionally through the 1980s. Rooted in the border country straddling the line between the 26 and Six Counties, it documents the movement’s activity in a region shaped by the militarised frontier of the period.

Civil Rights Newsletter — Browse documents on archive

The newsletter of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA), the body formed in 1967 to campaign against the discrimination faced by the Catholic minority in housing, employment and the franchise, under the banner of “one man, one vote” and the repeal of the Special Powers Act. An umbrella organisation rather than a republican one, drawing in moderate nationalists, liberal Protestants, trade unionists, socialists and republicans, NICRA pursued reform through publicity, documentation, lobbying and the street marches that defined the early civil rights movement, including the Derry anti-internment march of 30 January 1972 that ended in Bloody Sunday. The newsletter was part of that publicity work, setting out cases of discrimination and the Association’s campaigns for a wider readership.

Concerned Fermanagh — Browse documents on archive

The organ of the Fermanagh Civil Disobedience Committee, published from 1971 until at least 1975. It grew out of the civil disobedience campaign, chiefly the withholding of rent and rates, that nationalists across the North mounted in response to the re-introduction of internment without trial in August 1971. Those behind it were supporters of Frank McManus, the Unity MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone from 1970 until 1974 and a leading anti-internment campaigner, and of the Provisionals, placing the paper at the more militant end of the local response rather than with the SDLP’s constitutional line. It offers a county-level, grassroots record of the anti-internment agitation of the early 1970s.

Congress 86 — Browse documents on archive

The journal of the League of Communist Republicans, its full title Congress 86: Quarterly Journal of Communist Republican Prisoners and their Associates. The League had formed in November 1986 among republican prisoners in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh, part of a wider wave of resignations from the IRA after the 1986 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis ended abstentionism. This smaller breakaway, Marxist-Leninist in outlook and shaped largely by the 1980 hunger striker Tommy McKearney, argued that the armed campaign had reached the limits of its usefulness and that Sinn Féin was retreating from the left. Funded by fundraising among a small network of supporters outside the jail, its first issue appeared in June 1987 and it ran on into 1988. It has been described as the first debate journal written by republican prisoners for republican prisoners, a format the Provisional movement soon echoed with Iris Bheag and, later, The Captive Voice.

Creggan News — Browse documents on archive

A local Sinn Féin newsletter for the Creggan area of Derry, of which the archive holds issues from 1978. Creggan, the hillside estate above the Bogside, was one of the strongholds of the Free Derry period and remained a staunchly republican district through the 1970s, and the newsletter carried Sinn Féin’s news and comment to that community at neighbourhood level.

Eolas — Browse documents on archive

The international newsletter of Official Sinn Féin during the 1970s. Pitched at supporters and contacts abroad, it set out the Official movement’s analysis for an international readership, complementing the domestically focused United Irishman.

Faoi Glas — Browse documents on archive

A handmade journal of republican prisoners of war in Long Kesh during the 1970s, its title the Irish for “locked up” or “imprisoned.” Like the camp’s other prison papers it was typed, copied and illustrated by the internees themselves, mixing articles on history and politics with poetry, Irish-language lessons and prison news, and read out to weekly assemblies of prisoners in the cages. The name carried a long pedigree in republican prison journalism, having been used in Crumlin Road Jail in earlier decades and as one of the longest-running prison papers of the 1940s in the Belfast and Derry jails, before its revival in Long Kesh. The Long Kesh paper was unusual in running two simultaneous editions: one typed and hand-illustrated inside the prison, the other typeset as a full printed newspaper outside.

Fianna — Browse documents on archive

A paper of Na Fianna Éireann, the republican youth movement founded in 1909 by Constance Markievicz and Bulmer Hobson to train young people in the ideals of Irish republicanism. This title dates from the 1960s, when the Fianna operated as the youth wing of the then-undivided republican movement, before the 1969–70 split saw the organisation divide into Official and Provisional-aligned wings. As an earlier Fianna Éireann paper, it stands as the forerunner to the movement’s later Young Republican, the same youth organisation’s voice in an earlier decade.

Forum — Browse documents on archive

Forum (subtitled “A Republican Journal”) was the magazine of the New Republican Forum, a radical republican grouping formed in 2003 by Michael McKevitt and others after a split with the Real IRA — the breach arising from a dispute between Real IRA prisoners in Portlaoise and the organisation’s outside leadership, whom the prisoners called on to stand down. The New Republican Forum presented itself as a coalition of political and community activists offering a radical republican alternative, opposed to the Belfast Agreement and committed to reunification and a programme of social justice. Its pages carried interviews and analysis ranging across community issues such as drugs in Dublin, alleged Garda corruption, the newly released 1972 State Papers, the US military’s use of Shannon, and the situation of republican prisoners in Portlaoise. The magazine ran from February 2003 until 2006.

Fourthwrite — Browse documents on archive

Launched in spring 2000 by the Irish Republican Writers Group, Fourthwrite — subtitled “For a Democratic Socialist Republic” — was a quarterly journal set up to open debate among republicans critical of Sinn Féin’s peace-process strategy. It was founded and co-edited by former republican prisoners, chiefly Tommy McKearney, a Tyrone man and one of the 1980 hunger strikers, and Anthony McIntyre, both ex-blanketmen. From a left, radical-republican standpoint it argued that Sinn Féin’s course amounted to a parliamentary reformism incapable of transforming the Northern state, while also rejecting militarism as an alternative. It provoked considerable debate on its appearance — Sinn Féin was moved to launch its own discussion publication in response — and the journal later continued online.

Free Citizen — Browse documents on archive

The newspaper of People’s Democracy, the radical organisation founded at Queen’s University Belfast in October 1968, which held that civil rights could be secured only through a 32-county socialist republic and pressed for more far-reaching reform than NICRA. Free Citizen began in 1969 and was renamed The Unfree Citizen in 1971.

Free Derry News — Browse documents on archive

A local Sinn Féin Derry newsletter, of which the archive holds issues from 1975. Its title invokes Free Derry, the self-declared autonomous nationalist area of the Bogside and Creggan that held out against the RUC and the British army from 1969 until the army re-entered the no-go districts in Operation Motorman in July 1972.

Fuascailt — Browse documents on archive

A republican prisoner-support publication, its first issue appearing in July/August 1996. In its early years its masthead identified it with the Irish Political Prisoner Campaign, reflecting a focus on the cases and welfare of republican prisoners. By 2003 the masthead had changed to name the Wolfe Tone Society, though the precise point of the change is not certain. Surviving issues run up to 2006. The title is the Irish for “release” or “liberation,” apt for a paper centred on the prisoners’ cause.

H-Block/Armagh Bulletin — Browse documents on archive

A campaign bulletin of the National H-Block/Armagh Committee, the broad-based body formed in October 1979 to support the republican prisoners in Long Kesh and Armagh and their five demands: no prison uniform, no prison work, free association, full remission, and proper visits, parcels and facilities. Through the blanket and no-wash protests and the hunger strikes of 1980 and 1981, the Committee coordinated one of the largest protest mobilisations in the North since the early 1970s, and its bulletins carried news of the prisoners, the course of the hunger strike and the campaign’s marches and demonstrations to supporters.

Hunger Strike Bulletin — Browse documents on archive

A bulletin issued by the Irish Republican Socialist Party during the first hunger strike of 1980. That strike, begun in October 1980 by republican prisoners in Long Kesh and joined by women in Armagh, was called off in December; INLA prisoners aligned with the IRSP took part alongside their IRA counterparts, and the party’s bulletin carried news of the protest and the campaign behind it.

Hunger Strike Newsheet — Browse documents on archive

A news-sheet produced during the 1981 hunger strike to circulate news of the prisoners’ fast and the campaign behind it. It belongs to the flood of campaign literature generated that year, when, by police estimate, there were more than 1,200 demonstrations in support of the prisoners, and it kept supporters abreast of developments through the months in which ten men died on the protest.

INC News — Browse documents on archive

The newsletter of the Irish National Congress (Comhdháil Náisiúnta na hÉireann), an Irish republican organisation formed in December 1989, originally to prepare for the 75th anniversary commemoration of the 1916 Rising. Working on a non-party-political and non-sectarian basis for a united Ireland and for human rights, the Congress campaigned on matters such as justice and peace, inquiries into the killings of nationalists and civilians, and Irish neutrality, and drew in figures from across nationalist politics: Bernadette Devlin McAliskey sat on its executive in the early 1990s, and Mary Lou McDonald served as a vice-chair and later as chair in the years around 2000. INC News carried the organisation’s campaigning material and commentary. It should not be confused with the Irish-American lobby group the Irish National Caucus, which shares the initials.

Ireland International News Briefing — Browse documents on archive

A bulletin first issued in 1989 by the Sinn Féin Foreign Affairs Bureau, aimed at putting the republican view of events before an international readership of journalists, sympathisers and contacts abroad. Plainly produced, all text and no images, it functioned as an information service much in the manner of the Irish Republican Information Service of the 1970s, carrying news and analysis rather than the features of a conventional paper.

Ireland’s War — Browse documents on archive

The paper of the Glasgow Irish Freedom Action Committee, a 1980s solidarity group that had broken away from the Revolutionary Communist Group, the British anti-imperialist organisation known for its strong support of Irish republicanism. From a revolutionary-communist standpoint, Ireland’s War gave unqualified backing to the armed campaigns of both the Provisional IRA and the INLA, though the committee later withdrew its support from the latter. As a Glasgow-produced title, it represents the Scottish strand of the British solidarity press.

IRIS — Browse documents on archive

The magazine of Provisional Sinn Féin, launched in the early 1980s as a longer-form companion to the weekly An Phoblacht/Republican News. Rather than news, it carried extended political analysis and historical material, reaching its seventh issue by late 1983. It functioned as something closer to a theoretical and discussion journal for the movement.

Irish Freedom (1910–1914) — Browse documents on archive

An Irish republican monthly, effectively the journal of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, which first appeared in 1910 and ran until it was suppressed by the authorities in December 1914. It was founded with the backing of the veteran Fenian Tom Clarke and funds from Clan na Gael in America, with Bulmer Hobson as editor and Seán Mac Diarmada as manager. From the outset it took an uncompromising separatist line, rejecting Home Rule and the Irish Parliamentary Party and calling for complete independence. Its pages carried work by much of the coming revolutionary generation, including Pádraig Pearse’s “From a Hermitage” series and Terence MacSwiney’s “Principles of Freedom,” and Peadar Kearney’s “A Soldier’s Song,” later the national anthem, first appeared in it in 1912. Republican Sinn Féin’s Saoirse – Irish Freedom takes its name from this paper.

Irish Freedom — Browse documents on archive

The monthly newspaper of the Connolly Association, the London-based Irish socialist-republican body founded in 1938, initially as the Connolly Club, by veterans of Republican Congress and the Irish Self-Determination League to promote James Connolly’s politics among the Irish community in Britain. First published in January 1939, it consciously took its name from the earlier republican papers of that title, worked for a united and independent Ireland from a left perspective, and counted the campaign to free the Republican Congress and International Brigade leader Frank Ryan among its first causes. It was renamed the Irish Democrat in 1945. It is distinct from the 1910 to 1914 Irish Freedom of the IRB, also in this glossary, whose name it revived.

Irish Republican Information Service — Browse documents on archive

A weekly information bulletin of the Provisional republican movement, circulated to journalists, support groups, sympathetic organisations and foreign embassies in order to put the republican view of events directly before the press, the diplomatic world and the wider public. Running from 1973 until 1980, it functioned as a steady news-and-statement service rather than a conventional newspaper. Its initials, IRIS, also the Irish word for “journal,” were taken up for the Sinn Féin magazine Iris launched in 1981.

Irish War News (1916) — Browse documents on archive

A single-issue republican newspaper produced during the Easter Rising. Printed by the Gaelic Press in Dublin and dated 25 April 1916, the second day of the Rising, it reported the first day of the insurrection from the rebels’ own standpoint. Aside from the Proclamation of the Irish Republic itself, it was the only printed publication produced by the leaders of the Rising, which makes an original an exceptionally rare and significant document. A second issue was printed in 1924 to mark the eighth anniversary.

Irlande Libre — Browse documents on archive

The journal of a French committee set up to support Irish republicans, active in the 1980s. Its December 1980 issue was given over entirely to the hunger strikes of the republican prisoners in Long Kesh and Armagh, part of a French solidarity campaign run alongside the Comité de Défense des Prisonniers Politiques Irlandais. The committee and its paper were succeeded by Solidarité Irlande in the 1990s and 2000s, and later by Libération Irlande from 2010. The title is French for “Free Ireland.”

Nationality — Browse documents on archive

A weekly edited by Arthur Griffith, promoting Sinn Féin’s policy of abstention and national self-reliance. It first appeared in June 1915 as a successor to Griffith’s earlier suppressed titles (the United Irishman, Sinn Féin and the short-lived Scissors and Paste), ran until the 1916 Rising, and was revived from February 1917 before being suppressed in turn in September 1919. Like Griffith’s other papers it was subsidised by friends and by the IRB, and it did much to spread Sinn Féin’s ideas in the years around the Rising and the 1918 election.

Nuacht Feirste — Browse documents on archive

An Irish-language weekly produced by Sinn Féin in Belfast, its first issue appearing in January 1986. “Belfast News” in Irish, it belonged to the strong revival of the language among republicans through the 1980s, bound up with the prison struggle and the rapid growth of Irish-medium schooling in West Belfast, and it carried news and comment for that community through the medium of Irish. The archive holds a substantial run of issues from 1986 and 1987.

Poblacht na h-Éireann (War News) — Browse documents on archive

Poblacht na h-Éireann (“The Republic of Ireland”) began as a four-page anti-Treaty weekly, its first issue appearing in the days before the Dáil voted on the Anglo-Irish Treaty in January 1922, as a counter to the overwhelmingly pro-Treaty Dublin press. Once the Civil War moved into its guerrilla phase, it took the form of a “War News” bulletin — a broadside printed on one side of a coloured sheet that attacked the enemies of the Republic, British and Free State alike, and rallied the anti-Treaty side through at least January 1923. Produced in several editions, including a southern run and an eight-page Scottish edition printed in Glasgow, it was got out under extraordinary conditions — the printer Riobárd Lankford recalled running off 20,000 copies of the southern edition on a hillside, fifteen miles from the nearest town. Dorothy Macardle was among its Dublin contributors. The paper faded out as the Civil War ended in 1923.

Republican Bulletin / Iris na Poblachta — Browse documents on archive

The first paper of the newly formed Republican Sinn Féin. Its opening issue appeared in November 1986 to explain the reasons for the split in Sinn Féin and to report the progress of the reorganisation, running to eight A4 pages. It was published monthly until May 1987, when it was superseded by Saoirse – Irish Freedom.

Republican News (1942–1946) — Browse documents on archive

After the Belfast Battalion’s An Síol was shut down by the 1938 internment, the Belfast IRA issued editions of War News (1939–40), and in late 1941 and early 1942 these began to appear under the title Republican News. The Belfast edition led the way, running a couple of issues ahead of a Dublin edition in its numbering, and a Galway edition was also produced. Put out by the IRA’s publicity department from premises on the Crumlin Road, it passed through editors in quick succession as arrests took their toll: John Graham edited it until his arrest in September 1942, after which the Chief of Staff Hugh McAteer took it on, then Harry White, and then Jimmy Steele once he had escaped from Crumlin Road in January 1943. An issue appeared in the immediate aftermath of the execution of Tom Williams on 2 September 1942, and the paper ran until its demise in 1946.

Republican News (1970–1979) — Browse documents on archive

Founded in Belfast in 1970, roughly six months after An Phoblacht had been established as the movement’s Dublin paper, Republican News was set up by the Belfast Brigade of the Provisional IRA under the direction of Jimmy Steele and the former Chief of Staff Hugh McAteer, both veterans of the campaigns of the 1930s and 1940s. Steele founded the Belfast Republican Press Centre and was the paper’s first editor; it began as a monthly before becoming a weekly. Both founders died within months of the launch — McAteer in June 1970, Steele that August. In its early years the paper closely mirrored the devout Catholicism and fierce anti-communism of the first Provisionals. That shifted after 1975, when Billy McKee, the IRA’s Belfast O/C, appointed the recently released Danny Morrison as editor; under him it became the platform for a younger, left-leaning Belfast leadership around Gerry Adams, Ivor Bell and Brendan Hughes, openly questioning long-standing policies such as the federalist Éire Nua programme. Imprisoned republicans were given columns: Adams wrote from Long Kesh under the pen-name “Brownie,” and Bobby Sands later contributed as “Marcella,” while features such as the Cormac cartoon gave the paper a distinctive character. The division represented by two separate papers, North and South, came to be seen as reinforcing partition, and on 27 January 1979 Republican News merged with An Phoblacht to form the single title An Phoblacht/Republican News. By then it was a weekly with a circulation of around 20,000.

Republican Press (Limerick) — Browse documents on archive

One of the local Sinn Féin papers of the early 1970s, issued from the Republican News Office in Limerick. It served the movement’s supporters in the Limerick area, one of relatively few southern titles among a local republican press that was otherwise heavily Belfast-based. The archive holds issues from 1972 and 1973.

Resistance Comics — Browse documents on archive

A republican comic book created and self-published in Belfast by the cartoonist Brian Moore, who signed his work “Cormac.” It ran for ten issues between 1975 and 1978, printed in black and white with colour covers. A republican and socialist from Ardoyne, Moore mixed overtly political material with surreal, irreverent strips influenced by the American underground comics of the period, peopled by characters such as Paddy O’Looney of the “Irish section of the sixth intergalactic revolutionary movement” and Red Biddy, “the scourge of Irish male chauvinism.” Moore went on to become far better known for the Cormac cartoon that ran in Republican News from 1976 and later in An Phoblacht/Republican News, which makes Resistance Comics an early and freer outlet for the same satirical republican voice.

Resurgent Ulster — Browse documents on archive

After Republican News ceased in 1946, the Belfast IRA resumed a monthly paper in November 1951 under the title Resurgent Ulster, deliberately echoing the Belfast Battalion’s 1930s paper An Síol, “the Voice of the Resurgent North.” It was edited and largely written by Jimmy Steele, lately released from Crumlin Road, and in its first run was a do-it-yourself production in the manner of the old War News — typed onto a stencil and run off on a Gestetner duplicator, the front page printed on a red letterhead bearing the title, a large red hand and the motto “Ní Síocháin Gan Saoirse” (“no peace without freedom”) in old Irish type. Its surviving issues offer a window onto the build-up to the IRA’s Border Campaign, launched in December 1956. The paper later continued under the title Glór Uladh, Steele editing the two between 1951 and 1957.

Rosc Catha — Browse documents on archive

The newspaper of Clann na hÉireann, the British-based support organisation for Official Sinn Féin and the wider Official republican movement. Clann na hÉireann had been established in 1964 as Sinn Féin’s support body in Britain and remained with the Official side after the 1969–70 split. Rosc Catha was launched in 1972, its first issue carrying welcomes from the Official leaders Cathal Goulding and Tomás Mac Giolla, and it set out to organise and educate the Irish emigrant community in Britain behind the movement’s goal of a socialist republic, while countering what it saw as the distortions of the British press. The title translates roughly as “battle-song,” in the sense of a call to arms or exhortation before battle, rather than literally “war-cry.”

Saoirse – Irish Freedom — Browse documents on archive

The monthly newspaper of Republican Sinn Féin. It succeeded Republican Bulletin in May 1987, became an eight-page tabloid in November of that year, and was thereafter produced as a sixteen-page monthly magazine. RSF first issued the paper over the internet in June 1996. Its name derives from the 1910–1914 publication Irish Freedom, a Fenian paper suppressed by the British authorities at the outbreak of the First World War.

Saoirse Nua — Browse documents on archive

The paper of a group that broke away from Republican Sinn Féin in 2010, calling itself first Continuity Sinn Féin and then Real Sinn Féin. Based mainly in Limerick, with Des Long among its prominent members, the group and its paper, whose name means “New Freedom,” both lasted only a few years. Its title deliberately echoes Republican Sinn Féin’s Saoirse – Irish Freedom, marking the splinter’s claim to the same tradition, and the two should be kept distinct in the glossary.

Saoirse (IRSP) — Browse documents on archive

A newspaper of the Irish Republican Socialist Party published in Belfast, appearing from 1980 until around 1985. It was produced sporadically, with issues coming out bi-weekly, monthly and bi-monthly at different times, and some carrying no printed date. It should be distinguished from the IRSP’s main paper, The Starry Plough, and from the unrelated Saoirse titles of Republican Sinn Féin and Sinn Féin.

Saoirse (Sinn Féin) — Browse documents on archive

An Irish-language magazine founded by Sinn Féin and counted among the republican movement’s Irish-language media. It belonged to the resurgence of Irish among republicans through the 1980s, a revival closely bound up with the prison struggle, in which large numbers of republican prisoners took up the language (the so-called “jailtacht”), and with the rapid growth of Irish-medium schooling in West Belfast. Enrolment in Irish-language schools rose sharply after the 1981 hunger strikes, with most pupils coming from republican families and many citing Bobby Sands and the H-Block protests as their motivation. As a cultural and political magazine published in Irish, it stands apart from the movement’s English-language papers, and is not to be confused with the IRSP’s Saoirse or Republican Sinn Féin’s Saoirse Irish Freedom.

Sinn Féin — Browse documents on archive

The weekly newspaper of the reorganised, abstentionist Sinn Féin in the years after the Civil War. With the republican side defeated in 1923 and its elected TDs refusing to enter the Free State Dáil, the party paper served as the movement’s single voice against a mainstream press it regarded as wholly hostile to the Republic, putting the abstentionist case through the by-elections of 1924 and 1925. It revived a title first used by Arthur Griffith’s paper of 1906 to 1914, and should be kept distinct from that earlier Sinn Féin.

Socialist Republican — Browse documents on archive

A paper published by the Socialist Republican Collective, a grouping associated with the Irish People’s Liberation Organisation, the armed group formed in 1986 by a faction that split from the INLA and the wider republican socialist movement. From that breakaway socialist-republican current rather than the IRSP mainstream, the paper carried the IPLO’s politics. The single 1988 issue held here is notable in its own right, featuring an interview with the IPLO and an article by Jimmy Brown, a leading figure in the organisation who was himself shot dead in 1992.

Solidarité Irlande — Browse documents on archive

The journal of the French Irish-solidarity movement through the 1990s and 2000s, and the direct successor to Irlande Libre, the committee and paper that had carried the cause in the 1980s. It continued that French line of support for Irish republicans and republican prisoners into the peace-process years, before being succeeded in turn by Libération Irlande from 2010. The title is French for “Ireland Solidarity.”

Teoiric — Browse documents on archive

The theoretical and discussion journal of the Official republican movement, that is, Official Sinn Féin and, from 1977, Sinn Féin the Workers’ Party. Appearing from the early 1970s into the early 1980s (its tenth issue came out in autumn 1980), it carried policy statements and longer ideological articles by leading figures of the movement such as Eamonn Smullen, Máirín de Burca and Henry Patterson. Its contents track the Officials’ steady evolution toward Marxism and the politics that would produce the Workers’ Party. The name is the Irish word for “theory.”

The Captive Voice — see An Glór Gafa / The Captive Voice (above)

The Daily Sheet — Browse documents on archive

An anti-Treaty republican daily news sheet of the Civil War period. Alongside Poblacht na h-Éireann War News and the companion Daily Bulletin, it was one of the furtive daily publications of the anti-Treaty propaganda effort, giving close accounts of the activities of the Irregulars and the movement’s response to events such as the deaths of Michael Collins and Harry Boland, in opposition to the narrative of the established, largely pro-Treaty press. Long runs of it survive in collections such as University College Dublin’s “Irregular News” volumes of Civil War ephemera.

The Irish People — Browse documents on archive

A newspaper of Official Sinn Féin, first published in 1973, which concentrated on workers’ rights, housing and 26-county politics rather than the situation in the North, reflecting the Official movement’s increasingly social and class-based orientation. Note that the same title was used by a separate Irish Northern Aid (NORAID) paper in the United States.

The Irish People (NORAID) — Browse documents on archive

A weekly published in New York that styled itself the “Voice of Irish Republicanism in America,” running from 1972 to 2004. It was the main organ of the Irish Northern Aid Committee (NORAID), the Irish-American body that raised funds in support of the republican movement during the Troubles. Produced by volunteers, it carried weekly reporting and analysis of events in Ireland and acted as a record and organiser of Irish-American political activity, and during its most influential period was edited by Martin Galvin, who was also NORAID’s publicity director. Its outlook broadly mirrored that of the Provisional movement while also reflecting the distinct concerns of Irish America.

The Irish Volunteer — Browse documents on archive

The newspaper of the Irish Volunteers, the nationalist force created in November 1913 in response to the formation of the Ulster Volunteer Force. Set up in January 1914, it was a weekly aimed chiefly at the Volunteers’ own membership, and is strongly associated with Eoin MacNeill, the organisation’s chairman, who is commonly credited as its editor — though the working editor was Laurence de Lacy, with proofs approved by the Volunteers’ provisional committee, MacNeill among them. Its pages mixed political and historical articles with poetry and features on military tactics. When the Volunteers split in September 1914 over support for the British war effort, the paper sided with MacNeill’s faction, and the Enniscorthy Echo, which printed it, ceased publication of the title the following month.

The Plough — Browse documents on archive

A regional newspaper of Official Sinn Féin, produced from the 1970s for the South Down and South Armagh area. It belongs with the movement’s other organs of the period, the United Irishman, The Irish People and the international newsletter Eolas, and reflected the Officials’ increasingly socialist and class-based politics in the years after the 1970 split, with a particular focus on its own border districts. It should not be confused with The Starry Plough, the paper of the IRSP, nor with the Official Sinn Féin Starry Plough produced in Derry.

The Shan Van Vocht — Browse documents on archive

A nationalist monthly published in Belfast from 1896 to 1899, founded and edited by the poets Alice Milligan and Anna Johnston, who wrote as Ethna Carbery. Its name is a phonetic rendering of “An tSean-Bhean Bhocht,” the Poor Old Woman, a traditional personification of Ireland from a song of the 1798 period. Across forty issues it mixed poetry, serialised fiction and Irish history with separatist political commentary in the Tone, Emmet and Mitchel tradition, supported the Amnesty and Gaelic League movements, and gave an early platform to writers including James Connolly, whose “Socialism and Nationalism” appeared in the first issue. Widely read at home and across the diaspora, it was an important forerunner of the advanced-nationalist press that followed.

The Spark — Browse documents on archive

A Dublin weekly of 1915 and 1916, one of the cluster of small advanced-nationalist and anti-recruitment papers, the so-called “mosquito press,” that flourished in the run-up to the Easter Rising and harried the authorities in spite of wartime censorship. Like its contemporaries it preached separatism and opposition to Irish enlistment in the British war effort, and it belonged to the same milieu as the Workers’ Republic and the other separatist sheets, a number of which were seized or suppressed under the Defence of the Realm Act.

The Starry Plough — Browse documents on archive

The Starry Plough was the paper of Official Sinn Féin in Derry, a local title that carried the movement’s politics in the city through the early 1970s. It was the inspiration for the newspaper of the same name published by the Irish Republican Socialist Party, which has its own section in this archive.

The Starry Plough / An Camchéachta — Browse documents on archive

First published in April 1975 as the newspaper of the Irish Republican Socialist Party, a few months after the party’s foundation in December 1974. It covered IRSP politics, INLA activity, labour issues and international solidarity campaigns, and later moved to a more sporadic magazine format. The title was not unique to the IRSP: Official Sinn Féin also produced a Starry Plough in Derry, and the Irish-language form An Camchéachta later attached to a Provisional prisoners’ publication, so each run should be clearly attributed to the right group.

The Starry Plough (magazine) — Browse documents on archive

A theoretical magazine of the republican struggle published by Sinn Féin, its first issue appearing in 1990. Where the party’s weekly An Phoblacht/Republican News carried news, this longer-form magazine was given over to political analysis and discussion. The archive holds issues from 1990 to 1994. It takes a name long used in republican and socialist circles and should be kept distinct from the IRSP newspaper The Starry Plough and the Official Sinn Féin paper of the same name.

The Sovereign Nation — Browse documents on archive

The Sovereign Nation, subtitled “The Republican Voice,” was first produced by the 32 County Sovereignty Movement in 1998 and appeared irregularly thereafter. The 32CSM had been founded as the 32 County Sovereignty Committee on 7 December 1997 at a meeting in Finglas, Dublin, by republicans opposed to the direction taken by Sinn Féin over the peace process and the Good Friday Agreement. Issued in both print and online editions, the paper set out the movement’s analysis, centred on the assertion of Irish national sovereignty and opposition to the Belfast Agreement, and has remained the 32CSM’s main publication. The movement has been widely described as linked to the Real IRA, a characterisation both organisations reject.

The Tattler (Belfast) — Browse documents on archive

A local Belfast Sinn Féin paper of the early 1970s, issued by Cumann Liam McParland. The cumann took its name, in the republican custom of naming branches after the dead, from Liam McParland, an IRA volunteer from the Falls Road who died on 6 November 1969 of injuries from a car crash while on active service, and who is remembered in republican tradition as the first volunteer to die in the current phase of the conflict and the first buried in the County Antrim plot in Milltown Cemetery. The archive holds issues from 1971.

The Unfree Citizen — Browse documents on archive

The continuation of Free Citizen, retitled The Unfree Citizen in 1971 and carrying the strapline “For a 32 Co. Workers’ and Small Farmers’ Republic.” It was People’s Democracy’s paper through the 1970s, until, when the Movement for a Socialist Republic merged with PD in 1978, it was absorbed into that group’s existing publication, Socialist Republic.

The United Irishman (1899–1906) — Browse documents on archive

The nationalist weekly co-founded by Arthur Griffith and William Rooney, its first issue appearing on 4 March 1899. The most influential organ of the advanced-nationalist revival of its day, it carried Griffith’s developing ideas of self-reliance and abstention that would crystallise into Sinn Féin, and drew contributions from Maud Gonne, W. B. Yeats and Pádraig Pearse, among others; James Joyce called it the only Irish newspaper of any pretensions. In 1906, after a libel action, it was refounded as the newspaper Sinn Féin. It should not be confused with the later United Irishman of 1948 to 1980, also in this glossary, which the republican movement named in the same tradition.

The United Irishman / An tÉireannach Aontaithe — Browse documents on archive

First published in May 1948 under Michael Traynor as the official monthly organ of Sinn Féin, sold by its members, with Seán G. O’Kelly as its first editor. Bilingual in English and Irish, it sustained the movement through the 1956–62 Border Campaign, and the historian Éamonn MacThomáis was among those who edited it before the 1970 split. After the split it continued as the paper of Official Sinn Féin (covered separately).

The United Irishman (1970–1980) — Browse documents on archive

The continuation of the long-running Sinn Féin paper under the Official movement after the split. When Sinn Féin divided in 1970, the title carried on as the organ of Official Sinn Féin, and later of Sinn Féin the Workers’ Party, until 1980. It was produced from the movement’s offices at 30 Gardner Place in Dublin. Over this decade its content increasingly reflected the Official movement’s turn toward class politics — workers’ rights, housing and social agitation, largely in a 26-county frame, rather than the more militarily focused coverage of its Provisional counterpart. The final issue appeared in 1980.

The Voice of the North — Browse documents on archive

A weekly newspaper that first appeared on 12 October 1969, in the immediate aftermath of the August 1969 violence in the North. It was run by the journalist Seamus Brady, who was closely tied to the Fianna Fáil government’s covert response to the crisis: he worked on the government’s Northern propaganda effort, had links to the Citizens’ Defence Committees across the border, and moved in the circle of the ministers Neil Blaney and Charles Haughey. The paper pressed a militant Northern-nationalist line in keeping with that wing of Fianna Fáil, and its background became bound up with the events that produced the 1970 Arms Crisis, when Blaney and Haughey were dismissed over an alleged conspiracy to import arms for the North. Dating from the very outbreak of the Troubles, it captures that turbulent moment from the standpoint of the more militant, government-adjacent current of Northern nationalism.

The Volunteer (Belfast) — Browse documents on archive

A local Belfast Sinn Féin paper of the early 1970s, produced for the Andersonstown, Turf Lodge and St James areas of nationalist West Belfast. The archive holds issues from between 1972 and 1974. It should not be confused with The Irish Volunteer of 1914, also in this glossary.

The Workers’ Republic — Browse documents on archive

The newspaper of James Connolly, first published in 1898 as the organ of his Irish Socialist Republican Party and running intermittently until about 1903. Connolly revived the title on 29 May 1915, after the suppression of Larkin’s Irish Worker, and edited it as a weekly until 22 April 1916, the day before the Easter Rising, by which point its emphasis had become as nationalist as it was socialist. Its columns, arguing for a workers’ republic and, increasingly, for armed insurrection, were a significant influence on the forces that made the Rising.

Tírghrá — Browse documents on archive

When the Belfast IRA revived its own newspaper in December 1962 — again under Jimmy Steele’s editorship — it did so under a new title, Tírghrá (“love of country”), subtitled “the Voice of the Republican North.” Its first volume harked back in style to An Síol and Republican News, with a stencilled masthead duplicated on a Gestetner, though by 1964 it was being produced to a far more professional standard. Publication had ceased by 1965 as control of the movement centralised in Dublin and disaffection grew among Belfast republicans over IRA policy — the same current that carried Steele toward his role in the 1969–70 split, after which he refounded An Phoblacht and helped launch the new Republican News.

Troops Out — Browse documents on archive

The magazine of the Troops Out Movement, a British-based organisation formed in London in late 1973, in the wake of events such as Bloody Sunday, whose two aims were the withdrawal of British troops from Ireland and self-determination for the Irish people as a whole. With branches across Britain, by 1975 it claimed over 1,200 members. Its publication, Troops Out, ran for over two decades, carrying political analysis, counter-propaganda and artwork for activists in Britain.

Venceremos (1981) — Browse documents on archive

The paper of the Patsy O’Hara Youth Movement, a republican socialist youth group named after Patsy O’Hara, the INLA volunteer and officer commanding the organisation’s prisoners in the Maze, who died on hunger strike on 21 May 1981. The title, Spanish for “we will win,” places the movement in the international revolutionary socialist tradition with which the IRSP and INLA identified.

Volunteer — Browse documents on archive

Volunteer was the newspaper of the Derry Brigade of the Provisional IRA, produced locally and circulated within the city’s republican community during the most intense years of the conflict. Running from 1972 through to the mid-1970s, it provides an invaluable primary source for understanding how the Derry republican movement communicated with its own base — covering operations, prisoner welfare, political analysis, and community news at a time when the city was at the centre of the conflict.

War News (1939–40) — Browse documents on archive

Issued from the Irish Republican Publicity Bureau in both Dublin and Belfast, War News appeared in 1939 and, in the North, effectively took over from the suppressed An Síol. It belonged to the period of the IRA’s S-Plan, the sabotage campaign against British civil, economic and military infrastructure launched in January 1939. Its pages largely tracked the progress of that English bombing campaign while keeping something of the character of earlier republican papers, carrying poetry and other items alongside the war reporting. The Belfast edition was produced first by Charlie McGlade, a compositor by trade, and then by Tarlach Ó hUid, working from a series of addresses around College Square, the Markets and the Pound — Ó hUid also running clandestine radio broadcasts — with each print run gathered up by women couriers. Reflecting the IRA’s wartime turn toward Germany, some 1940 issues carried antisemitic propaganda. In late 1941 and early 1942 the title gave way to Republican News.

Wolfe Tone Annual — Browse documents on archive

An annual publication produced by Brian O’Higgins from 1932 to 1962, from his business premises at 56 Parnell Square, Dublin. He started it to raise funds for the annual Wolfe Tone commemorations, and each issue was given over to the story of a hero or episode from Irish history told from O’Higgins’s own staunchly republican standpoint, offered as a counter to what he saw as the revisionism of mainstream historians and politicians. The 1944 edition was banned by the wartime censors. In its pages O’Higgins held up contemporary IRA figures such as Seán Russell and Charlie Kerins as the true heirs of earlier rebels.

Wolfe Tone Weekly — Browse documents on archive

An Irish republican newspaper founded in September 1937 by Brian O’Higgins, together with the Easter Rising veteran Joseph Clarke, following the suppression of An Phoblacht earlier that year. It set out to promote the policies of the Republican Movement, but, unlike the An Phoblacht edited by Peadar O’Donnell, it carried little radical social content: O’Higgins was a social conservative whose emphasis lay on Gaelic revivalism and Catholic social teaching. Its contributors included Jimmy Steele — then serving a sentence in Crumlin Road — along with Brendan Behan and Gearóid Ó Cuinneagáin. Its issue of 17 December 1938 carried the statement by which a body styling itself the Executive Council of the Second Dáil purported to transfer governmental authority to the IRA, a key text of republican legitimism. The paper was suppressed by the authorities in September 1939.

Women in Struggle / Mná i Streachailt — Browse documents on archive

A magazine issued by the Sinn Féin Women’s Department, its first issue appearing in 1992. It set out the department’s analysis of the position of women within the republican struggle and Irish society more widely, part of the movement’s growing attention to women’s politics through that period. The archive holds issues from 1992.

Young Ireland / Éire Óg — Browse documents on archive

Young Ireland (Irish: Éire Óg) was founded in April 1917 by the writer Aodh de Blacam, originally as a paper intended to shape the nationalist outlook of young Irish readers, with editorial offices at Sinn Féin’s headquarters on Harcourt Street and a close working relationship with the contemporary paper The Irishman. By the Civil War it numbered among the anti-Treaty republican titles in circulation in 1922–23, appearing in the same body of Irregular publications as Poblacht na h-Éireann and The Daily Sheet.

Young Republican (Provisional) — Browse documents on archive

The newspaper of Na Fianna Éireann, the republican youth movement founded by Constance Markievicz in 1909. This run was produced by the Provisional-aligned Fianna through the 1980s, when the organisation acted as the youth wing of the Provisional movement. An eight-page paper, it carried youth-focused political material, news of Fianna activity and tributes to young members killed or imprisoned in the conflict, alongside commentary on matters such as youth unemployment and the presence of the British army and RUC in nationalist areas. After the 1986 split, Na Fianna Éireann withdrew its support from the Provisionals and aligned with Republican Sinn Féin.

Young Republican (Republican Sinn Féin) — Browse documents on archive

A later paper of the same title, produced by Na Fianna Éireann once the youth movement had aligned with Republican Sinn Féin following the 1986 split. This series first appeared in 2003 and served as the voice of the RSF-aligned Fianna, carrying youth-oriented republican material and appeals to readers to join the movement’s activities. It continues the Young Republican title the Fianna had used in its earlier, Provisional-era incarnation.