Police, politicians and clerics appeal for end to loyalist violence A total of 32 police officers injured in Belfast and Derry disturbances over Easter weekend
about 2 hours ago
Senior police officers, politicians and church leaders in the North called on Monday for an end to rioting in loyalist areas and appealed to those with influence in communities to use it to prevent further attacks on police.
Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) Chief Supt Davy Beck described the “orchestrated” violence as “senseless and reckless” and said there was “absolutely no justification for the shameful scenes we have witnessed on our streets”.
The legacy of bitterness caused by the 1981 hunger strikes continues For northern nationalists, Bobby Sands’s election in 1981 transformed politics
Sat, Apr 3, 2021, 06:00 Brian Feeney
For northern nationalists, Bobby Sands’s election transformed politics. Within two years all leading Sinn Féin figures had been elected.
Forty years ago, on April 9th, 1981, Bobby Sands was elected MP for Fermanagh/South Tyrone with 30,493 votes. His election turned out to be the watershed of the Troubles.
There were major events both before and after that election but they didn’t alter the trajectory of the Troubles: Sands’s election did.
He had gone on hunger strike on March 1st that year, exactly five years after the British government’s policy of criminalisation took effect. Until 1976 prisoners convicted of so-called “scheduled offences” were categorise
To any reasonable observer, the event attended by senior Sinn Féin politicians was a flagrant and egregious breach of the spirit – at the very least – of the rules