Claire Hanna is International Secretary of the SDLP and chairs the Balmoral South Belfast Branch. She works for the development agency Concern Worldwide.
You come from a political family. When did you start to get involved in politics yourself?
Yes, my father was a Civil Rights activist and General Secretary of the SDLP in the 1980s and [...]

This is the paper that the economist Michael Burke gave at the Irish Unity Conference in London last Saturday. Some of the points made by Michael were discussed in Seumas Milne’s post in The Guardian’s Comment is Free site today. As readers may know, Michael, a former senior international economist with CityBank, is a regular [...]

So the DUP and Sinn Féin have managed to negotiate their way through the disaster scenarios to a deal. No walkouts, elections or joint authority after all. The agreement is now out for consultation, so there will be plenty of opportunity to pick over the details over the next few weeks. The outline is:

The devolution [...]

With the ongoing instability of the devolved institutions and the degeneration of the relationship between the First and deputy First ministers, it is an apposite time to revisit a rather under-rated monograph from the beginning of the year.
‘The Long March: The Political Strategy of Sinn Féin, 1981-2007‘ by Cambridge historian, Martyn Frampton, is a necessary [...]