(Irish Times) The sole survivor of the the IRA’s Kingsmill massacre has accused the Irish Government of hypocrisy and of “speaking out of both sides of its mouth” over its attitude to the legacy of the conflict in the North. Alan Black said the Government had spoken out last month against the British government’s decision ...
A campaign to stop Belfast’s first Irish-language preschool shows how dysfunctional unionist politics has become. (Susan McKay for The Guardian) The hard men of Ulster loyalism are adept at spotting Trojan horses. Belfast’s first Irish-language preschool, planned to open in September, wouldn’t get past them without a fight. This weekend, as the school announced it ...
Brian Feeney reviews "Northern Protestants: On Shifting Ground" (Irish News) SUSAN McKay's new book, Northern Protestants: On Shifting Ground, should be compulsory reading for both sides of the divide here: for nationalists, who only see their stereotype of northern Protestants confirmed by every utterance of unionist politicians; and for unionists also, who don't realise those ...
(for The Guardian) In the early hours of a summer morning in 1991 Tom Oliver, a 43-year-old father of seven children, left his home in the border county of Louth in the Republic of Ireland to attend to a calving cow in a field on his farm in the Cooley mountains. Hours later, his body ...
If you want to see the 17th century squaring up to the 21st and letting it know what it thinks of it, come to Northern Ireland for the Twelfth of July. There, you will see huge, tall, wooden pyres set alight, on which the election posters of politicians deemed disloyal will be burned along with ...
Susan talks to Una and Andrea about her time in the Irish Press and its "downstairs office" (Mulligan's pub), her tenure at the Sunday Tribune and Vincent Browne's prowess as editor, her feminist politics and how that informs her work, and, of course, unionist politics. Una & Andrea's United Ireland · BYLINE: Susan McKay ...
Susan McKay on the lives of northern Protestants: "It's a full-blown crisis within Unionism" 21 years on from her book Northern Protestants: An Unsettled People, Susan McKay revisits the lives of that community in her new book Northern Protestants: On Shifting Ground. She talks to Irish Times' Arts & Culture Editor Hugh Linehan about the ...
(for the New York Times) BELFAST, Northern Ireland — It was meant to be a year of celebration. But Northern Ireland, created in 1921 when Britain carved six counties out of Ireland’s northeast, is not enjoying its centenary. Its most ardent upholders, the unionists who believe that the place they call “our wee country” is ...