I know by now I shouldn’t find this IT columns so bizarre but for me, a Northerner, they really are. Critiques of contemporary SF without any hint that Irish history occurring outside the 26 counties. The possibility for some people in the North their independence is postponed. https://twitter.com/irishtimes/status/1335123503847153665

Again I’m going to bang on about commemoration (in a broad sense) and how the past lives on in the present. Having studied hunger strikes, and put an exhibition on about them, it is completely clear hunger strikes during the Troubles were seen as continuing a republican lineage.

Republican prisoners were well read on the prison experiences and mechanisms of protest from the ‘revolutionary’ period. They used those forms of protest and re-formatted them for their contemporary needs. HS were nods to the past but reacting to the present.

Essentially they saw their actions and their acts of commemoration as tying into longer lineages that continued the struggle for independence. This wasn’t invented by SF c2017. History was used by both sides eg loyalist used elaborate OO marches and WWI commemorations in prison.

It would be really helpful if journalists are going to write pieces about all-Ireland parties that they actually engage with all-Ireland history. Maybe look over the border and find out what happened there after 1922? Maybe move beyond the Troubles being simply IRA atrocities?