Sinn Féin is an Irish republican and democratic socialist political party active in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Gerard Adams is an Irish republican politician who was the president of Sinn Féin between 13 November 1983 and 10 February 2018, and served as a Teachta Dála (TD) for Louth from 2011–2020. From 1983–1992 and from 1997–2011, he won election as a Member of Parliament (MP) of the British Parliament for the Belfast West constituency but followed the policy of abstentionism.
John Hume was an Irish nationalist politician in Northern Ireland and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate. A founder and leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, Hume served in the Northern Ireland Parliament; the Northern Ireland Assembly including, in 1974, its first power-sharing executive; the European Parliament and the United Kingdom Parliament. Seeking an accommodation between Irish nationalism and Ulster unionism, and soliciting American support, he was both critical of British government policy in Northern Ireland and opposed to the republican embrace of "armed struggle". In their 1998 citation, the Norwegian Nobel Committee recognised Hume as an architect of the Good Friday Agreement. For himself, Hume wished to be remembered as having been, in his earlier years, a pioneer of the credit union movement.
William David Trimble, Baron Trimble, was a Northern Irish politician who was the inaugural First Minister of Northern Ireland from 1998 to 2002, and leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) from 1995 to 2005. He was also Member of Parliament (MP) for Upper Bann from 1990 to 2005 and Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Upper Bann from 1998 to 2007.
The Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD) was established to oversee the decommissioning of paramilitary weapons in Northern Ireland, as part of the peace process.
The Downing Street Declaration was a joint declaration issued on 15 December 1993 by the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, John Major, and the Irish Taoiseach, Albert Reynolds, at the British Prime Minister's office in 10 Downing Street.
The Northern Ireland peace process includes the events leading up to the 1994 Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) ceasefire, the end of most of the violence of the Troubles, the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, and subsequent political developments.
Michael Anthony Stone is a British former militant who was a member of the Ulster Defence Association, a loyalist paramilitary group in Northern Ireland. He was convicted of three counts of murder committed at an IRA funeral in 1988. In 2000 he was released from prison on licence under the Good Friday Agreement. In November 2006, Stone was charged with attempted murder of Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams, having been arrested attempting to enter the parliament buildings at Stormont while armed. He was convicted and sentenced in 2008 to a further 16 years' imprisonment, before being released on parole in 2021.
On 20 December 2004, a total of £26.5 million in cash was stolen from the headquarters of Northern Bank on Donegall Square West in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Having taken family members of two bank officials hostage, an armed gang forced the workers to help them steal used and unused pound sterling banknotes. The money was loaded into a van and driven away in two trips. This was one of the largest bank robberies in the history of the United Kingdom.
An Phoblacht is a formerly weekly, and later monthly newspaper published by Sinn Féin in Ireland. From early 2018 onwards, An Phoblacht has moved to a quarterly magazine format while remaining an online news platform. Editorially the paper takes a left-wing, Irish republican position and was supportive of the Northern Ireland peace process. Along with covering Irish political and trade union issues the newspaper frequently featured interviews with celebrities, musicians, artists, intellectuals and international activists.
Raymond Smallwoods was a Northern Ireland politician and sometime leader of the Ulster Democratic Party. A leading member of John McMichael's South Belfast Brigade of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), Smallwoods later served as a leading adviser to the UDA's Inner Council. He was killed by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) outside his Lisburn home.
On 19 March 1988, the British Army corporals Derek Wood and David Howes were killed by the Provisional IRA in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in what became known as the corporals killings.
Stormontgate is the name given to the controversy surrounding an alleged Provisional Irish Republican Army spy ring and intelligence-gathering operation based in Stormont, the parliament building of Northern Ireland. The term was coined in October 2002 after the arrest of Sinn Féin's Northern Ireland Assembly group administrator Denis Donaldson, his son-in-law Ciarán Kearney, and former porter William Mackessy for intelligence-gathering on 4 October 2002.
William Frederick Frazer was a Northern Irish Ulster loyalist activist and advocate for those affected by Irish republican violence in Northern Ireland. He was the founder and leader of the pressure group Families Acting for Innocent Relatives (FAIR). He was also a leader of the Love Ulster campaign and then, the Belfast City Hall flag protests. In 2019, from evidence gained in a police report, journalist Mandy McAuley asserted that the Ulster Defence Association had been supplied weapons, in the late 1980s, by the Ulster Resistance and that Frazer was the point of contact for those supplies. She asserted that multiple sources also confirmed this to be true. Those weapons were linked to at least 70 paramilitary murders.
Clonard Monastery is a Catholic church located off the Falls Road in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and home to a community of the Redemptorists religious order.
The 2001 Ealing bombing was a terrorist attack in Ealing Broadway, London, England by the Real Irish Republican Army (RIRA), a splinter group of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) that opposed the Good Friday Agreement.
Brendan Hughes was a leading Irish republican and former Officer Commanding (OC) of the Belfast Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). Also known as 'The Dark', and 'Darkie', he was the leader of the 1980 Irish hunger strike.
The 2005 United Kingdom general election in Northern Ireland was held on 5 May 2005 and all 18 seats in Northern Ireland were contested. 1,139,993 people were eligible to vote, down 51,016 from the 2001 general election. 63.49% of eligible voters turned out, down 5.1 percentage points from the last general election.
The independent Assessment on Paramilitary Groups in Northern Ireland was announced by the United Kingdom government in September 2015 in response to the political crisis in Northern Ireland. The assessment sought to establish "the structure, role and purpose of paramilitary organisations in Northern Ireland." The report was delivered to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland on 19 October 2015 and published the next day. It concluded that: "all the main paramilitary groups operating during the Troubles are still in existence including the Ulster Volunteer Force, Red Hand Commando, Ulster Defence Association, the Provisional IRA and Irish National Liberation Army." But that "the leaderships of the main paramilitary groups are committed to peaceful means to achieve their political objectives".
Francis Desmond Wilson (1925–2019) was an Irish Catholic priest and church dissident who in the course of the Northern Ireland Troubles embraced ideas and practice associated, internationally, with liberation theology. Active in working-class and Irish nationalist West Belfast, he defended the right of communities failed by the state to create “alternative education, alternative welfare, alternative theatre, broadcasting, theological and political discussion, public inquiries and much else”. More controversially, he did not condemn paramilitary groups when they presented themselves, in his words, as “alternative police and alternative armies”.
