Liam Kennedy is an Irish historian, emeritus professor of history at Queen's University, Belfast. [1]
Liam Kennedy was born in rural Tipperary, Ireland. [2]
In 2005 Kennedy stood against Gerry Adams as an independent candidate for Belfast West, to protest against IRA violence especially paramilitary punishment attacks. [3] He finished last, with 147 votes. [4] He has called for a commission of inquiry into punishment attacks, which he considers a form of child abuse, considering that many victims are minors and some younger than 14. According to Kennedy, Sinn Féin is involved in the attacks, which the party denies. [5] [6]
Kennedy's look at Irish history, Unhappy the Land: The Most Oppressed People Ever, the Irish? , was published in 2016. [7]
Sinn Féin is an Irish republican and democratic socialist political party 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 to 2020. From 1983 to 1992 and from 1997 to 2011, he followed the policy of abstentionism as a Member of Parliament (MP) of the British Parliament for the Belfast West constituency.
The Official Irish Republican Army or Official IRA was an Irish republican paramilitary group whose goal was to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and create a "workers' republic" encompassing all of Ireland. It emerged in December 1969, shortly after the beginning of the Troubles, when the Irish Republican Army (IRA) split into two factions. The other was the Provisional IRA. Each continued to call itself simply "the IRA" and rejected the other's legitimacy.
Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland. It was created as a separate legal entity on 3 May 1921, under the Government of Ireland Act 1920. The new autonomous Northern Ireland was formed from six of the nine counties of Ulster: four counties with unionist majorities – Antrim, Armagh, Down, and Derry/Londonderry – and two counties with slight Irish nationalist majorities – Fermanagh and Tyrone – in the 1918 General Election. The remaining three Ulster counties with larger nationalist majorities were not included. In large part unionists, at least in the north-east, supported its creation while nationalists were opposed.
James Martin Pacelli McGuinness was an Irish republican politician and statesman for Sinn Féin and a leader within the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) during The Troubles. He was the deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland from May 2007 to January 2017.
Peter David Robinson is a retired Northern Irish politician who served as First Minister of Northern Ireland from 2008 until 2016 and Leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) from 2008 until 2015. Until his retirement in 2016, Robinson was involved in Northern Irish politics for over 40 years, being a founding member of the DUP along with Ian Paisley.
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.
The IRA Army Council was the decision-making body of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, a paramilitary group dedicated to bringing about independence to the whole island of Ireland and the end of the Union between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. The Council had seven members, said by the British and Irish governments to have included Gerry Adams, the president of Sinn Féin. The Independent Monitoring Commission declared in 2008 that the council was "no longer operational or functional," but that it had not dissolved.
The murder of Robert McCartney occurred in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on the night of 30 January 2005 and was carried out by members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army. McCartney, born in 1971, was a Roman Catholic and lived in the predominantly nationalist Short Strand area of east Belfast, and was said by his family to have been a supporter of Sinn Féin. He was the father of two children and was engaged to be married in June 2005 to his longtime girlfriend, Bridgeen Hagans.
Alex Maskey is a former Northern Irish politician who served as Speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly from 2020 to 2024 and was the first member of Sinn Féin to serve as Lord Mayor of Belfast from 2002 to 2003. He was Sinn Féin's longest sitting councillor, representing the Laganbank electoral area of Belfast. He was also an MLA for Belfast West for two periods, and also for Belfast South. He reportedly retired "from frontline politics" in early 2024.
Denis Martin Donaldson was a volunteer in the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and a member of Sinn Féin who was killed following his exposure in December 2005 as an informer in the employ of MI5 and the Special Branch of the Police Service of Northern Ireland. It was initially believed that the Provisional IRA were responsible for his killing although the Real IRA claimed responsibility for his murder almost three years later. His friendship with French writer and journalist Sorj Chalandon inspired two novels: My Traitor and Return to Killybegs.
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.
Sean Kelly, is a former Irish volunteer in the Belfast Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), who was a member of the active service unit which carried out the Shankill Road bombing in 1993. Kelly was convicted of nine counts of murder, but was released in 2000 as part of the Good Friday Agreement.
Michelle O'Neill is an Irish politician who has served as First Minister of Northern Ireland since February 2024 and Vice President of Sinn Féin since 2018. She has also been the MLA for Mid Ulster in the Northern Ireland Assembly since 2007. O'Neill was previously deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland from 2020 to 2022.
Patricia Black, also known as smiler or Patricia Black-Donnelly was a Volunteer in the Belfast Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). She was killed in St Albans in 1991 when a bomb she was carrying exploded prematurely.
This is a chronology of activities by the Provisional Irish Republican Army, an Irish republican paramilitary group in the 21st century.
Heidi Hazell was a German citizen murdered by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA.) The investigation into her murder was reopened in March 2015. The victim's family and the German Federal Attorney have argued that the Good Friday Agreement, which imposes limitations on retrospective criminal proceedings being filed against paramilitaries who committed crimes during The Troubles, may not be binding. This argument is made on the basis that the Geneva Convention would supersede the Good Friday Agreement in a situation where a civilian non-combatant like Hazell was killed by a paramilitary, thereby demanding prosecution as a war crime. The murder of Hazell, a German citizen, also took place in Germany and the country is not legally bound by the agreement between the United Kingdom and Ireland.
Unhappy the Land: The Most Oppressed People Ever, the Irish? is a 2016 book by Liam Kennedy, professor emeritus at Queen's University, Belfast. Kennedy introduces, as well as criticizes, the concept of "most oppressed people ever" (MOPE) to describe what he sees as a pervasive assumption both among Irish nationalists and the Irish diaspora that Irish people have been uniquely victimised throughout history. Throughout the book he plays devil's advocate while questioning many truisms he perceives as being commonly accepted about Irish history.
Since the early 1970s, extrajudicial punishment attacks have been carried out by Ulster loyalist and Irish republican paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland. Attacks can range from a warning or expulsion from Northern Ireland, backed up by the threat of violence, to severe beatings that leave victims in hospital and shootings in the limbs. The cause of the attacks is disputed; proposed explanations include the breakdown of order as a result of the Northern Ireland conflict, ideological opposition to British law enforcement, and the ineffectiveness of police to prevent crime.
John Finucane is an Irish Sinn Féin politician and solicitor. He has been Member of Parliament (MP) for the Belfast North constituency of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom since the 2019 general election.