Inside the rise of the political party, once subordinate to the IRA, that is on the brink of taking power in IrelandSinn Fein is the most popular political party in both Northern Ireland and the Republic. A movement once synonymous with a paramilitary campaign is on the brink of taking real power through purely democratic means. But if Sinn Fein has mastered the art of electoral politics, it remains strangely opaque.
Who really runs the party? How is it funded? And what can we expect of it as a party of government? Aoife Moore, Irish Journalist of the Year in 2021, explores these and other burning questions in The Long Game. Drawing on exclusive interviews with current and former members of Sinn Fein, she builds up a picture of a party undergoing a profound, and still incomplete , transformation. She looks at the key individuals and moments that put the party on its present course, and she explores tensions within the party and the wider republican movement.
Packed with revelatory details, The Long Game is a groundbreaking telling of contemporary Ireland's biggest and most elusive political story.
The Brexit referendum of 2016 triggered one of the most profound constitutional crises in modern British history. A wave of populist nationalism gave way to political and economic instability, throwing the future of the United Kingdom into sharp relief. The Scottish National Party saw an opportunity to press for a second referendum on Scottish independence with Irish republicans lobbying the British Government for a border poll in a move to help secure their goal of a United Ireland. For Unionists in Northern Ireland, a referendum that began on the question of sovereignty quickly degenerated into cries of betrayal and a redrawn border in the Irish Sea. Extraordinary uncertainty now hangs over the future of the Union between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
In Northern Ireland's centenary year, military and political historian Aaron Edwards, a native of Belfast, explores the profound challenges facing Unionists. He reflects upon the past century of political turbulence on these islands, the effects of Republican violence on the Unionist psyche and the embattlement of a people who believe themselves to be once again under siege.
ISBN 9781785372995