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Eamon McCann

'X' marks spot for changes to anti-woman irrationality

In the High Court in Dublin 20 years ago tomorrow, a hearing opened under Judge Declan Costello in the matter of 'X'-v-the Attorney General. The case was to have a profound effect on thinking on abortion in the Republic. But the issues it raised remain unresolved.

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Inside Eamon McCann

Price's pardon is lost along with 'standard' procedures

Friday, 3 February 2012

In olden days, a politician knocking a judge was something shocking. Now, heaven knows, anything goes. In Northern Ireland, anyway.
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Security services making a killing from the Troubles

Friday, 27 January 2012

From the dusty wastelands of Afghanistan to Desertcreat in Co Tyrone, the G-men keep the memory of the B-men alive. The B Specials provided a sizeable percentage of the first recruits to RUC Special Branch. Now the FBI is sending its own recruits over here to learn from the Branch's experience.
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Sammy wants the unions to shut up (just like the shops)

Friday, 20 January 2012

Does Sammy Wilson ever visit Connswater Shopping Centre these days? It's in his old east Belfast stomping-ground, round the corner from where he used to teach. Economics, I am told.
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How ordinary people really shaped the events of 1981

Friday, 13 January 2012

Historians, paramilitaries and journalists have this in common: they are all acutely vulnerable to demophobia. It is not that they are fearful of crowds in the sense of being nervous of large numbers, but in their reluctance to acknowledge the role of the masses in shaping significant events.
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How ANC is trying to rewrite the anti-apartheid struggle

Friday, 6 January 2012

The past is not another country. It is here and now and riven by the same issues and acrimonies as ever - because they who shape understanding of the past are well-placed to mould the future.
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Why US soldier Bradley Manning is my Man of the Year

Friday, 30 December 2011

If US soldier Bradley Manning had committed war crimes rather that exposing them, he wouldn't be in so much bother.

Pity Hitchens couldn't stick around for the death of Kim

Friday, 23 December 2011

There was something oddly appropriate about Chris Hitchens and Kim Jong-il dying within days of one another. Chris and the Kims went back a long way.
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Can you believe presidential election is question of faith?

Friday, 16 December 2011

Hark the herald angels sing . . . Christ is born in Bethlehem. But was he really? The outcome of next year's US presidential election could depend on it.
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Money's not too tight for top bosses to mention a pay rise

Friday, 9 December 2011

I imagine that Sinn Fein strategists are quietly chuffed by the harmonisation of public sector pay policy north and south - what we might call the "Ciaran-Trevor convergence".
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There's no end in sight for Maghaberry prison dispute

Friday, 2 December 2011

Lord Morrow was mightily miffed on Monday that Maghaberry prisoners have cost us a million pounds.
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Rich elite beware as death knell sounds for democracy

Friday, 25 November 2011

I think it's clear that every man that is to live under a government ought first, by his own consent, to put himself under that government; and I do think that the poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that government that he hath not had a voice to put himself under."
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We must fight this death by a thousand pension cuts

Friday, 18 November 2011

Peter Robinson throws a wobbler about the design of the badge on prison officers' caps and, suddenly, Stormont is in uproar. But the cap on public sector pay and pensions elicits little more than a shrug.
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Smokin' Joe felled by the power of liberal pretension

Friday, 11 November 2011

The most popular tourist attraction in Philadelphia is the statue of Rocky Balboa adjacent to the steps leading up to the city's Arts Museum.
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Executive refuses to face the truth about abortion

Wednesday, 2 November 2011

The law on abortion in Northern Ireland is 150 years old this month and it's never been in more of a mess. Every year, abortions are carried out in the north which are, on the face of it, illegal, while women travel to Britain for abortions which could legally be carried out here.
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Why Blair should also face the wrath of liberated Libya

Wednesday, 26 October 2011

Watching the foot-age of Gaddafi's last moments, a friend with no particular interest in politics turned to me and said: "You'd have to feel a pity for any human being treated like that."
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A new spook story to prompt some more US sabre-rattling

Wednesday, 19 October 2011

Would you buy an international bomb-plot from a used-car salesman? Barack Obama would. Last week, Obama's attorney-general, Eric Holder, announced that the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) had uncovered a plot by elements of the Iranian government to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the US, Adel al-Jubeir.
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Women's rights the first casualty of Afghan fiasco

Wednesday, 12 October 2011

So who are you going to believe, then: the svelte dude at the White House podium, or the grimy character preaching from a hut in the Hindu Kush? Barack Obama or Zabihullah Mujahid?
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It's 'Tories R Us' as Labour betrays working-class roots

Wednesday, 5 October 2011

The country is going to hell in a handcart (something like that), Jeremy Paxman said to former Labour leader John Prescott on Newsnight. And yet you won't be present to hear your party leader's conference speech for the first time in 30 years. You've just given up on them, haven't you?
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As Catholics lose faith, there is still one saviour to turn to Bitter legacy: thousands of Irish children suffered in Church-run institutions; (below) Archbishop of Dublin Dr Diarmuid Martin

Wednesday, 28 September 2011

The reason the Catholic Church finds it so difficult to face up to the child-abuse scandal in the present is that it's had it too easy in the past.
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