Left Archive: The Blanket – Vol 1, No. 1, Winter 2002

To download the above please click on the following link. The Blanket./a>

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Many thanks to the person who forwarded this to the Archive.

A range of documents were donated to the Archive from a number of groups and organisations from the 2000-2002 period. We’ll be posting them up over the Summer in order to get a sense of the specific concerns during that period, now a good decade and a half ago. This is the first.

This edition, number 1, of the Blanket is particularly fascinating. Issued in Winter 2002 it has a pessimistic tone with various contributions including a front page article by Liam O’Ruairc arguing that ‘Irish Republicanism is in crisis’. An interview with Marion Price states that ‘I wouldn’t consider SF of today being republicans, I see SF as being a nationalist party… for Republicans I think we had a setback’.

An editorial by O’Ruairc and Anthony McIntyre reiterates this:

…this journal is also very conscious that Irish Republicanism is at present facing a serious crisis. To attempt to solve this crisis, this journal intends to regenerate what is best in the Irish Republican tradition. We believe that what is most valid in it could e summarised as the ‘three Ds’; defiance, defence and dissent. Any society needs dissent from the structures of power, defence against the structures of power and to defy the structures of power. Provisional Republicanism long enough provided that until those ideas were ‘decommissioned’ by people claiming to be Republicans. Failure to regenerate them today will allow Truceleers and Good Friday Solders to use the Republican tradition to legitimate their own ends.

There is much more including book reviews, an article addressing unionism and decommissioning and reports on issues outside of Ireland.

An important addition to the Archive.