There are stirrings in Ulster Loyalist groupings which may, if they mature, disprove the old cliché that Northern Protestants have no culture other than the Orange Order and Rangers football club.

An anthology of the most important Dáil debates of the last sixty years covers vital economic matters, Northern Ireland and the nation’s ongoing difficulties with matters of sexual morality and their consequences.

Irish socialism was divided and weak in the early decades of the twentieth century, while the axis of trade union solidarity ran through Dublin and Merseyside, not Dublin, Belfast and Cork.

The 1970s was a transitional decade for Ireland in which new social movements emerged and the state acted decisively against movements which were prepared to use lethal violence within the jurisdiction.

In a sense, most of the old guard never fully understood, and certainly never accepted the consequences of, the process they had initiated. If they had, they would have released control of the Workers Party with good grace to De…