Tom Griffin (London, OK): Monday was the 200th anniversary anniversary of the death of Tom Paine, the man who, in Mike Marqusee's words, "inspired and guided revolutions in north America and France, and equally important, the revolution that did not happen in Britain." As both Brendan O'Neill and Edward Vallance note, Paine's writings retain rema...

Tom Griffin (London, OK): The ongoing debacle in the House of Commons this week overshadowed an equally significant scandal in the House of Lords. A day after Michael Martin became the first Speaker of the Commons to be forced out since 1695, Lord Truscott and Lord Taylor of Blackburn became the first peers to face suspension from the Lords since 1642. The latter landmark is in...

Tom Griffin (London, OK): The Conservatives took another step in their nascent alliance with the Ulster Unionist Party today, with a visit to Northern Ireland by David Cameron in support of UUP European election candidate Jim Nicholson. The previous evening, Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary Owen Paterson explained the thinking behind the alliance in a talk at West London&...

Tom Griffin (London, OK): Today's Guardian carries an alarming report about safety at the Trident submarine base in Faslane:  The worst breaches include three leaks of radioactive coolant from nuclear submarines in 2004, 2007 and 2008 into the Firth of Clyde, while last year a radioactive waste plant manager was replaced. It emerged he had no qualifications in radioact...

Tom Griffin (London, OK):Does the Irish peace process have lessons for the Middle East? Many of the key players in the Good Friday Agreement seem to think so. Tony Blair has cited the precedent as cause for optimism in his role as Quartet Envoy, while Gerry Adams called for inclusive negotiations during his visit to Gaza last week. The analogy isn't universally welcome, however. Two recen...

Tom Griffin (London, OK): The debate about reforming the Act of Settlement has prompted some interesting musings over at the Slugger O'Toole website: I have known a number of unionist republicans: most would be fairly liberal, though still clearly unionists. However, there are also unionists, albeit fewer, from a more hardline view point who support what has recently been suggested as the...

Further to this piece by Tom Griffin, over at LC, on the connections between the “decent left” (*spits*) and the Islamophobia movement, I read a piece in this week’s Time Europe, about the survival of NATO in spite of the collapse of the USSR. How it’s actually got stronger, despite all other alliances collapsing soon

Thomas Ash (Oxford, OK): Shortly after the attack at Massereene army base early this month, OurKingdom's own Tom Griffin posted a brief discussion of the many attempts that were being made to paint the attackers as the "true" representatives of the Irish republican tradition. As he noted, these attempts were made not only by republicans who rejected the peace process but also by unio...

Tom Griffin (London, OK):The agenda behind the dissident republican attacks of the past few days was acutely summed up yesterday by Irish News commentator Brian Feeney: The killings were designed to accomplish a number of objectives – to embarrass Sinn Fein; to provoke a disproportionate response from the British; to cause division between Sinn Fein and the DUP and make it less likely t...

Tom Griffin (London, OK): There has been a lot said in recent months about democratic republicanism as a neglected tradition in British politics. If Saturday's Convention on Modern Liberty is anything to go by, it is a debate which has struck a chord. It was standing room only for the afternoon session entitled Liberty, Sovereignty and Republicanism: Can the Leveller Tradition Be Revived ...