RNU Monaghan

05/09/2026

01/09/2026

R.N.U Rejects ''Selective Justice''

RNU condemns the British Government’s continuing attempt to construct special protections for former members of the British armed forces while refusing to recognise the same principle of fairness for republican prisoners who were imprisoned as a consequence of the conflict. Recently the British Government has repeatedly presented the new Troubles legislation as its opportunity to “get legacy right”, yet its approach continues to expose a fundamental double standard: protection and consideration for those who served the British state, while republican prisoners remain excluded from any comparable recognition of their circumstances.

On 13 May 2026 the British Government described the Troubles Bill as its “final chance to get legacy right.” On 20 August 2026, Secretary of State Sir Chris Bryant stated: “We can’t shape the future unless we deal with the past,” calling the legislation the Government’s “last chance to properly address legacy issues and get as many answers as we can.” RNU challenges the British Government to apply those principles consistently. If the conflict’s legacy is to be addressed, then the experiences and treatment of republican prisoners cannot simply be written out of the history.

RNU rejects any attempt to create a hierarchy of victims, perpetrators or participants in the conflict based upon allegiance to the British state. Former members of the British armed forces cannot be afforded protections that are denied to republican prisoners who were imprisoned during the same conflict. A genuine human-rights-based approach cannot mean one set of rules for those who fought for Britain and another for those who opposed British rule.

The British Government cannot claim that it wants reconciliation while simultaneously protecting one side from scrutiny and denying recognition to the other. If this really is its “last chance” to get legacy right, then it must confront the full legacy of the conflict — including the treatment of republican prisoners. There must be no selective justice, no political rewriting of history and no special category of protection for those who served the British state.

29/08/2026

Burnham’s Words Expose the Reality Behind the Failed Good Friday Agreement

The Republican network For Unity views the declaration by the British Prime Minister Andy Burnham that a referendum on Irish unity is now ‘off the table’ as an unsurprising admission by the British Government and a vindication of the position maintained by republicans since 1998.

The British government has no mandate to deny the Irish People our democratic right to unity. The constitutional future of Ireland is not a matter for Westminster to determine; and the constitutional future of Ireland does not concern any ‘’question’’ of Irish unity. Ireland being governed by the people of Ireland is not a decision, but the inherent right of the Irish people. The overwhelming majority of people across Ireland's thirty two counties desire Irish Unity; this is not subject to any ‘debate’.

For three decades now, the nationalist community has been strung along and told that the Good Friday Agreement created a peaceful pathway to Irish unification. This was presented as a ‘’democratic alternative’’. Let us be very clear as Republicans; the occupation of our country is not a ‘democratic’ situation, and furthermore, the touted mechanism for Irish Unity itself is clearly anti democratic as it is not only a mechanism confined to 6 of Ireland's 32 counties, but it has a British controlled triple lock mechanism securely in place.

RNU has consistently rejected the suggestion that the Good Friday Agreement represented the fulfillment of the republican struggle. We outright rejected the acceptance of Britain's presence in Ireland to be now legitimate and now a matter of ‘’democratic’’ choice.

For successive years the Republican Network for Unity have openly stated that the reliance on a border poll as a mechanism for Irish unity is fraught with the glaring reality that it is a process entirely under the firm control of the British government. During our Easter 2025 address we stated that the ‘’mechanism of a border poll is under the right control of the British government. It is they who decide on the wording of any such border poll, and by extension, the nature of any such outcome. It is the British government that decides when to hold a border poll; and there is no set criteria. Then; it is essentially the British government that decides on the acceptance of any such outcome’’. This encapsulates what is known as the ‘triple lock’ mechanism, which essentially guarantees Britain's presence in Ireland.

In response to Sinn Fein’s attempt to introduce an ‘Irish Unity Bill’ which ultimately failed; we stated that ‘as we look closer, what seems to be a ‘historic step’, reveals itself as somewhat of a faux pas held on the basis of a conversation constitutional nationalists are having with themselves’

Months previously R.N.U attended a public event hosted by Sinn Fein on the subject of Irish Unity. We attended to ask some honest and open questions that were completely void within the Irish Unity debate, yet were the most important. R.N.U asked the panel, and the wider floor, two questions. The first: How does Sinn Fein and constitutional nationalism plan to overcome the triple lock mechanism given Britain is not an impartial bystander. The second: Are there any red lines which would lead to Sinn Fein and constitutional nationalism's support for the Good Friday Agreement being withdrawn? Numerous Sinn Fein representatives were present, including Pearse Doherty. Yet, no response came from the floor to address both of those questions.

This is coupled with the long standing dismissal of the British government surrounding the prospect of a border poll. Let us again remind ourselves, Boris Johnston stated that there would be no border poll for a ‘very, very long time to come’. Teresa May stated ‘the time is not right’. Rishi Sunak advised Sinn Fein to focus on the day to day running of Stormont. Keir Starmer stated it was ‘not even on the horizon’ and now Andy Burnham has stated it’s ‘off the table’.

The Republican Network for Unity has long since recognised the rhetorical drive behind Irish Unity. We have engaged ourselves in this debate recognising the growth of aspirational discussion surrounding the prospect of Irish Unity. Yet hand in hand with this; is our clear duty to challenge the absolute lack of any real engagement from the British government in addressing what is not an ‘option’ but the inherent right of Ireland to be governed by the people of Ireland and not a foreign government or its local dysfunctional micro council.

For Republicans we must engage ourselves in the serious task of building republican unity and creating a real republican alternative for the people of Ireland.

28/08/2026

Republican Network For Unity
Hungerstriker Commemoration
Cavan Town (Assemble at the Cathedral)
Sunday, 18th October @ 2 pm
All Republicans Welcome 🇮🇪

28/08/2026

A quashed decision, a festering wound re-opened: Garvaghy Road and the price of getting it wrong.

Republican Network for Unity condemns, without reservation, this week's crown court decision to quash the parades commission determination that kept the bigoted orange order off the Nationalist Garvaghy Road for decades.

So what has happened here? A ruling that protected a sieged community for the better part of three decades has been struck down, not because it was the wrong decision by the parades commission to protect a community, not because the people of the Garvaghy Road were found to have no case, but because six appointees of the British Secretary of Statelet could not manage the basic administrative task of all signing the same single piece of paper.

That is the whole crux of it. The ban was not overturned on its merits. It fell on a technicality, an internal failure of pencil pushers to have every commissioner sign off on the final text before it was issued. And on the back of that clerical failure, an application will now be lodged to walk loyalist banners back through a nationalist community that has said, calmly and consistently, for thirty years, not here, not through our community, not without our consent.

For those too young to remember. A generation has grown up on the Garvaghy Road since this was last a byword for confrontation, so the history bears repeating. The dispute began in 1995. Each July the bigoted orange order marched from Portadown to a service at the Protestant Drumcree parish church and insisted on returning through the Nationalist Garvaghy Road, a settled Catholic area whose residents were besieged by a triumphal loyalist parade past their homes every year prior. In 1995 and again in 1996 during the communities objections, the statelets answer was to force the march through with support and protection from the RUC/PSNI militia against the community's wishes, with the road sealed by police and residents barricaded back behind lines and into their homes. Those images of a people penned in their own streets so an unwanted sectarian parade could march passed did lasting damage.

Then came 1998. The newly created Parades Commission ruled the return parade could not use the Garvaghy Road. The Orange Order refused to accept it, and a mass standoff took hold at Drumcree that spilled into a week of loyalist violence across the North. The loyalists attacked their own security force lackies.

The loyalist violence did not end there, It was in the early hours of the 12th July 1998, at the very height of that tension, a cowardly loyalist petrol bomb was thrown into a home in the Carnany estate in Ballymoney. Three young Catholic brothers, Richard, Mark and Jason Quinn, none of them older than eleven, burned to death in their beds. Catholic! that was reason enough for the coward that threw it and ran.

The killing of those children changed the mood across the occupied province overnight. It laid bare, in the most unbearable terms, where sectarian brinkmanship over a silly parade actually leads. In the years that followed, the determination hardened into something close to permanent, the return parade down the Garvaghy Road was refused, year upon year, and a genuine, if uneasy peace took root in its place.

Fast forward back to today. Here is the part the court's decision ignores entirely. The calm on the Garvaghy Road was not handed down from a bench or a quango. It was built, painstakingly, by the Nationalist people who live there. Residents organised, engaged, and held a line without a single life lost to that dispute in more than a quarter of a century. Neighbours that included some Protestants who were once set against one another have spent those intervening years building something better. That is the real achievement, and it was paid for at a price no ruling should be permitted to wash away because of a clerical error.

To reopen this festering wound now, on a technicality, with a fresh application already flagged is to treat that hard-won calm as expendable. It is to tell an entire community that their consent, which was the foundation of the settlement here, counts for nothing the moment a legal team spots a flaw in the filing.

RNU has never accepted that a British-appointed commission should be the arbiter of whether a community must endure a parade it has refused. But even those who put their faith in these institutions should be able to see the danger in what has just occurred. If a determination can be swept aside for want of a signature, then no nationalists community's protection is secure, and the message to every marching organisation is simple, challenge it, wait for the state's machinery to trip over its own feet, and walk.

The principle at stake is consent. There is no right to march through a community that does not want you. There never was. The residents of the Garvaghy Road settled this question long ago, and no procedural sleight of hand has unsettled the answer.

The determination keeping the bigots of the Orange Order off the Garvaghy Road must stand. Any fresh application to parade that route should be refused, plainly and quickly, and the Commission or whatever replaces it, must not allow its own incompetence to become the lever that drags this community back to the barricades.

RNU stands with the residents of the Garvaghy Road, we will stand with you on the barricades. We commend the discipline and dignity you have shown for close to thirty years, and we say to you now, what we have always said, your right to refuse consent is not a technicality, and it is not a foreign occupying state's to give away.

27/08/2026

RNU is a socialist republican movement driving grassroots political change to achieve a united, democratic Irish republic for the people.

23/08/2026

Republican Network for Unity – Anniversary Statement

54th Anniversary – 22 August 1972
In memory of Volunteers Patrick Hughes, Oliver Rowntree and Noel Madden

On the 22nd August 2026, we remember with pride, respect and deep sorrow the three IRA volunteers who lost their lives 54 years ago in an accidental explosion at the Customs Station on the Dublin Road in Newry. On that day, Patrick Hughes, Oliver Rowntree and Noel Madden made the ultimate sacrifice. We also remember with compassion the civilians who perished alongside them in this terrible tragedy, and we extend our heartfelt solidarity to all the families, friends and communities who have carried the pain of this loss across the decades.

Each of these men walked a different path, but each was led by a deep and unyielding commitment to justice, freedom and the reunification of our country.

Patrick Hughes, 34 years old, was raised on Derramore Road in Bessbrook, County Armagh. He had served for nine years in the British Army – posted to Germany, North Africa and Kenya – before leaving to be closer to his family. He and his wife had seven children, and tragedy would strike again when their son Michael was killed by British soldiers in October 1974. Witnessing the injustice and repression of his community, Patrick turned against the very army he had once served and joined the struggle for Irish freedom. A quiet man known for his love of animals, gardening and DIY, these passions became the cover for his Republican work. His military experience was a great asset to his comrades, yet he was a model volunteer – trusted, respected, and unsuspected by those around him. His death came as a profound shock to the people who knew him, never guessing the quiet courage and principle that drove him.

Oliver Plunkett Rowntree, 23 years old, was born into a Republican family in Newry in 1949. A brilliant student who studied at Trinity College Dublin, he was a fluent Irish speaker, a lover of Gaelic culture, and a Gaelic footballer with John Mitchel’s club. From his teenage years he was active in Na Fianna Éireann and the Civil Rights Movement. Even when arrested and charged in the Free State – on evidence so flimsy it could not stand – his resolve never wavered. By 1972 he was O/C of the Newry IRA, his home a centre for planning and organisation. He saw the futility of feuding among Republicans and instead sought unity against the common enemy: British occupation. That vision was honoured at his funeral, when two firing parties – one IRA, one from the Stickies – stood together and fired a single volley over his coffin, a unique tribute to the man who believed Republicans should stand as one. His twin brother Colman continued in that same struggle until his own death in a premature explosion two years later.

Noel Madden, just 18 years old, was born and raised in Newry. He left school at 15 to work as a painter, where his skill and craftsmanship made him much sought-after. He loved fishing and spending time with friends at the weekends – a young man with his whole life ahead of him. But in the face of systemic discrimination, social deprivation, the presence of British soldiers on his streets, and the injustice of internment without trial, Noel made the choice to fight. The death of his comrade Colm Murtagh in an explosion just two weeks earlier had shaken him deeply, yet he continued on the path he had chosen. His family knew nothing of his involvement until that fateful day – another young life cut short, another home left broken by the cost of standing up for what is right.

These three men were ordinary people who answered an extraordinary call. They came from different generations and different backgrounds: one a father of seven with military experience; one a scholar and cultural activist; one a talented young craftsman barely out of his teens. But they shared a belief that Ireland should be free, that all people should be treated with dignity, and that occupation and injustice could not go unchallenged.

Today, as we honour their memory, we reaffirm our commitment to the ideals for which they gave their lives: a united Ireland, free from foreign rule, built on equality and justice for every man, woman and child. We remember too that their sacrifice was not in vain – it continues to inspire the struggle for national reunification and social justice today.

To the families of Patrick, Oliver and Noel, and to the families of the civilians who died that day: your loss is our loss. Their legacy lives on in us, and we will never forget.

Ar dheis Dé go raibh a n-anamacha uile.

20/08/2026

RNU Remembers
Vol. Michael Devine from Derry who was the last to die after 60 days on Hunger Strike on this day 1981.

As we mark the 45th anniversary of the 1981 Hunger Strike, Republican Network for Unity remembers all the hunger strikers who gave their lives in pursuit of justice and political recognition.

Whatever political perspective people hold today, their sacrifice remains an undeniable part of Ireland's history and continues to resonate with many across the country. Their courage, determination and unwavering commitment are remembered with respect by all republicans.

RNU will continue the fight for Irish Freedom and their sacrifice will not go in vain.

"Our revenge will be the laughter of our children." – Bobby Sands