Daniel Finn

Daniel Finn is features editor for Jacobin and the author of One Man’s Terrorist: A Political History of the IRA. He is on the editorial board of New Left Review.

The​ Conservative politician Airey Neave was a man whose life touched many bases. A Second World War veteran who became a close friend and ally of Margaret Thatcher, he was killed by Irish republicans when a bomb attached to his car exploded as he left the underground car park at the Palace of Westminster. Speaking to the Media Society in 1977, Neave had pitched his idea for a...

Diary: Ireland’s Election

Daniel Finn, 17 March 2011

Four years ago, when Fianna Fáil was returned for a third consecutive stint in office, electoral pundits could barely find enough superlatives for the role played by Bertie Ahern and Brian Cowen in the party’s triumph. Ahern, they said, was a ‘political tsunami’, and Cowen, if anything, even more formidable. This time around, neither Ahern nor Cowen was standing,...

Ahead of the Game: The Official IRA

Daniel Finn, 7 October 2010

In May 1977, Ian Paisley was in a television studio in Belfast when he bumped into Malachy McGurran, a leader of the Official IRA in Northern Ireland. At that time, Paisley was attempting to orchestrate a repeat of the loyalist workers’ strike that had defeated the Sunningdale power-sharing agreement three years earlier. Paisley was demanding a return to unfettered Orange rule and...

Community Relations: In Belfast

Daniel Finn, 27 August 2009

‘Get out of our Queen’s country before our bonfire night and parade day, other than that your building will be blown up.’ The message was sent to Muslim, Polish and Indian community centres in Belfast at the start of July. Having driven more than a hundred Romanians from the Queen’s country the previous month, Belfast’s Aryan fraternity must have felt they were...

Short Cuts: Tax Havens

Daniel Finn, 9 July 2009

There was an awfully genteel protest organised by the Tax Justice Network in Jersey earlier this year. The TJN had joined up with a group of Jersey campaigners who would like the island to wean itself off its dependence on the more creative aspects of modern finance. Christian Aid have estimated that Southern countries lose at least $160 billion every year in unpaid taxes as a result of dodgy...

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