The fire and the future
Chris Brazier sounds out those people most resistant to change in Northern Ireland - Ulster's loyalists - and still emerges full of hope.

Seven roads to salvation
An NI guide to the constitutional options for a future Northern Ireland - with cartoons by Martyn Turner.

All along the watchtowers
From birth deformities to a vet's house calls, Liz Curtis looks at life on the border between the two Irelands.

Kissing King Billy goodbye
Ruth Moore knows how hard it is for a Protestant to come out as a radical.

War and peace
An interview with Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness, whose voice is banned from broadcast in the UK.

The Queen, Mary R and me
Feminist Nell McCafferty explains why she is ceding her claim to the British throne.

NORTHERN IRELAND - THE FACTS

The riotous and the righteous
Britain used Ireland as a training ground for its colonial conquests elsewhere, argues Bill Rolston.

View from the world
What do people outside Europe think about Northern Ireland?

Will the hard men fall to loving?
Dave Duggan turns his mind to the conflicts and questions that will arise after the peace.

Simply - a brief history of Britain's 'adventures' in Ireland

Basta and ACTION
A poem by Tom Paulin

I heard a story when I was last in Northern Ireland which might have been designed to strike trepidation into my heart. The Bishop of Derry has in his archives three letters written to him by the novelist Graham Greene in the early 1970s. The first sought an interview, saying he'd been commissioned to write a long piece about 'The Troubles'. The second thanked the Bishop for the interview and promised to send a copy of the article. And the third was an apology - Greene had abandoned his piece because he found the Northern Ireland question quite impossible to disentangle.

I gather that the New Internationalist once made a similar abortive attempt to mount an issue on Northern Ireland back in the 1970s. Even in the last five years this issue has had quite a chequered history, seeming to fall off the end of each year's magazine schedule - always through coincidence rather than conspiracy, but leading me seriously to wonder if it were ever going to see the light of day. Even now this issue has avoided another postponement only because I decided to go ahead and edit it from Toronto (I am working for a year in the NI's North American office).

My location is ironic given that the NI's Canadian editors have tended over the years to oppose a special issue on Northern Ireland. They have argued that it would be seen as Anglocentric and that most North American subscribers would prefer us to concentrate on conflict in the Third World.

I understand a little more where they're coming from now - Northern Ireland is seldom reported on here in Canada and this could not seem like quite such a vital issue as it does in Britain. I have had to resort to a transatlantic traffic in press cuttings as well as to innumerable conversations with people acting as my eyes and ears on the ground (our last phone bill hit the sky).

But I'm still convinced that the NI has a special responsibility to address a major conflict which is taking place on its own doorstep. Before I started my research I'm afraid I could have cited myself as proof that British people need to have Northern Ireland explained to them just as much as do Americans or Australians.

But at least I finished the magazine. Perhaps I had more signs of hope and movement to encourage me along the way than Graham Greene did. In the end this long-postponed, much-mooted issue could not be coming out at a better time.

Letters
Letter from Lagos
Updates
Reviews: plus Herman Melville classic
Curiosities
Endpiece: by Anne-Marie Sweeney
Country profile: Albania

FRONT COVER PHOTOGRAPHS:
(TOP) RIOTS IN BELFAST 1989, ROB LOWE / NETWORK
(BOTTOM) SCHOOLCHILDREN IN DERRY 1991,
ELI REED / MAGNUM
MAGAZINE DESIGNED BY ALAN HUGHES
ONLINE MAG MAINTAINED BY SIMON LOFFLER