An Phoblacht follows in a long line of republican journals over the past 200 years since the first republican paper, the United Irishmen’s Northern Star, edited by Samuel Neilson in the 1790s; the Young Irelanders’ Nation of the 1840s, edited by Thomas Davis; the Fenian paper, The Irish People 1863-’65, edited by Thomas Clarke Luby, John O’Leary and Charles J Kickham; and the numerous republican papers each decade of the present century.

Although relaunched in 1970, the title An Phoblacht has a long and historic association with the Republican Movement and was used first used in its English form, The Republic, by the Dungannon Clubs in Belfast in 1906. The clubs were founded by Denis McCullough and Bulmer Hobson and their first task was to start a weekly paper. They managed to scrape together ￡60 and the first issue of The Republic appeared on December 13th, 1906.

The Republic by Bulmer HobsonIts aim, as set out in the first issue in a short article written by Hobson, was the establishment of an independent Irish republic. In a concise article he outlined the paper’s separatist policy. ‘‘Ireland today claims her place among the free peoples of the earth. She has never surrendered that claim, nor will ever surrender it, and today forces are working in Ireland that will not be still until her claim is acknowledged and her voice heard in the councils of the nations.’’