The name refers to the 32 counties of Ireland which were created during the Lordship and Kingdom of Ireland. With the partition of Ireland in 1920–22, twenty-six of these counties formed the Irish Free State which was abolished in 1937 and is now known as the Republic of Ireland since 1949; the remaining six counties of Northern Ireland remain part of the United Kingdom. Founder Bernadette Sands McKevitt said in a 1998 interview with the "Irish Mirror" that people did not fight for "peace" - "they fought for independence" - and that the organisation reaffirms to the republican position in the 1919 Irish Declaration of Independence.