I've Been Reading About The Troubles Since January
and I haven't stopped
This newsletter is a wee-bit different. I’ve been reading a lot about The Troubles so I have a lot of history/politics adjacent recommendations for my history-heads.
Also, history is political, and I definitely have an anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, pro-resistance bias. I just wanted to say that from the beginning in case my writing feels biased because well, it is. I think all deaths as a result from violence of this era are heartbreaking, no matter what flag you are waving. And that violence trickles down generations.
Take care of yourselves while reading / watching any of the suggested material. See ya on the other side of this rabbit hole.
The Troubles in Northern Ireland: 1969 - 1998
Most of the media I’ve been engaging with recently has been on Irish history and the era of The Troubles in Northern Ireland in particular. My best friend grew up in the North, and another friend visited it recently and until now, they are pretty much the only people I’ve spoken to about what I’ve been reading and learning. (With the exception of my boyfriend, who unfortunately has to suffer with hearing about hunger strikes and dirty protests1 before bed. The book I read aloud from the other night still had a library check-out receipt in it from 1984, presumably the last time anyone read On the Blanket by Tim Pat Coogan).
Anyways, this is a really ugly chapter in Irish history that is still very fresh and very painful, but I believe it is important for people (especially outside of the island) to understand because what happened to basically the whole world — colonization, violence, occupation, and cultural genocide at the hands of the British — happened in Ireland first. (Welsh people might disagree, but I’ll save that for another time). And in order to understand the current political climate of, well the whole world really, I think it’s important to know Irish history. With TV and music about this time being so popular right now (Say Nothing on Hulu and KNEECAP touring the world) I think it’s really important not to romanticize or fetishize this time, but to learn about it in order to contextualize the ongoing issues that working-class people in the North face and the resiliency with which so many show up for their communities and work to revitalize the Irish language.
So what were The Troubles?
Trying to simplify these three decades is really feckin’ hard, but I will do my best. Of course, you can always argue the conflict goes back further but The Troubles started as a civil rights movement of Catholics in Northern Ireland in 1969. Since the partition of Ireland in 1921, Catholics did not enjoy equal representation in government or access to decent paying jobs like their Protestant counterparts. There are many words: Loyalist, Unionist, Republican, Nationalist etc. but essentially, non-violent Catholic (and some Protestants in solidarity) protest was met with community and police violence in Northern Ireland. Catholic homes were burned as they were chased out of town by the thousands or murdered, leading to massive displacement and homelessness. The IRA was seen to have abandoned Catholics in the North, so a new faction called The Provisional IRA or “the Provos” were created as a Republican paramilitary to protect Catholics who were being persecuted by Loyalist mobs and police officers. Violence between loyalist and republican paramilitaries was met with the arrival of British soldiers to “keep the peace” as Northern Ireland was and still remains part of the United Kingdom.
The British soldiers, however, were not impartial and loyalists were clearly favored by law enforcement and the courts. So by the time the 1970s kicked off, you’ve got a three way(ish) war between two paramilitaries and the British troops with a whole bunch of working-class people just trying to survive in the middle while shootings, kidnappings, beatings, and bombings are happening all over Northern Ireland. Internment was introduced, allowing the government to detain people indefinitely without charge, special status was taken away from people previously considered political prisoners, car bombs, dirty protests, and hunger strikes continued to further the republican cause — a socialist and united Ireland out from under British occupation.
Loyalist, mostly Protestant residents in the North, however, did not want to join the Irish Republic, and wanted to stay a part of the United Kingdom. Everyone continued to fight. Many innocent people died in the crossfire. After 30+ years of violence, representatives from both paramilitaries and the British government were able to come to a deal, cease violence, and agree that if at some point in the future Northern Ireland wanted to unite with the Republic, it could. That agreement was called The Good Friday Agreement and was signed in 1998. Over 3,500 were killed in the 30 years of violence in the region.
Many people were relieved to see an end to the violence, though some Republicans were angry that Northern Ireland still remained part of the United Kingdom. This debate continues to this day. Also, forgive me for any errors and reduction. I am a noob at this history but just wanted to share what I’ve been learning. So, if you are interested in learning more about sectarian conflict —war—known as The Troubles, here are some places I have looked.
🎬 Say Nothing (Irish Historical Drama) ★★★★★
This series is based on the 2018 book of the same name written by Patrick Radden Keefe. I can understand why someone who grew up in the North wouldn’t want to watch this, but as a complete outsider I thought it was an excellent adaptation of the book, which weaves together the stories notable figures from Belfast trying to come to terms with the trauma left by the violence The Troubles.
Belfast was a hotbed of violence throughout The Troubles, and home to the key figures in Say Nothing: Brendan Hughes, Dolours and Marian Price as well as the McConville children whose mother was one of the nineteen people disappeared by the IRA in the 1970s.
The performances of Anthony Boyle (Brendan Hughes) and Lola Petticrew (Dolours Price) in particular were absolutely phenomenal in this series. It was their IFTA speeches at this year’s ceremony that convinced me to watch the series, as they both used their platform to spotlight working class people in the North who have borne the brunt of the trauma and continue to be underserved by their government when it comes to access to decent paying jobs and social services.
Watch Lola Petticrew’s IFTA Speech
Speak the truth, even if your voice shakes
Watch Anthony Boyle’s IFTA Speech
So classic West Belfast
Anthony Boyle and Lola Petticrew have been friends since they were eleven and their chemistry really comes across on screen. In reading about Anthony Boyle’s upbringing, I learned that he had a bone disease in his youth, and as a result spent a lot of time observing other children playing from his wheelchair. When he was able to finally walk, he was the first to join in the games and sports he wasn’t able to participate in as a child.
This energy may have gotten him into trouble in his teens, as Boyle admits that he was expelled from his school for “behavioral problems” that he guesses may have been related to his frustration with what he knows now is dyslexia. Funnily enough, Boyle appeared in the hilarious and award-winning “Derry Girls” as a the punky heartthrob David Donnelly, but was actually more of a James in real life.
“I ended up going to an all-girls school in Belfast, which was an experiment where they invited 15 of the worst-behaved local lads to attend. Luckily, they had an amazing drama department, and I would just spend all day there. My “dance first” energy was celebrated, and I loved it.”
Derry Girls (Comedy)
To end on a bit of a lighter note, watch a clip from the Derry Girls episode “Across the Barricade” where interfaith efforts attempt to bring Catholic and Protestant children together in 1990s Derry.
🎬 I, Dolours (Documentary, Irish History) ★★★★★
Interested in the Belfast Project and primary accounts of the time, I watched this documentary about Dolours Price, the IRA bomber who went on record to discuss her time in the IRA with various journalists in the last years of her life.
🎬 Kneecap (Biopic, Music) ★★★★★
Mostly in Irish, this film is the “mostly true story” of how the Belfast Hip-Hop trio Kneecap was formed. It’s hilarious. If you are not from the North of Ireland or haven’t studied its history, you may not understand all of the references or jokes, but it’s still great craic.
🎧The Troubles (History / Journalism)
Hosted by Oisin Feeney, this podcast gets better and better. He’s got enough of a name for himself now that he can interview guests, and those episodes are some of my favorites — especially his talk with Gearóid Ó Faoleán.
🎶Kneecap (Rap / HipHop)
If you were at Coachella weekend 1, you got Kneecap’s full set, but if you were watching the livestream you may have noticed that the feed was cut at a very interesting time.
Though a cut feed at Coachella may not seem sinister on first glance, it serves to suppress and censor support for human rights activists and those calling for an end to military occupation. We are witnessing draconian punishments for people speaking out against the genocide in Palestine (from ICE raids, to expulsions, to firings and potential deportations) and control of the narrative and manipulation of public opinion is what allows governments to continue their abuse of power. From the River to the Sea. Tiocfaidh ár lá!
Rap group Kneecap claims pro-Palestine messages were cut from its Coachella set | LA Times
Mo Chara addressed the crowd on Weekend 2: “The Irish are not so longer persecuted under the Brits, but we were never bombed under the fucking skies with nowhere to go. The Palestinians have nowhere to go. It’s their fucking home. And they’re bombing them from the skies. If you’re not calling it a genocide, what the fuck are you calling it?”
Since speaking out, their work visas have been revoked and their US representation dropped. The Irish government has descended into moral hysteria about the lads as a distraction from the real and actual genocide occurring in Palestine. Catch yourself on.
📚Trespasses by Louise Kennedy (Historical Fiction) ★★★★☆
Plot: A Catholic school teacher begins an affair with a Protestant barrister outside of Belfast in1975. 1974 was one of the most violent years of The Troubles and tensions were high to say the least. If you like character and setting driven novels, then you’ll like this. If you need a dramatic / dialogue driven plot, you may not love.
Thoughts: I am happy I waited until I learned more about The Troubles to read this book. There are things that would have gone way over my head a few months ago that I latched onto as some of my favorite bits a few weeks ago.
📚 Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe (Narrative Non-Fiction, Biography) ★★★★☆
“The idea for the book was: what if you looked at one murder, and you looked at both the victims and the perpetrators, saw the ripples of this one act, but tracked that in time, down the decades.”
- Patrick Radden Keefe speaking to Naben Ruthnum of Hazlitt
What I love about reading non-fiction, specifically historical non-fiction, is that you get to read so many pieces of writing that are in conversation with one another, which means you enter a discourse rich in conflict and contradiction. Did I learn a lot from Say Nothing? Yes. But it was just the beginning of an education, and through reading the articles and interviews that informed the book and critical responses to it, I am able to see its merits and its flaws more clearly.
Both Ed Moloney, who initially helped Patrick Radden Keefe a great deal with his research for Say Nothing, and Timothy O’Grady, a random Irish-American author I don’t really care about, have spoken out against the book and TV series. I’m inclined to entertain Moloney’s claim that Keefe benefitted a great deal from tireless research done by Irish journalists and interviewers without properly crediting their efforts (see Susan McKay’s piece on Jean McConville later on) and that his claim that Moloney redacted a name from a transcript is misleading. I do not agree with Timothy' O’Grady’s critique of Say Nothing as much because 1) he’s an American who was not present in Ireland during The Troubles so his opinion means less to me and 2) he gets so many really key facts wrong (probably because of this).
On the whole, Say Nothing did introduce many stories of The Troubles to an international audience, but I believe much of the truth of The Troubles will, despite American writers’ best efforts, remain in Northern Ireland to be preserved by and for the people’s whose story it is — at whatever time — to finally tell.
📰An American Reporter in Belfast: How a New Yorker Writer Got So Much Wrong in His Bestselling Book On The Troubles by Ed Moloney
Okay a little background on Ed Moloney will make the next bit make more sense. Basically, Ed Moloney was a journalist that covered The Troubles for the Irish Times and was subsequently involved with The Belfast Project and various documentaries and books about the time. He has accused several writers of plagiarism and lack of journalistic integrity as it relates to their portrayal of the time and handling of sources and has also been accused of violation of journalistic ethics when it comes to the structure of The Belfast Project: an oral history project undertaken by Boston College to record and preserve personal testimony of former loyalist and nationalist paramilitary.
Ed Moloney, the Irish journalist who directed the Belfast Project at Boston College (the foundation upon which so much of Say Nothing rests), has taken issue with many of Patrick Radden Keefe’s journalistic choices — chief among them being that Keefe named who he believes killed Jean McConville at the end of his book without any definitive proof and suggested that Ed Moloney himself agreed to it.
Moloney writes about his perspective on Say Nothing on his blog The Broken Elbow and in Counterpunch. The fallout of The Belfast Project is an interesting legal mess to follow (as are Ed Moloney’s dissertation-length contributions to the comment sections).
If you love messy, historical tea, then you might love the rabbit hole that Ed Moloney’s internet presence provides. Ed Moloney pulls no punches when it comes to stating his opinion of Keefe in the aftermath of the book’s publication and now the TV series’ production. (Marian Price has begun legal action against Disney+ for her portrayal in the series)
📰Diary | Jean McConville by Susan McKay ★★★★★
London Review of Books, Vol. 35 No. 24 · 19 December 2013
Wanting to know more about Jean McConville’s life, I read Susan McKay’s 2013 piece in the London Review of Books, which is the most comprehensive article I’ve seen on Jean McConville’s life before her murder in 1972. She met her husband while working for his mother when she was 14 and he was 26. As she was an Irish Protestant and he was a British Catholic, neither family approved of the union (though it doesn’t seem their twelve year age gap was a reason for reproach). She had her first child at 17 and would go on to have thirteen more pregnancies over the course of the next fifteen years.
Outsiders in East Belfast due to her husband’s Catholicism and outsiders in West Belfast due to his service in the British Army and her Protestant upbringing, Jean McConville seemed to work tirelessly in her attempts to provide a safe home for her children. Eventually moving to the Divis Flats (an IRA stronghold very close to Army barracks), Jean McConville fell into a deep, suicidal depression after losing her husband to lung cancer in 1971. A target of republican ostracism, the McConvilles suffered threats, taunts, and beatings at the hands of IRA members and affiliated families. The children’s lives only got worse after their mother’s abduction.
Rejected by both grandmothers and all once-friends of Jean’s, the children were placed into separate institutions by social services where many faced more trauma due to abuse and poor conditions. The siblings’ relationships with one another remain difficult to this day, and though Say Nothing intimates at who is ultimately responsible for their mother’s death, it is unlikely that they will ever be prosecuted for her murder (though former IRA leader Ivor Bell was prosecuted for aiding and abetting her abduction and murder, but was found not guilty while former Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams and three others were released without charge). Perhaps a bit of solace can be found in the discovery of Jean’s remains in 1999 and her subsequent burial next to her husband in Lisburn. The McConville children have voiced their disapproval of the Say Nothing TV series, believing it dredges up their past trauma as entertainment.
📰“REVIEW: ‘Say Nothing’ says a lot; none of it convincing” by Timothy O’Grady
Timothy O’Grady also did not like this series, but for different reasons. Timothy O’Grady is an Irish-American (an American who immigrated to Ireland and later received Irish citizenship, not the other way around). Though I respect his dislike for the series and agree that Patrick Radden Keefe naming Jean McConville’s murderer without any confirmed or corroborated evidence when the person is still alive is less than sound journalism, I don’t really agree with anything else O’Grady says. I dissect his review below.
“in the television series Price and Hughes are falsely shown to be speaking for all.”
He accuses PRK and the series of painting Brendan Hughes and Dolours Price’s viewpoints as indicative of the republican movement’s which is demonstrably false. It is clear in both the book and the series that both Hughes and Price were outliers among their republican peers after The Good Friday Agreement.
“Moloney blew the cover on the Boston College Project when Hughes and loyalist David Ervine unexpectedly died and he published a book called ‘Voices from the Grave’, based on their interview material there.”
Moloney contests this. According to him, Boston College needed publication to come from the archive in order to have someone to show for the amount of money they had put into the project and how much they had relied on reputation of the project to secure more archives. Moloney is the last person that wanted to blow anyone’s cover and has fought tooth and nail for his sources’ anonymity. Having been around academia myself, I know how quickly universities can turn on their own faculty, partners, and researchers when confronted with law suits or government interference. I am inclined to believe Moloney over the university’s PR, but that’s just me!
“It was clear by then that the Boston College Project had turned Hughes and Price, among others, unwittingly into police informers. In their earlier lives there had been nothing so damaging and hateful to them as touts, and they devoted their energies to locating and eliminating them.”
To call Brendan Hughes or Dolours Price police informers, even unwittingly, is ridiculous. The point of the archive was to preserve history and allow paramilitaries to share their stories without fear. The purpose was never to prosecute people for crimes. (Many people have clarified this repeatedly).
Ed Moloney, critical of Patrick Radden Keefe, stated in a recent article in Counterpunch that, “He omits entirely the reason for myself interviewing Dolours Price, which was to stop her from talking herself into serious trouble by opening her door to any reporter who came knocking, something she seemed intent on doing after a disastrous interview she gave to the Belfast daily, The Irish News.” Ed Moloney fiercely protected his sources and was hung out to dry by the university when the PSNI came knocking. The Belfast Project at Boston College did not turn anyone into informers, it tried to provide a safe place for ex-paramilitary to process and share their experience in a war so opaque that the international community refused to ever legitimize it as a war.
“Had the project been allowed to stand it would have given future scholars the impression that the only combatants were republicans and loyalists, with the uninterviewed British trying to keep the peace, and that resistance mortally wounds the psyche because your sacrifice is all for nothing as you get sold out by your leaders.”
Oh give me the biggest break here, O’Grady. Future scholars would not have had the impression that the only combatants were republicans and loyalists! Anyone who knows anything about Irish history knows that the British were never keeping the peace. The reason this archive existed, the reason it needed to be kept a secret, was because people involved in loyalist and republican paramilitaries cannot speak openly about their involvement in those organizations. Those organizations are considered terrorist organizations. Admitting to participation is grounds, even now, for prosecution. (It’s why Gerry Adams doesn’t admit to ever being in the IRA even though he was a leader of it!) British soldiers, legitimized by their government, have been able to give interviews and speak about their experience in the troubles since their deployment. British voices have shaped the narrative of The Troubles to the rest of the world since the violence began. Why on earth would this archive need to include interviews with British soldiers when there is so much testimony available already? It is insulting to any indigenous population oppressed by the British and to any historian — casual or academic — to claim that because British voices aren’t included in an archive, the archive is somehow misleading or illegitimate. Jaysus.
Also, resistance mortally wounding the psyche was not at all the message I walked away with from the book, the series, or any of the documentaries about Brendan Hughes or Dolours Price. Brendan Hughes wanted conditions for the poorest people in Northern Ireland to fundamentally change for the better, and he saw that happening through an armed, socialist revolution after nonviolent, civil disobedience was met with merciless suppression from loyalist paramilitaries and the state in the 1960s. Che Guevara was his hero. He read Paulo Freire. It wasn’t resistance that mortally wounded him; it was seeing years of armed struggle result in no material changes for the working class in Northern Ireland; a situation he blamed on politicians—ones who claimed republican values—who he saw use their power to enrich themselves while PTSD, addiction, suicide, and unemployment continued to ravage low income communities in the North.
“What the series doesn’t show is that before the 1981 hunger strike led by Bobby Sands, Hughes called a hunger strike which lasted fifty-three days but then cancelled it precipitously in confused circumstances, with calamitous effect for the prisoners’ campaign for political status; that ten men elected to go on hunger strike after him and died; or that he stayed with Adams and his wife when he came out of prison and that the movement found him a house and a job; or that Price absented herself from the IRA command structure in Armagh prison when she was repatriated after winning her hunger strike and was then released early under Royal Prerogative of Mercy.”
It’s just getting silly now, O’Grady. Brendan Hughes did not cancel the hunger strike precipitously. This has been refuted by Richard O’Rawe (who was on the blanket with Hughes and Sands in Long Kesh) in multiple interviews. I highly recommend listening to O’Rawe’s interview on The Troubles podcast, as he talks about the decision to end the hunger strike specifically. Essentially, Hughes, as the IRA Officer Commander inside prison walls, was tasked with choosing from many volunteers, who would go on hunger strike. Strikers had to be prepared to die, as they were going to be playing a very dangerous game of chicken with the British Crown who did not have a history of backing down easily. As the strike headed past fifty days, one of his men admitted that he wasn’t ready to die. Hughes, in term, made him a promise that he wouldn’t let him die. Hughes, upon hearing that this man had slipped into a coma, gave the order to feed him to save his life. Knowing the British were not going to deliver a deal in time, Hughes manufactured an end to the strike to uphold his promise. The prisoner’s political status had nothing to do with Hughes ending the strike.
The ten men that went on hunger strike afterwards did so despite Hughes disagreeing with the move, as Bobby Sands took over at OC. Richard O’Rawe2 has also gone on the record (literally wrote an entire book about it) to say that the British government had delivered a deal in ‘81 after only four strikers had died, which the remaining strikers were willing to accept, but IRA leaders on the outside did not approve of the deal. Six more men went on to die because of that decision, not because of Hughes.
If you are interested in the ‘81 Hunger Strikes, specifically the communication between the crown and the IRA, check out the hunger strike archive here
Of course Hughes stayed with Adams after he got out of prison; they were best friends.
The house that the IRA found Hughes was bugged by the British which is why Hughes refused to live there. According to interviews in Voices from the Grave, estate agent Joseph Fenton had set up safehouses for the IRA in Belfast, and Hughes was put in contact with Fenton who would set him up with a house to live in after prison, but Hughes was suspicious of the gesture. As it turned out, Fenton was working at the behest of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) who had set up surveillance to spy on the IRA. Fenton was executed by IRA internal security before Hughes could interview him, which led Hughes to believe that there was an informer higher up than Fenton who had him murdered to cover for himself. It was at this point that Hughes left Belfast. (Hughes’ suspicions would prove sound decades later with the news that Freddie Scappaticci, head of internal security for the IRA, was actually a double agent and Britain’s most valuable informer).
The job that Hughes worked after prison was the same exploitative “cowboy construction” work given to working class Catholics because they knew he wouldn’t be able to get any other job with his religious background and IRA reputation.
Dolours Price was released because she was dying of anorexia, and after spending her twenties in prison, she had grown disillusioned with armed struggle. This was literally in the book and the series; I do not know what O’Grady is talking about here.
“Nor do we see all the commemorations, anniversaries, orations, coffin-bearing, pamphlet-writing and numerous gestures public and private participated in and conducted by Adams on behalf of IRA veterans, or the daily work he continues to do to advance the united Ireland that Hughes and Price fought for. Both Hughes and Price talked and gave the names of comrades who were later arrested.”
A lot of Gerry’s public gestures are in both the book and the series. Again, the book and series do not need to highlight this very commonly known, very easily accessible information. Gerry Adams is incredibly famous for his politics! To say that Gerry Adams works daily for the united Ireland Hughes and Price fought for but to then label Hughes and Price as informers is so wild to me. A united Ireland may very well become a reality in the near future, and of course Gerry Adams had a massive role in bringing the IRA to the table for peace talks and steering Ireland in the direction it has gone in over the past twenty years. He is an integral part of ending the violence that Northern Ireland became so accustomed to. However, the island is a far cry from the socialist republic Hughes and Price went on hunger strike for: Northern Ireland reports the highest rates of poverty, low pay jobs, and suicide in the UK. Domestic violence reports are at a historic high and, according to Aiofe Moore’s testimony before Cambridge University Union, nearly thirty years after the Good Friday Agreement, “less than 8% of children in Northern Ireland are in integrated schools” that serve students from both Protestant and Catholic families.
These are the materials I have referenced the most to learn about The Troubles. This is only the tip of the iceberg of the region’s history, but if you are interested in learning about it, I highly recommend these sources. I will admit, they bias toward (Irish) republican perspectives. Sue me. (An Irish Republican is very different from an American Republican, and I am referring to the Irish kind here).
🎬 I, Dolours by Ed Moloney - d
🎬 Voices from the Grave by Ed Moloney
🎬 The Ballymurphy Massacre
📜The CAIN Archive - Ulster University’s collection of source material about the politics of The Troubles era
📜 The Blanket: A Journal of Protest and Dissent - a magazine by Anthony McIntyre with contributions by many former IRA members including Dolours Price, Brendan Hughes and Richard O’Rawe
📜Boston College Subpoena Wordpress - archives of the legal case and background
📰 Diary | Jean McConville by Susan McKay
📰 ‘The Rude March of History’, Irish Review 55 (2020)
a look back on the hunger strikes of 1980'/81
Dr. Margaret M. Scull’s CV (it’s just fucking cool)
💻 The Broken Elbow - Ed Moloney’s Blog
💻 The Pensive Quill, a blog and archive by Anthony McIntyre by James McAuley (Editor), Máire Braniff (Editor), Graham Spencer (Editor)
📚 Troubles of the Past?: History, Identity and Collective Memory in Northern Ireland
📚 Stakeknife’s Dirty War by Richard O’Rawe
📚 On the Blanket by Tim Pat Coogan
🎧 The Troubles
🎧 The Irish Passport
Alright, that’s all for me. See youse later! Free Palestine.
XO,
M
Dirty protests were led by republicans in Long Kesh and lasted for several years. They refused to wear the prisoner’s uniform, believing themselves to be political prisoners and not criminals. They advocated for the reinstatement of special status by wearing and sleeping on only a blanket. They refused showers. They refused to shave to brush their teeth. They then used their excrement to paint the walls, making the conditions so horrific that they had to be removed from their sells for power-washing sessions. Many men were “on the blanket” for years, until Bobby Sands went on hunger strike in 1981. The hunger strikes replaced the dirty protests.
A Bit on Richard O’Rawe:
Basically Richard O’Rawe grew up in a Republican family in West Belfast, which, if you aren’t familiar with Irish / Northern Irish politics, means that Richard’s family supported the idea of a united and sovereign Ireland and did not support the 1921 partition of Ireland that resulted in six Irish counties remaining a part of the United Kingdom. Where Richard O’Rawe was born (West Belfast and The Falls Road specifically) is also historically a predominantly Catholic neighborhood and became a republican (and IRA) stronghold during The Troubles beginning in 1969. Richard O’Rawe then
Joined the IRA
Was imprisoned in Long Kesh
joined the Blanket and Dirty Protests
witnessed the Hunger Strikes of ‘80 and ‘81 and served as head of communications in the prison
learned Gaeilge while imprisoned to communicate with other republicans
left the IRA when his wife gave him an ultimatum of her and his daughter or the republican movement
later denounced armed resistance and became a writer
spoke on the record with Anthony McIntyre as part of The Belfast Project, burned his tape when it was returned to him after the famous PSNI subpoenas
is the author of Blanketmen: An Untold Story of the H-block Hunger Strike where he claims the hunger strikes continued past the point of prisoners wanting to continue it because of an outside leadership decision
has written loads more books — the most recent being Stakeknife's Dirty War: The Inside Story of Scappaticci, the IRA's Nutting Squad and the British Spooks Who Ran the War
participated in “Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland” documentary (highly recommend from previous newsletter)
Further Reading About Richard O’Rawe:
Interview with LA Review of Books, 2023 (about Stakeknife’s Dirty War)
The Venetian Vase Interview, 2022 (a lot of biography but also discussion of his book)