Directed by Kari Skogland by John Gibney 50 Dead Men Walking is a cinematic depiction of the career of the IRA informer Martin McGartland. The actual details of McGartland’s life and career need not detain us; suffice it to say that his former colleagues in the IRA tried to kill him, thereby vouching for … Read more
Had anyone been of a mind to survey the attitude of Northern Ireland’s Catholic population on the evening of Sunday 8 August 1971, they would have discovered an agitated people alienated from the ruling Stormont regime. A similar study carried out seven days later would have found a community still alienated from Stormont but now … Read more
Operation Demetrius (or internment, as it was known) began at 4.30am on Monday 9 August 1971, when the British Army began arresting those identified by the RUC. Of the 342 men arrested, 116 were released within 48 hours. Some 226 men were detained: 86 from Belfast, 60 from County Derry, 20 from the Newry area, … Read more
Our march was based upon the Selma–Montgomery ‘freedom march’ in Alabama in 1965, and it is instructive to examine the similarities and the contrasts. The distance between the two US cities, at 55 miles, was quite a bit shorter than ours. The march, like ours, was organised by a student group, the Student Non-Violent Co-ordinating … Read more
The January 1969 Belfast to Derry march was organised by People’s Democracy, a civil rights group that had come into existence only a few months earlier. We were dismayed at the poor turnout and were outnumbered by Loyalist counter-demonstrators. International parallels As the four-day march got under way, prisoner 46664 on Robben Island, an obscure … Read more