Danny Morrison’s “West Belfast”: a coming of age novel set against the backdrop of a city in conflict

I grew up hearing Danny Morrison’s name on the radio at breakfast time as Sinn Féin’s Director of Publicity. More recently I’ve known him as chair of Féile an Phobail and spotted his attendance at many of the festival’s events in St Mary’s and the annual West Belfast Talks Back debate. But I’d never realised he was an author until his book (re)launch earlier this year at the end of January. Spread over a decade, West Belfast is a coming …

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“delivering a shared future [for] those who issued death threats [and] attacked home of colleagues”

An interesting debate on Sunday Sequence this morning. Just after the nine o’clock news, William Crawley chaired a discussion between Naomi Long, Alex Kane and Danny Morrison. [Debate starts 34 minutes into the programme.] Points raised about the kind of parties that did not emerge following the Good Friday Agreement, whether there was a lack of political imagination, what moving on can feel like. The conversation finished with Naomi Long being asked about the personal impact of the last week. …

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If history is war by other means, is truth the first casulty?

There’s a fascinating exchange on Will Crawley’s Sunday Sequence programme yesterday (begins about half way through). It talks about the Boston College oral history archive (which is still ongoing). Danny Morrison just before the end notes that history, so far as he is concerned is ‘war but by other means’. If this year’s state papers anything to go by that may be a battle Sinn Fein must brace itself for on a yearly basis. As luck would have it, history …

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Boston College and the ongoing battle over a disturbing past…

As the legal process continues the disturbance of the past continues apace… Liam Clarke has an interesting piece from yesterday’s Sunday Times up on Nuzhound today. In it points out that there is a fascinating clash between history and the law. In particular hightlights the current case in which the PSNI has a US Federal subpoena out to try and get material information on given by Dolours Price: Price has told me she will not make a statement or speak …

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“We on the outside finessed…”

In today’s Belfast Telegraph, Liam Clarke observes Danny Morrison’s admission that “we on the outside finessed the sequence of events for the sake of morale” at the end of the 1980 hunger strike. This is a major admission, as it changes the whole narrative that had been pushed for years, and also removes the main defence that the Morrison narrative had employed as to why O’Rawe’s version of events was wrong. Previously, it had been argued that the reason why Thatcher’s July 1981 offer was not accepted was because of British duplicity over the deal secured during the 1980 hunger strike. With Morrison’s admission that no such deal existed, and that the British reneging was a false claim, that argument falls apart.

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The “Top Secret” Press Release

One has to admire the sheer chutzpah of Brendan McFarlane. He was in Saturday’s Irish News trying to pass off a 1981 press release as a secret comm reflecting the personal viewpoint of Richard O’Rawe. Mr McFarlane said yesterday he would break five years of silence by producing secret IRA comms written by Mr O’Rawe during the Hunger Strike in which he accused the British government of trying to prolong it. The first first two lines of the original comm read: …

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Will anyone here object….

With continuing speculation on a visit by the British Queen to Ireland one person is ahead of the game. Danny Morrison has been talking to the BBC about struggling through the crowds at Glastonbury and being rewarded with a courteous chat from Prince Charles. When we got up it was Prince Charles… He was the only person out of quarter of a million wearing a shirt and tie. He asked myself and my brother Ciaran did we actually camp out …

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