By Matt Ellis |
In O’Rawe’s
Northern Heist (Melville House, Apr.), James “Ructions” O’Hare and other former Irish Republican Army paramilitaries plan to rob the biggest bank in Belfast.
Where did you get the idea for
Northern Heist?
I always thought there was a great novel in the Northern Bank robbery in Belfast in 2004. It almost ended the Good Friday Agreement peace process, because the British and Irish governments said the IRA did it. I have no absolute proof, but the IRA was the only outfit in Ireland who had the expertise to pull off something so intricate. I thought it was a work of art.
A bullet hole from 1916 on the O Connell monument in Dublin
“There are positive and negative reactions to the word ‘fenian’. Usually it’s negative if it’s followed by the word ‘bastard’.” We are standing in the basement of the International bar in Wicklow Street in Dublin – myself, Jamie the photographer and a group of representatives of Failte Ireland, the Irish tourist board, listening to our host, Lorcan Collins, author, editor and founder of the 1916 Rebellion Walking Tour. He is setting the scene for the next hour and a half: a walk through the streets of the Irish capital in the footsteps of the rebels who rose on Easter 1916.
Ireland s Gerry Adams tells jailed Catalan leaders: You know we support you
El Nacional
Updated Wednesday, 23 December 2020. 21:24
Reading time: 2 minutes
Former Sinn Féin leader
Gerry Adams has had an online meeting with two of the jailed Catalan pro-independence leaders: ERC party leader
Oriol Junqueras and former Catalan foreign minister
Raül Romeva, who spoke to the Irish peacemaker from Lledoners prison in Catalonia where they are incarcerated for their part in the 2017 independence process. Adams reiterated his support for the Catalan struggle. You know you have our support. The links between the struggles of the Catalan and Irish people go back a long way, said the retired Irish politician. I myself was imprisoned for Christmas, and it s not a pleasant place to be. But
The H-Blocks at Long Kesh where the 1980/81 hunger strikes took place.
Despite being on hunger strike for 53 days, Raymond McCartney was still on his feet when he received word that the prison fast was at an end,
writes Sean McLaughlin.
The Derry man, like his fellow hunger strikers, believed an offer of compromise had been made by the British government on the prisoners’ demands for special category status.
News of the protest’s end, says the retired Sinn Féin politician, was, initially, met with a mixture of relief, confusion, excitement and, later, frustration, disillusionment and anger.
1980. Raymond McCartney during the hunger strike.
On August 7, 1994, three weeks before the IRA ceasefire, in the picturesque Tyrone townland of Brackagh South near Creggan, horror visited the O Hagan family.
Kathleen O Hagan (38) was home alone with her five young boys. Seven months pregnant, she stayed home while her husband Paddy went out to a function. The family had been concerned that Paddy and Kathleen s home, an isolated bungalow, might be attacked by loyalists, as other republican homes had been.
Roseann Mallon (78) had been killed weeks earlier just outside Dungannon and mother of two Theresa Clinton had been killed in April in Belfast. Republican homes were being targeted and the new reality was that family members were being killed, not just the usually male republican activists.