'I was born in a united Ireland, I want to die in a united Ireland.'
Born in Belfast in 1920, Joe Cahill has been an IRA man motivated by this ambition all his life. Here Cahill gives his full and frank story.
Category: Biography/Memoir, History, Northern Ireland, Politics
'I was born in a united Ireland, I want to die in a united Ireland.'
Born in Belfast in 1920, Joe Cahill has been an IRA man motivated by this ambition all his life. IRA activists rarely speak about their lives or their organisation, but here Cahill gives his full and frank story, his viewpoint, his experiences -- from Northern Irish prison cells of the 1940s, on a death sentence, to Washington when the Good Friday Agreement was being negotiated.
He tells of the visit he made to Colonel Gaddafi to arrange for arms and ammunition, and the fateful voyage of the Claudia; Bloody Sunday and the burning of the British Embassy in Dublin; the high-drama helicopter escape of IRA prisoners from Portlaoise Jail.
This is the story of an extraordinary journey, Cahill's own life mirroring the growth, changes and development of the republican movement as a whole through more than sixty years of intense involvement.
Brendan Anderson was born in Belfast in December 1945. He has worked in print for thirty-five years – first as a compositor, then as a proofreader, a typesetter and page make-up artist. Selected by an enlightened editor at the Irish News to be trained as a journalist in 1989, he became senior reporter and security writer for that paper within two years. He has covered all the big stories of the Irish troubles, and interviewed and questioned all of the major players. He has had unrivalled contacts with republicans and loyalists, and is frequently interviewed as a security analyst on Irish and British television and radio, and consulted by British newspapers. Seconded to the University of Ulster, Belfast, to lecture in Practical Newspaper Journalism in 1998, he joined the staff of the university as an associate lecturer in Journalism in 1999. He is a freelance writer for a United States weekly newspaper. He is a father of three, and grandfather of ten, and lives in Belfast.
Joe Cahill was a lifelong and high-ranking member of the IRA.
'One of the most accurate and authoritative accounts of the history of the Republican Movement ever published.'
'An intriguing story of a fascinating life'
'Tremendously valuable for the insights it provides into the thinking of perhaps the most respected living republican'
'Fascinating profile of a unique rebel'
