 | Thisbiography of a living personneeds additionalcitations forverification. Please help by addingreliable sources.Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced orpoorly sourcedmust be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentiallylibelous. Find sources: "Danny Morrison" Irish republican – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(August 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Danny Morrison | |
|---|---|
 Morrison in 2012 | |
| Born | Daniel Gerard Morrison (1953-01-09)9 January 1953 (age 72) Belfast, Northern Ireland |
| Occupation | Author Politician Political Activist |
| Nationality | Irish |
| Notable works | Hunger Strike (editor) |
| Website | |
| dannymorrison | |
Daniel Gerard Morrison (born 9 January 1953[1]) is an Irish formerProvisional Irish Republican Army (IRA)volunteer, author and activist who played a crucial role in public events duringthe Troubles inNorthern Ireland. AnIrish republican, Morrison is also a formerSinn Féin publicity director and editor ofRepublican News andAn Phoblacht.[2] He is the secretary of theBobby Sands Trust and current chairman ofFéile an Phobail, the largest community arts festival in Ireland.
Morrison was born in staunchlyIrish nationalistAndersonstown,Belfast, on 9 January 1953, to Daniel and Susan Morrison. His father worked as a painter at theHarland & Wolff shipyard in East Belfast. The Morrisons were a stronglyrepublican family originally from Massereene Street in West Belfast. His uncles had been jailed for their part in theIRA'sNorthern Campaign in the 1940s; one of his uncles wasHarry White, a prominent IRA member from a previous generation. Morrison joinedSinn Féin in 1966 and helped to organise 50th anniversary commemorations of theEaster Rising in Belfast. At this time, he later recalled, "as far as we were concerned, there was absolutely no chance of the IRA appearing again. They were something in history books".
After the1969 Northern Ireland riots, in which nationalist areas of Belfast were attacked and burned, he joined the newly formedProvisional IRA. He believed that "the IRA had been deliberately run down, so that when August 1969 came, there was little or no defence [of nationalist areas]'...[so] a new IRA was built to ensure that nationalists were never left defenceless again". After this, he was engaged in clandestine republican activities, but as late as 1971, was still attending Belfast College of Business Studies and editing a student magazine there. Morrison wasinterned inLong Kesh in 1972.
Morrison's talents for writing and publicity were quickly recognised within therepublican movement and after his release in 1975,Billy McKee, IRA O/C for Belfast, appointed him editor ofRepublican News. In this journal, he criticised many long-standing policies of the movement, especially theÉire Nua programme which advocated a federalunited Ireland with autonomy forUlster. At this time, he became associated with a grouping of young, left-wing Belfast based republicans, led byGerry Adams, who wanted to change the strategy, tactics and leadership of the IRA and Sinn Féin. In particular, Morrison believed the IRA's 1975 ceasefire was 'a disaster'. He was especially critical of IRA killings of other republicans and Protestant civilians.[citation needed]
With the rise of Adams' faction in the republican movement in the late 1970s, Morrison succeededSeán Ó Brádaigh as Director of Publicity for Sinn Féin. During the1981 Irish hunger strike, Morrison acted as spokesman for the IRA hunger strikers' leaderBobby Sands,[3] who was elected to the British Parliament on anAnti H-Block platform. According to an intermediary between the IRA leadership and the British government, "Danny Morrison, Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams were the only individuals of sufficient clout to offer the 'persuasion, education and knowledge' to push through any deal" between the strikers and British officials.[4] Blanket protesterRichard O'Rawe and others have claimed that Adams, McGuinness and Morrison withheld an offer and subsequent offers from the British which could have ended the hunger strike after the first four deaths,[5] although this is fiercely disputed by Morrison and Sinn Féin.
At the 1981 Sinn FéinArd Fheis, Morrison made a famous speech in which he called for the party's constitution to be changed. He said: "Who here really believes we can win the war through the ballot box? But will anyone here object if, with a ballot paper in one hand and anArmalite in this hand, we take power in Ireland?"[6] It is from this speech that the term "Armalite and ballot box strategy" derived. The term described the two-pronged approach of the Provisional IRA and Sinn Féin as it sought to advance the republican cause.[7] In reply, Sinn Féin PresidentRuairí Ó Brádaigh argued that the Ard Fheis should not "swap a slogan for a policy", referring toÉire Nua. Later, at the Ard Fheis in 1982, Morrison said of British Prime MinisterMargaret Thatcher, "She's the biggest bastard we have ever known."[8]
Morrison was elected as a Sinn Féin Member forMid Ulster of a short-lived Northern Ireland Assembly from 1982 to 1986. He also stood unsuccessfully for theEuropean Parliament in 1984, receiving 91,476 votes and again in 1989. He also stood for theMid Ulster Westminster seat in 1983 and 1986. Morrison, along withOwen Carron, was arrested on 21 January 1982 whilst attempting to enter the United States illegally from Canada by car. Two Canadian supporters also faced charges for trying to smuggle the men in.[9] After spending a week in a federal jail, Morrison was deported and later both men were convicted on a charge of making false statements to US immigration officials.[10][11]
Morrison was director of publicity for Sinn Féin from 1979 until 1990,[12] when he was charged with false imprisonment, membership of the IRA and conspiracy to murder adouble agent in the IRA, Sandy Lynch.[13] He was sentenced to eight years in prison but was released in 1995.[14]
The conviction was referred back to theCourt of Appeal by theCriminal Cases Review Commission and the convictions of Morrison and the other defendants were overturned in 2008. According toBBC News, Lord Chief JusticeSir Brian Kerr found the convictions to be unsafe and quashed them. Unusually, the reason was given in a confidentialannex, to which Morrison and the others were not allowed access. He claimed that this was because the report contained classified details about double agents working in the IRA and his arrest was a "set-up".[15]
Since 1989, Morrison has published several novels and plays on themes relating to republicanism and events in the modern history of Belfast. His play,The Wrong Man, opened in London in 2005.[16] It is based on his 1997 book of the same name and deals with the career of an IRA man who is suspected by his colleagues of working for thepolice.
His first novel,West Belfast, has been described as "significant for its honest portrayal of a conflict which has been written on extensively by outsiders but rarely by the people involved...This is perhaps the first time that a modern Irish Republican has attempted to show in novel form what his community has gone through under British oppression".[17] His second book,On The Back of the Swallow, deals with homosexual relationships, loss and the taboo around such relationships during the conflict in Northern Ireland and the treatment of gay men by the RUC. His latest original work,Rebel Columns, was published in 2004 followed byHunger Strike, which features contributions, poems and stories fromChristy Moore andUlick O'Connor, with an international view of the hunger strikes from an Iranian man originally published inThe Blanket.[citation needed]
The Belfast Telegraph reviewer wrote that his third book,The Wrong Man (1997), "should come to be regarded as one of the most important books of the Troubles", while theSunday Times called it "a powerful and complex piece of storytelling". The book is discussed in theOxford Companion to Irish Literature, which describes it as "a powerful evocation of betrayal, deceit and guilt".[18][19] It was adapted into a play that was produced in London in 2005.[18]
His fourth book,Then the Walls Came Down: A Prison Journal (1999), was described in theIrish Times as "remarkable as a human document" and compared it to Brendan Behan'sBorstal Boy.[20] Another review in the same newspaper called it "one of the most important books to emerge from the conflict in Northern Ireland...A vividly humane account of life in prison.[20]The Observer commented that in "post-ceasefire Northern Ireland...the new thinking has come from those involved in the republican war. Danny Morrison's prison memoirs are an honest study of a man seeking fresh solutions to the stalemate the Provos found themselves in at the beginning of the Nineties."[21]The Irish News said it was "invaluable as a rare look at prisoners as human beings."[22]
All the Dead Voices (2002) is a memoir. It was followed byRebel Columns (2004), a collection of articles. Morrison editedHunger Strike: Reflections on the 1981 Hunger Strike (2007), which features poems, stories, and reflections on the strike by contributors such asTony Benn,Edna O'Brien andChristy Moore. The publisher describes the book as follows: "Well-known novelists and poets, former prisoners and activists reflect upon the deaths of the ten republican hunger strikers who died in protest to gain political prisoner status from the British government in Northern Ireland. Their deaths proved a turning point in relations between Britain and Ireland in the early 1980s. Most of the pieces here were specifically commissioned, and while they differ greatly, what they have in common is a sense of the intensity of the experience of the hunger strike at the time, and the intensity of the impression made by it even now."[23]
Morrison lives in West Belfast with his Canadian-born wife, Leslie; he has two sons from his first marriage.[citation needed]
TheBobby Sands Trust was formed after the 1981 Hunger Strike where ten republican prisoners died due to their hunger strike against the UK Government. The legal firm Madden & Finucane continues to act for the Trust whose original members were Gerry Adams, Danny Morrison, Tom Hartley, Tom Cahill, Marie Moore and Danny Devenny. For a time Sands's two sisters, Marcella and Bernadette, were members of the Trust. Current members are Gerry Adams, Danny Morrison, Tom Hartley, Jim Gibney, Brendan 'Bik' McFarlane, Sile Darragh, Caral Ni Chuilin, and Peter Madden.[citation needed]
The BST claims to hold copyright to all the written works of Bobby Sands. The family of Sands has been critical of the BST and they have called for it to disband.[24] Journalist and author Ed Moloney republished an article he had written for theSunday Tribune highlighting that Bobby Sands' next of kin wanted to take legal action against the BST.[25] Moloney, with ex-IRA prisoner and journalist Anthony McIntyre, published an open letter to the BST which detailed their challenge to the legality of the trust.[26]
| Northern Ireland Assembly (1982) | ||
|---|---|---|
| New assembly | MPA forMid-Ulster 1982–1986 | Assembly abolished |
| Media offices | ||
| Preceded by | Editor ofRepublican News 1975–1979 | Succeeded by Merged with An Phoblacht |
| Preceded by | Editor ofAn Phoblacht 1979–1982 | Succeeded by Mick Timothy |
| Party political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Sinn Féin Director of Publicity 1979–1990 | Succeeded by |
