Former Derry Hunger Striker Raymond McCartney to reflect on turbulent life and times
The veteran republican and former Sinn Féin MLA will discuss his life and political career in the latest Gasyard’s ‘Did Ye Hear About?’ lecture series
Derry’s Raymond McCartney has been front and centre of the Troubles here, He was one of the key leaders of the hunger strikes in the 1980s when he went 53 days without food.
On his release from Long Kesh in 1994 he went into politics and served as a Sinn Fein MLA for the Foyle constituency from 2004 to 2020.
McCartney’s life, in many ways, mirrors much of the Troubles here.
Born in 1954 in a city which had witnessed much of the worst excesses of the old Stormont regime – discrimination in housing and jobs, widespread gerrymandering etc – the suppressed anger locally was to prove the catalyst for the outrage that exploded in the late 1960’s when Catholics in their thousands took to the streets to protest at the blatant inequalities.
Like quite a few others of that era McCartney joined the IRA in protest at what he regarded as not only the heavy-handed treatment meted out to those civil rights marchers but also the whole concept of a Northern Ireland state that seemed to be based on the hegemony of unionism in perpetuity.
He was originally convicted in 1979 of murder, along with other related offences connected to IRA activity during the Troubles and served 15 years. Those convictions were quashed in 2007.
Next Tuesday at the Gasyard in the Bogside Raymond McCartney will reflect on his turbulent life and times when he talks to former Derry Journal editor, Pat McArt in the penultimate episode in the current Did Ye Hear About? series of talks.
The talks are described as ‘myth busting’ in that the aid is to explain why so many people acted like they did, made the decisions that they did, and the consequences resulting from those decisions.
The event organiser, Chris McDonagh stated: ‘These talks have proved ground-breaking in that we have had people from the Orange Order, the Bands Forum, the Dublin government, the Muslim community come in and myth-bust so many misconceptions.
‘It has been a learning experience for all of us. We have a tendency to live in in our own silos but if we really want to understand what is going on around us we can only reach out and learn from people like these.’
Chris added: ‘Please come along next Tuesday to the Gasyard. And we would put out an appeal to all local secondary schools to send along their GCSE and A Level Politics students for what should be a very interesting event. The big event gets underway at 2.00pm and refreshments will be served.’