Irish Working Class | Seattle Book Mama

One of the most hotly contested political issues for English speaking people during the 1970s and 1980s was the battle taking place in the North of Ireland between its original inhabitants and the British government. This reviewer was deeply interested in the conflict while it took place, and so when I saw this book, The Next One is for You: A True Story of Guns, Country, and the IRA’s Secret Army, by Ali Watkins,my heart began to pound before I’d read a single page. My thanks go to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

The fight between the working-class citizens of Belfast and the middle-class Protestants, who worked hand in glove with the British Crown, has roots that are centuries deep. Watkins reviews these without going into the weeds, and leads us up to modern times succinctly. I appreciate her fair discussion of the manner in which the Irish Republican Army, or IRA, developed and burgeoned. (U.S. readers new to the topic should know that ‘Republican’ was part of the name due to a desire for the Irish Northern counties to be restored to the Republic of Ireland, not because of any political similarities to the Republican party in the U.S.A.) Initially the movement was modeled on the Civil Rights Movement of the United States, with large, peaceful marches; there were signs, songs and speeches given. People packed lunches and took their children with them. But these protests were violently repulsed, with police and the military surrounding the participants so that there was no escape, and then shooting them like wooden ducks in an arcade.

Poverty was widespread in Belfast and its surrounding areas, with few jobs, and miserable living conditions in government subsidized apartments. “A Catholic surname got you passed over for jobs, if you even got the chance to apply.” There was no Bill of Rights, and when armed forces chose to search someone’s home, they announced themselves by kicking the door in. The situation was intolerable. And so, when peaceful protest was no longer possible, there were two choices remaining: armed struggle or defeat. “The goal: to expel the British from Northern Ireland, whatever the cost.”

Because such a large portion of the U.S. population is of Irish descent, these circumstances were of great interest in America. When the IRA broke off from the more traditional, less militant (and ineffective) organization that already existed, it wasn’t long before many Americans wanted to help in some way. Two organizations developed in the States, and this is much of what Watkins discusses. Clan na Gael was an Irish solidarity organization that had existed in the U.S. since 1867. It became an important element in the Irish struggle, organizing politically, and raising funds. But in order to gain widespread appeal, there needed to be an additional organization that existed for those that wanted to contribute financially to the poor of Belfast without also supporting the armed fight. In 1969, NORAID was born.

A disclosure: this reviewer was a great supporter of both organizations during that time. In fact, I once won a raffle from the Clan, which netted me a wheelbarrow of whiskey! Since I don’t drink, I took one bottle for my spouse and donated the rest back to the Clan. I never joined the Clan, primarily because I wasn’t asked.

Watkins discusses the history of both organizations as well as the key individuals that brought them about. She does a magnificent job and brings a treasure trove of outstanding documentation, right up until nearly the end of the book, at which point she inexplicably lapses into the journo-speak of the period, blathering about “senseless violence” in an abrupt shift that made my jaw drop. She had already explained, very capably, just why a nonviolent struggle was completely impossible. The devastating numbers of Irish youth that died during this campaign is indeed heartbreaking, but at the same time, just what else were they supposed to do? No foreign government was even remotely interested in assisting them; the British government was a key ally of the U.S. government, and had something of a headlock on its protectorates. And while I respect that the author had to conclude the book in one way or another, just admitting that there was no clear solution would have been vastly better than parroting American mainstream media of the time period. What the what?

Nevertheless, those with an interest in this struggle should get this book and read it. Just bear the ending with a grain of salt.

The Irish have fought against oppressive British rule for centuries, but for many the most interesting—and for some of us, emotionally charged—period is that known as The Troubles, which unfolded in 1969 as Irish youth, inspired by the Cuban Revolution and the Civil Rights movement in the United States, sought to carve out some rights for working people living in the North of Ireland and concluded in 1997 following the ceasefire agreement struck between Sinn Fein, which was then the political arm of the revolutionary Irish Republican Army, and the British government. Keefe’s intense, compelling narrative is the most readable that I’ve seen, and the revelations it holds affected me more deeply than any literature I’ve read since I began reviewing books five years ago. Thanks go to Net Galley and Doubleday for the review copy, which I read free and early. You can buy it tomorrow, February 26, 2019.

The history unfolds in three sections and is bookended by the quest of Jean McConville’s family to find her body and if possible, to learn who killed her and why. It’s an interesting choice given the number of dead the conflict produced, many of whom have never been found and identified, but the mystery and the ambiguity of her activities—was she merely a mother of ten as her children say, or working quietly for the IRA, or a double agent working for the British—is emblematic of the tension and secrecy maintained on both sides. We begin with Jean’s abduction in the first section, titled “The Clear, Clean, Sheer Thing,” move on to the meatiest and most tragic part of the struggle, “Human Sacrifice,” in which young hunger strikers and many others die, and conclude with “A Reckoning,” in which the ceasefire is signed and many Irish people that were involved in the guerrilla war are held accountable—and as usual, the British are not. The entire thing is carefully documented.

Keefe notes that during the 1980s there was a good deal of “ambient” support for the IRA in the US, and this I know to be true. I participated in fund raisers for humanitarian aid to the six counties during that time, and I attended a presentation by Bernadette Devlin, an iconic leader of the struggle who for some reason barely bears mention in this work. It’s my only complaint about the book.

The middle section left me shaking an in tears. I had not read Brendan Hughes’s claim about the deaths of the hunger strikers and the role almost certainly played by Gerry Adams, and it was a week before I could pick the book up again. I am still raw from it. I can recall seeing headlines in 1981 when Bobby Sands died, and at the time I was a practicing Catholic. When I saw the news, I picked up the phone and requested a special mass be held for him at my parish in the Midwestern city where I lived then. The parish priest thought it was a lovely idea but he needed the approval of the bishop. The bishop squashed it like it was a bug. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere.

The final section discusses The Belfast Project, a series of interviews done under the promise that they would not see the light of day until the subjects were dead and buried. The names of the interviewees were coded as a further layer of protection, and the whole thing was stored in the vaults of the Burns Library at Boston College, where it was believed that the British government would never lay hands on it. Never say never.

This book is a masterpiece. The writer is a journalist on the staff of The New Yorker, and this project took four years of steady effort by the author and his assistants, and a good deal of travel as well. The documentation is meticulous. Nevertheless, there are a number of details that are impossible to nail down, and the book’s title gives the reason for this. The only way to be sure a secret remains a secret is to keep your mouth shut, and that’s precisely what most of those involved in the struggle have done. A great many details that could doubtless condemn large numbers of working class Irish to lengthy prison sentences are buried with the bones of those that could have told. And although the author doesn’t explicitly say so, it’s obvious from the fate of the interview tapes that there is never any other guarantee of confidentiality; the code of silence still held to by the survivors of The Troubles has been all the protection that Irish participants have ever had. The vow to keep information private was decimated time and time again by the horrifying physical and psychological torture on the innocent and culpable alike by British jailers, none of whom will ever be brought to justice.

Those that didn’t follow this fight in real time will likely not be as shattered by the things this book holds as I was. The author paints a vivid scenario—imagine coming home and noting that there’s a British soldier in uniform, gun drawn, in the rhododendrons in the front yard, for example—and peppers the account with well-chosen quotes. The slow deaths of Irish youth held in virtual dungeons are hard to read about, but then, war stories usually are. It’s fascinating stuff, though but necessarily material for bedtime, depending on your level of sensitivity.

Highly recommended.