Thu, Jan 5, 2012
Rose Dugdale has led an extraordinary life and her unexpected involvement in the IRA and subsequent imprisonment became headline news all around the world in the 1970s. In this programme she tells the story of how and why she went from being a member of an aristocratic English family to becoming involved in the republican movement in Ireland. In 1974 she was incarcerated, while pregnant, for a botched bombing attempt in Strabane and an audacious art theft in Co. Wicklow. She gave birth in prison and later become one of the first republican prisoners to marry while in prison. She was released in 1980 and lives in Dublin.
2012
Josephine Hayden served four and a half years in prison in Limerick for transporting arms and ammunition for the Continuity IRA. She refused to support the Northern Ireland peace process and, despite suffering two heart attacks while in jail, did not take early release under the Good Friday Agreement as many other prisoners did. As a result she became a symbol of opposition to the Agreement. Now the General Secretary of Republican Sinn Féin, she has remained a hard-line republican who believes the armed struggle is not over yet and that the country will never really be at peace until Ireland is united.
2012
Pamela Kane grew up in a republican family in north Dublin. She recalls the formative impact of seeing how the nationalist population was treated when on childhood family holidays in her father's homeland of Tyrone. She became actively involved in the republican movement during the 1980s hunger strikes in Northern Ireland. At this time, Sinn Féin members were banned from the airwaves because of state censorship under Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act. To protest this, Kane and others scaled RTÉ's TV mast in a daring publicity stunt. She was arrested but released on probation. In 1990 she was arrested during a botched bank robbery in County Wexford, along with five others and was sentenced to ten years, part of which was served in the high-security Limerick Prison. She was released in 1995.
2012
Martina Anderson was born into a large republican family in the Bogside, Co Derry. In this programme she speaks of an early memory offering water and vinegar to tear gas victims during the Northern Ireland riots. She joined the IRA at an early age and at 18 was charged with possession of a firearm and causing an explosion. She managed to slip into the crowds of people at the courthouse on her sentence day and flee. Anderson was arrested again in 1985 in Glasgow, along with four others, and was held for just over a year in the all-male Brixton prison. The group was sentenced to life at the Old Bailey, before being moved to dire conditions at Durham prison, where they campaigned to be moved to Maghaberry Prison near Lisburn in Northern Ireland. Here, Anderson completed a degree in Social Science, receiving First Class Honours, before her release in 1998. Since then, Martina Anderson has occupied the post of Director of Unionist Engagement for Sinn Féin and was a Member of the European Parliament for Northern Ireland.
2012
Born in Belfast in 1957, Rosaleen McCorley left school at 17 to work in the Northern Ireland Housing Executive where she worked until the time of her arrest in 1990. She was sentenced to 66 years for the attempted murder of an army officer and possession of explosives. She obtained two degrees and a postgraduate diploma while in prison. Here she expresses how the other female prisoners greatly affected her - 'I often found myself feeling greatly humbled by their stories and the sacrifices they made in their personal lives for the struggle, particularly those women who were mothers.' After serving 9 years, McCorley was released, the first republican woman freed under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. Rosaleen McCorley was elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly as a member of Sinn Féin between 2012 and 2016.
2012
Roseleen Walsh was born in 1950 into a Belfast, republican family and she joined Cumann na mBan as a young woman. Walsh was interned in Armagh Prison in 1973 for just over a year, where she was afforded certain 'freedoms' as internees had political status at that time. Here, her writing flourished and she covered her white cell walls with poetry. Even though it was forbidden to write on cell walls, her officers never painted over it and would often come in to read her work. Walsh was actively involved with Sinn Féin in the lead up to the Peace Process, which she fully supported. She lives with her family in Belfast and has written 35 plays, 33 of which have been produced.