My Life in the IRA:: The Border Campaign

by Mick Ryan

Former IRA Director of Operations Mick Ryan's memoir of growing up in Dublin's East Wall in the 1940s and 1950s and his subsequent involvement in the border campaign. My Life in the IRA is a story of suffering, hardship, frustration and constant disappointment that will leave readers wondering why anyone would become involved in such a patently hopeless cause and, even more so, why these volunteers persisted when defeat loomed from an early stage. Mick and his comrades regarded the objectives of 1916 not as pious aspirations but as a bequest from previous generations of revolutionaries that provided them with the opportunity to give meaning to their own lives. Mick had a 'deep sense of regret' that he had not been born early enough to participate in the Easter Rising and the subsequent struggle for independence. For him and his comrades to give up would have been a form of self-betrayal akin to the loss of a vocation among his more religiously inclined contemporaries.

Genres: Ireland, History, Nonfiction, Biography

282 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 5, 2018

Reviews

[Hanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tiocfaidh ár lá

[Conor Smyth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting snapshot of Ireland in the 50's & 60's and fascinating insight into the border campaign. Being from a border county myself, it was interesting to hear about the lives of the families in the billets and the culture of support. Wildly frustrating to read about the inefficiency of the operations (the section on the Bazaookas is almost unreadable). The book also doesn't shy away from the pettiness, ego and ignorance within the ranks of the IRA. While the book is obviously not anti-republican in anyway, it does not hold the men of this group to be shining heroes of freedom. While there is bravery and companionship described, it also paints them as flawed, regularly scared, constantly ineffective lads whose romantic ideas of freeing Ireland from the yoke of British imperialism in a month or two, crumble due to internal failures and external failures. It tries to be honest about the fiasco of a campaign and given how biased any content surrounding Irish republicanism post the War of Independence is, it takes a fair stab at it.

[Izzy · Rating 4 out of 5]

reading about how their optimism left them as time went on is so sad

[Antony Mumford · Rating 1 out of 5]

A bunch of Brownies would have been deadlier, and braver.

A tale of incompetence, imbecility and cowardly viciousness. A tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury but signifying nothing. If this was my story I’d be ashamed to relate plans to murder, in cold blood and from the darkness, with always the first thought being how I would run away. Did the author never once think he ought to grow up and stop playing soldiers? The moment when in the unoccupied house yards from a roadblock after the botched attack at Crossmaglen the “experienced lads” light up their fags sums up this bunch of half-wits.