A former IRA gunman and hunger striker tells his story
Weekend Read: One night 40 years ago Laurence McKeown ambushed an RUC Land Rover. He was jailed for 16 years. Now a playwright, he looks back on his life's journey
IRA hunger striker: Laurence McKeown. Photograph: Dara Mac Donaill
IRA hunger striker: Laurence McKeown with his parents as a child. Photograph courtesy of the Gallery of Photography, Temple Bar, Dublin
Inside the Maze: Laurence McKeown with fellow republicans in the H-block exercise yard in 1982. Photograph courtesy of the Gallery of Photography, Temple Bar, Dublin
“Our revenge will be the laughter of our children”: the funeral of the hunger striker Patsy O’Hara, in 1981. Photograph: Chip Hires/Gamma-Rapho via Getty
“Our revenge will be the laughter of our children”: Laurence McKeown with his daughters in the yard of the Maze Prison hospital when they were younger. Photograph courtesy of the Gallery of Photography, Temple Bar, Dublin
From his hiding place in the hedge Laurence McKeown could clearly hear the conversation between the two bingo women. It was a summer’s night in July 1976, and McKeown had walked a short distance from his parents’ home in the countryside near Randalstown, Co Antrim, to ambush a police vehicle.
“I was lying in a hedge with an M1 Garand rifle – a very slow rifle – with a clip of eight bullets, waiting for the Land Rover. I had been there a couple of other nights, but nothing happened,” McKeown says. “I heard two women passing by, coming from the bingo in the local [Ancient Order of Hibernians] hall. They were having a conversation about the bingo, and I remember thinking, That’s normal life, and you have a chance of being part of that normal life; instead you are waiting in this hedge with a rifle for a police Land Rover to come along. It seemed like some form of madness. But that was my choice.”