When Danny Morrison wrote the letters which constitute this book, he was in prison in the early 90s, serving a sentence for false imprisonment and conspiracy to murder a British informer in the IRA. He was sentenced to eight years but released after five. (In 2008 his conviction was quashed.)
The book consists of letters from prison, almost all of them to his girlfriend, a Canadian woman living in Belfast. But these are love letters that range well beyond expressions of affection.
Like any good writer, Morrison is alive to everything around him. He often begins a letter with a description of what he’s doing (“Drinking black coffee and eating a currant-square bun”). From there he’ll move to comment on events inside the prison (removal to a different wing, new arrivals in the prison, the difficulties some prisoners have in filling a single page of a letter). If being in prison depressed him he disguises it well. If he writes about the future and being free, it’s to console the woman to whom he is writing.
Events from the armed conflict beyond the prison walls are reported and analysed. The impact of the hunger strike, the execution of eight IRA men at Loughgall, Bloody Sunday, and how these events propelled volunteers into the IRA. Looking to a resolution of the armed conflict, would compromise by the IRA be seen as weakness? Are the British to be trusted? Significantly, he doesn’t write abusively of any of his opponents/enemies – with one exception: Margaret Thatcher. When word comes through that she’s been ousted from power, “I grinned like a Cheshire cat”.
Anyone looking for a confessions-of-a-hard-man will be frustrated. Morrison is keenly aware of the continuing violence: he’ll recall an incident where a father was shot dead by loyalists as he knelt on the living-room floor saying the rosary. But a few paragraphs later he’ll muse over Flaubert’s writing style in Madame Bovary.
Even allowing for the fact that imprisonment leaves you a lot of time for reading, Morrison’s appetite for literature is ravenous: Ovid’s love poems, biographies of Schubert and Mahler, Russian authors, an Anthony Burgess autobiography. (The Burgess autobiography didn’t impress him, but he finds room to repeat Burgess’s description of Groucho Marx when told of a man who loves his wife so much they have ten children: “I love my cigar, but I take it out sometimes”.) There are references to OU courses he’s taking ( “I got 95 out of 100 for my Art essay’) short stories he has written, a novel that’s being published, his plans for writing in the future.
Music is prominent as well. He has access to a radio and often uses the lyrics of a pop song to relate them to his own situation – “The clouds will soon roll by”. As with literature, he ranges widely. There’s pop music (the book’s title is from a song by The Traveling Wilburys), old standards – but also classical. He has a picture of Schubert up in his cell and is amused as fellow-prisoners try to guess which great republican it is. Schubert is clearly a classical favourite: he loves Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony but “the greatest is Number 9, the last movement of which gives you a glimpse of heaven”.
The book is subtitled “A Jail Journal”, which suggests details of grim incarceration. Morrison does describe what life is like but always with an optimism and a capacity to enjoy prison’s small consolations. A lot of his positive tone is doubtless to boost the morale of his girl-friend, but you can see why he was known as “Smiler”.
The book has four sections: 1990, 1991, 1992 and an Epilogue. I don’t want to do a spoiler but the relationship with his girl-friend isn’t always smooth, and the Epilogue provides a twist you probably weren’t expecting.
In Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, a character is asked about a diary she keeps. “It is simply a very young girl’s record of her own thoughts and impressions, and consequently meant for publication”. Then the Walls Came Down is exactly the opposite: reading it feels like spying on a relationship, a cause, an institution, a young man’s ricocheting thoughts and feelings.
I don’t think I’ve ever read a more successful fusing of politics, prison and love. If you have a Kindle, download Then The Walls Came Down. You’ll be glad you did.
“the execution of eight IRA men at Loughgall, Bloody ”
Theyweren’t executed. They were lawfully killed while engaged in a criminal violent attack.
Sorry, MT – I disagree. The British Army does not have the role of judge, jury and executioner. …That’s to say, by law it doesn’t but of course in fact it has been all three on numerous occasions, this one included.
“Sorry, MT – I disagree.”
Best take it up with the European Court of Human Rights, then.
“The British Army does not have the role of judge, jury and executioner. …”
I know.
“That’s to say, by law it doesn’t but of course in fact it has been all three on numerous occasions, this one included.”
I’m afraid you’re wrong. The Loughgall killings were lawful. The challenge to the ECHtR resulted only in a finding that the investigations and not the killings themselves breached human rights. This is a matter of public record. I should have thought a paid commentator such as yourself should be aware of this.
Why are you quoting British law in Ireland, MT?
“Why are you quoting British law in Ireland, MT?”
I’m not.
Yes you are. ………. These men were lawfully killed …… Whose law? God’s law? Chinese law? Irish law? Or perhaps British law for the colonies?
“Yes you are. ………. These men were lawfully killed …… Whose law? God’s law? Chinese law? Irish law? Or perhaps British law for the colonies?”
Customary law as understood in every state,, supported by European human rights law.
No such thing as customary law,old chap and which law is the European law (has Britain signed?) supporting? Keep squirming.
“No such thing as customary law,old chap”
Yes there is.
“and which law is the European law (has Britain signed?) supporting?”
If you actually read what I wrote you’ll see reference to the European Convention on Human Rights.
“Keep squirming”
I haven’t begun so it’s not possible to keep doing so.
“The British army does not have the role of judge jury and executioner”….in response to an article about Morrison who was serving a prison sentence for the “false imprisonment and conspiracy to murder a British informer in the IRA”, where Morrison was attempting to act as all three!
Doublethink 101, folks.
“where Morrison was attempting to act as all three!
Doublethink 101, folks.”
Well, certainly uninformed 101, jb. The charge against Morrison as I noted was quashed and he received considerable compensation. Except you’re planning to add to that compensation, you’d be well advised to avoid unsubstantiated statements…
Its a fair cop. I retract the statement. I am sure he is a good boy, always says his prayers, etc.
but what about all the other IRA kangaroo courts and executions. what is your view on them?
Had just came off a masochistic spell of Sunday Morning Shoneen Mass Media coming down, Esteemed Blogmeister, before reading your review of Danny Morrison’s:
– ‘And then the Walls came Down’.
And came down with a dose of wondering what sort of review it would get in the DOBland media. From listening to RTE firing their de rigeur round of pellets-designed-for-pullets at the (gulp) Shinners (!) over the Wood Pellet Scam.
To a ‘Security Consultant’ on Newstalk fm prissily dissing the Shinners in the South by dinging his dong with all the long ago enthusiasm of a medieval media-type bell-ringer in the time of AIG-sponsored plague :
-Unclean ! Unclean ! Unclean !
Declan Power (for it is he !) is, seemingly, a former career soldier (with the REAL Oglaigh na hEireann, aka, Free Southern Stateen Army) and is a regular rather than an irregular hurler on the ditch on anti-pariah dog progs on the DOBland media.
Hurler, is right.
In a Midlands voice, redolent more of elocution lessons rather than elections, a Bog of Allen baritone which is powerfully fruity and thus ideally suited to hurling humdingers at truthingess, he intoned:
-Sinn Fein have a long way to go before they become a grown-up party, they still have a lot of house-cleaning to do. There is still about them, a Whiff of Cordite.
A WOC ?
-A Whiff of Cordite.
(Security, erm, consultants find it a sine qua non commission to whack the unclean with the old WOC phrase).
OH, DANNY, WHY?
What, for the Prison Journal of Danny Morrison
Can one expect from the media of the garrison?
Does not matter if
It’s good,b or indiff
Odds are more on a malediction than an orison.