Author John Wight joins Andrew Milne to chat about his new book Jungle Days Celtic in the 1980’s. John hails from Edinburgh and as a young bhoy he found sanctuary in Celtic Football Club.
He chats about the time spend on buses travels near and far to see Celtic in the 1980’s in Maggie Thatcher’s Britain, Unemployment, The Hunger Strikes and the Miner Strike.
Coronation Street’s Aaron McCusker joined More than 90 Minutes Editor Andrew Milne during the recent international break for a catch up and a chat. Aaron was a regular guest when the fanzine hosted Celtic AM in Malones Glasgow before Celtic home games.
The Bhoys chat about Aaron’s life on stage and screen and all things Celtic.
While much has been written on the experience of republican prisoners during the conflict from 1969 onwards there has been comparatively less attention paid to writing produced by the prisoners themselves. There was a vibrant culture of education and debate inside the cages of Long Kesh, but while we have many second-hand accounts of this, relatively few copies of journals produced by the prisoners have survived.
Luckily, Paddy McMenamin not only edited one of these journals for a period, but managed, with the help of his family, to smuggle several issues out. Reproduced here, they provide a fascinating snapshot of the debates taking place amongst just one group of Provisional IRA prisoners in cages 10/18 between 1974 & 1976. There is politics of course, global and local, but also history, culture, sport and craic.
Despite the official narrative of the time, it is clear these young men were neither ‘mindless terrorists’ nor ‘criminals’! The author has done all those interested in our history a service by keeping the journals safe. His commentary reminds us not only of the horror and tragedy of the time, but also that these young men were grappling with how to make sense of the conflict they had been thrown into. This book is an important contribution to understanding the politics of modern republicanism.
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