Danny Morrison

His uncles had been jailed for their part in the IRA's Northern Campaign in the 1940s; one of his uncles was Harry White, a prominent IRA member from a previous generation.

Daniel Gerard Morrison (born 9 January 1953 ) is an Irish former Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteer, author and activist who played a crucial role in public events during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

An Irish republican, Morrison is also a former Sinn Féin publicity director and editor of Republican News and An Phoblacht.

He is the secretary of the Bobby Sands Trust and current chairman of Féile an Phobail, the largest community arts festival in Ireland.

Morrison was born in staunchly Irish nationalist Andersonstown, Belfast, on 9 January 1953, to Daniel and Susan Morrison.

His father worked as a painter at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in East Belfast.

The Morrisons were a strongly republican family originally from Massereene Street in West Belfast.

Morrison joined Sinn Féin in 1966 and helped to organise 50th anniversary commemorations of the Easter Rising in Belfast.

At this time, he later recalled, "as far as we were concerned, there was absolutely no chance of the IRA appearing again. They were something in history books".

After the 1969 Northern Ireland riots, in which nationalist areas of Belfast were attacked and burned, he joined the newly formed Provisional IRA.

He believed that, "the IRA had been deliberately run down, so that when August 1969 came, there was little or no defence [of nationalist areas]'...[so] a new IRA was built to ensure that nationalists were never left defenceless again".

With the rise of Adams' faction in the republican movement in the late 1970s, Morrison succeed Seán Ó Brádaigh as Director of Publicity for Sinn Féin.

After this, he was engaged in clandestine republican activities, but as late as 1971, was still attending Belfast College of Business Studies and editing a student magazine there.

Morrison was interned in Long Kesh in 1972.

Morrison's talents for writing and publicity were quickly recognised within the republican movement and after his release in 1975, Billy McKee, IRA O/C for Belfast, appointed him editor of Republican News.

In this journal, he criticised many long-standing policies of the movement, especially the Éire Nua programme which advocated a federal united Ireland with autonomy for Ulster.

At this time, he became associated with a grouping of young, left-wing Belfast based republicans, led by Gerry Adams, who wanted to change the strategy, tactics and leadership of the IRA and Sinn Féin.

In particular, Morrison believed the IRA's 1975 ceasefire was 'a disaster'.

He was especially critical of IRA killings of other republicans and Protestant civilians.

Morrison was director of publicity for Sinn Féin from 1979 until 1990, when he was charged with false imprisonment, membership of the IRA and conspiracy to murder a double agent in the IRA, Sandy Lynch.

During the 1981 Irish hunger strike, Morrison acted as spokesman for the IRA hunger strikers' leader Bobby Sands, who was elected to the British Parliament on an Anti H-Block platform.

According to an intermediary between the IRA leadership and the British government, "Danny Morrison, Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams were the only individuals of sufficient clout to offer the 'persuasion, education and knowledge' to push through any deal" between the strikers and British officials.

Blanket protester Richard O'Rawe and others have claimed that Adams, McGuinness and Morrison withheld an offer and subsequent offers from the British which could have ended the hunger strike after the first four deaths, although this is fiercely disputed by Morrison and Sinn Féin.

At the 1981 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis, Morrison made a famous speech in which he called for the party's constitution to be changed.

He said: "Who here really believes we can win the war through the ballot box? But will anyone here object if, with a ballot paper in one hand and an Armalite in this hand, we take power in Ireland?"

It is from this speech that the famous term "Armalite and ballot box strategy" derived.

The term described the two-pronged approach of the Provisional IRA and Sinn Féin as it sought to advance the republican cause.

In reply, Sinn Féin President Ruairí Ó Brádaigh argued that the Ard Fheis should not "swap a slogan for a policy", referring to Éire Nua.

In early 1982, loyalist paramilitaries unsuccessfully attempted to kill Morrison and his first wife, opening fire on them as they walked from a local bar.

Later, at the Ard Fheis in 1982, Morrison famously said of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, "She's the biggest bastard we have ever known."

Morrison was elected as a Sinn Féin Member for Mid Ulster of a short-lived Northern Ireland Assembly from 1982 to 1986.

Morrison, along with Owen Carron, was arrested on 21 January 1982 whilst attempting to enter the United States illegally from Canada by car.

Two Canadian supporters also faced charges for trying to smuggle the men in.

After spending a week in a federal jail, Morrison was deported and later both men were convicted on a charge of making false statements to US immigration officials.

He also stood for the Mid Ulster Westminster seat in 1983 and 1986.

He also stood unsuccessfully for the European Parliament in 1984, receiving 91,476 votes and again in 1989.

He was sentenced to eight years in prison but was released in 1995.

The conviction was referred back to the Court of Appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission and the convictions of Morrison and the other defendants were overturned in 2008.

According to BBC News, Lord Chief Justice Sir Brian Kerr "found the convictions to be unsafe and quashed them."

Unusually, the reason was given in a confidential annex, to which Morrison and the others were not allowed access.