A NEW book by the son of a Bloody Sunday victim details his journey from his father’s death to imprisonment in Crumlin Road Jail as an IRA bomber.
Tony Doherty’s second book, “The Dead Beside” - which was launched at the weekend- details the years after his father, Paddy was shot dead on Bloody Sunday. The Derry man’s death as he crawled to safety at Joseph Place in the city’s Bogside became one of the most enduring images of the day after his final moments of life were caught by French photographer, Gilles Peress.
The Dead Beside US follows his first publication, This Man’s Wee Boy which culminated in his father’s funeral in 1972.
The book takes Doherty from his home in Brandywell through his life as a member of the IRA junior wing, Na Fianna and eventually to membership of the Provisional IRA. It details his first effort to join the Provos which was turned down when he cited his father’s death as his reason.
Published by Mercier Press, Doherty recalls planting a firebomb in a furniture store as an IRA bomber before getting the bus back home. However, the incident led to his arrest and four years in prison before he returned to his home city. Doherty was instrumental in the 1990s campaign for a new inquiry into Bloody Sunday which led to the establishment of the Saville Tribunal.
His new book culminates in his first days in custody after his arrest under the Prevention of Terrorism Act in 1981. He recalls his thoughts after hearing he could face ten years in prison.
“As I lay in the echoing basement of Belfast’s crumbling prison, the silence broken only by an occasional jangle of keys slapping off a screw’s thigh, I measured my life in years for the first time ... It was exactly nine years and twenty-nine days since me da had been killed by a British soldier. I wondered if his executioner was living or dead, and if he’d killed again since then,” he wrote.
