SEARC'S WEB GUIDE - Brendan McCaffrey (born 1951)

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Searc's Web Guide to 20th Century Ireland - Brendan McCaffrey (born 1951)

Brendan McCaffrey was born in Roslea, County Fermanagh. He was educated at St. Tiernan's Christian Brothers School, Clones and at Enniskillen Technical College where he studied joinery. McCaffrey joined the Republican movement in the early 1970's. He was arrested in Enniskillen in 1973 and charged with possession of explosives and causing explosions. McCaffrey refused to recognise the court and was sentenced to seven years in Long Kesh. He was released in 1977 and in the following year he moved to County Monaghan.
In 1983 McCaffrey was arrested and charged with possession of firearms and hijacking vehicles on the Cavan/Fermanagh border. He was convicted on 'eye identification' [identification solely by a police officer's word] in the Irish Republic and was sentenced to ten years imprisonment in Portlaoise Prison. While in prison McCaffrey completed a degree with the Open University, composed poetry and exhibited paintings in the National College of Art and Design and in the Annual National Portrait Awards in Dublin. McCaffrey was released from Portlaoise Prison in April, 1991.©

Untamed Spirit
Continuity and the anti-social state
Blocks out the sunlight in darkened cells
Barbed wire encircled steel bars
Protecting their status quo.

Agents of change, conveyor-belted,
By pomp and ceremony
To cells that restrict and confine
Body, but, not mind.

Foreign structure, allowing no change
Thinking we'll conform and accept your ways
Yet freedom rests on their barbed wire
With spirit that's free, never to be tamed.

Butterfly, living but a day
Free; not worried by time
Will rest in the palm
Of you, who leave no time
For conformity by compulsion.
© Searc's Web Guide 1997-2008

20th Century Ireland (1947-2000) History Index
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