There were three separate launches for The Comrades, a book written by former friends of the twelve hunger strikers who died between (1974 & 1981), with an introduction by the former leader of the women in Armagh Jail, Síle Darragh. The launches were in Belfast, South Armagh and South Derry.

The book can be got from An Fhuiseog, Belfast, and will shortly also be available from the Sinn Fein Bookshop, Dublin.

The former prisoners at the launch of The Comrades in Ti Chulainn, Mullaghbawn, last Wednesday, 15 September: (L-to-R) Conor Murphy, Dan Daly, surviving hunger strikers Paddy Quinn & Laurence McKeown, Padraic Wilson, Gerry Adams, Richard McAuley, Eileen Morgan, Danny Morrison (editor) & Brendan Bik McFarlane

 

At the Gullaghduff launch in South Derry, Benny McElwee (L) and his sister Pauline (R), siblings of Thomas McElwee, with Sally Hurson (Carrickmore), representing Martin Hurson’s family

 

Colm Scullion (L) who wrote the chapter on his schoolfriend and comrade, Thomas McElwee, with Bik McFarlane, OC of the blanket men in 1981