Eamonn McCann

Eamonn McCann is a Derry journalist, political activist, author, and former elected representative whose writing joins memoir to arguments about class and state power. He participated in Northern Ireland's civil rights movement and witnessed the events that made Derry central to international understanding of the Troubles. War and an Irish Town begins with his experience growing up Catholic in the city, then follows the civil rights campaign as it moves from demands for equal citizenship toward direct conflict with British authority. The first edition appeared in 1974; revisions followed in 1980 and for Pluto Press in 1993, when McCann added an introduction covering the intervening thirteen years. Its analysis is openly political, but its force also comes from concrete recollection and attention to how public struggle entered streets, workplaces, and families. War and an Irish Town therefore serves as both participant testimony and a sustained socialist interpretation of Northern Ireland, written by someone positioned inside the events rather than observing them at a distance.