The Lying Game

I WAS born in 1954 in Tralee, County Kerry, in the Irish Republic. It was and still is an area with a strong republican tradition. After the treaty and the formation of the Irish Free State in 1922 the IRA and the new Free State Army fought a bitter civil war. That war was conducted with great savagery in Kerry. Less than three miles from my parents’ house, eight IRA prisoners were blown to pieces by government forces in an officially sanctioned reprisal for the earlier IRA murder of a Free State Army officer.

Civil war bitterness was still very much alive in parts of Kerry in the 1950s. My father’s side of the family was steeped in that tradition. He and his brother, active IRA men, were interned without trial in the Curragh military camp in the early 1940s. My father, several aunts, and other family members have remained lifelong activists and supporters of the republican movement. That was the tradition and the family background into which I was born.

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About the Author

Sean O'Callaghan

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I WAS born in 1954 in Tralee, County Kerry, in the Irish Republic. It was and still is an area with a strong republican tradition. After the treaty and the formation of the Irish Free State in 1922 the IRA and the new Free State Army fought a bitter civil war. That war was conducted with great savagery in Kerry. Less than three miles from my parents’ house, eight IRA prisoners were blown to pieces by government forces in an officially sanctioned reprisal for the earlier IRA murder of a Free State Army officer.

Civil war bitterness was still very much alive in parts of Kerry in the 1950s. My father’s side of the family was steeped in that tradition. He and his brother, active IRA men, were interned without trial in the Curragh military camp in the early 1940s. My father, several aunts, and other family members have remained lifelong activists and supporters of the republican movement. That was the tradition and the family background into which I was born.