Laurence McKeown

Laurence McKeown (born 1956) is an Irish author, playwright, screenwriter, and former volunteer in the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) who took part in the 1981 Irish hunger strike.

Background and IRA activity McKeown was born in 1956 in Randalstown, County Antrim, Northern Ireland. He attended St Malachy's College, Belfast. As a teenager, McKeown had ambitions of becoming an architect and started working in the offices of a quantity surveyor when aged 15. When aged 16 he joined the IRA. He said of joining the IRA: "There was a lot of soul-searching. It's not like joining a state army, where someone signs their name, gets a uniform and rifle, and the chaplain blesses them."

Imprisonment and hunger strike McKeown took part in the blanket protest at the Maze Prison upon arrival in 1977 with the aim of resecuring Special Category Status for convicted paramilitary prisoners, which had been lost in 1975.

The strike ended before any prisoners had died and without political status being secured, and a second hunger strike began on 1 March 1981 led by Bobby Sands, the IRA's former Officer Commanding in the prison. McKeown joined the strike on 29 June, after Sands and three other prisoners had died. Following the deaths of six other prisoners, McKeown's family authorised medical intervention to save his life on 6 September, the 70th day of his hunger strike.

"You're very sleepy and very, very tired and you're sort of nodding off to sleep but something's telling you to keep waking up. This was the thing that kept everybody going through the hunger strike in trying to live or last out as long as possible. I knew death was close but I wasn't afraid to die – and it wasn't any sort of courageous or glorious thing. I think death would have been a release. You can never feel that way again. It's not like tiredness. It's an absolute, total, mental and physical exhaustion. It's literally like slipping into death."

Freedom McKeown was released in 1992. Before his release, he completed a bachelor's degree in social science from the Open University while in prison, and subsequently obtained a PhD in Sociology from Queen's University Belfast. In the mid-1990s he co-founded the Belfast Film Festival, In 2006 he appeared in a two-part documentary titled Hunger Strike, which was shown on RTÉ to mark the 25th anniversary of the 1981 hunger strike. McKeown also works as a Development Officer for Coiste na nIarchimí, an umbrella organisation of republican ex-prisoners groups.

Writing McKeown and Brian Campbell co-wrote a film about the 1981 hunger strike called H3 which was directed by Les Blair, and premiered in cinemas on 28 September 2001. Before the death of Campbell in 2005, he and McKeown also wrote two plays together, The Laughter of Our Children which debuted in 2001, and A Cold House which debuted in 2003. McKeown's first solo play, The Official Version, debuted on 18 September 2006. He has continued to write drama, including Two Roads West which is a site-specific play set in a Belfast black cab, where the audience enters the cab with the two actors. The play was revived with an altered script for a Derry location as part of Derry City of Culture in 2013.

In 2016, McKeown's play Green and Blue premiered at the Girdwood Community Hub, Belfast as part of the Belfast International Festival. Produced by Kabosh, Green and Blue dramatises the realities faced by, and unlikely relationship between, a Garda officer and an RUC officer. It was inspired by the Voices From the Vault oral history project which recorded first-hand accounts of Garda Síochána and Royal Ulster Constabulary experiences during the Troubles.

Selected Playography The Laughter of Our Children (2001, co-written with Brian Campbell) A Cold House (2003, co-written with Brian Campbell) The West Awakes (2010) Green and Blue (2016)

Publications Nor Meekly Serve My Time: The H-Block Struggle 1976–1981 (1994, co-written with Brian Campbell and Felim O'Hagan) . Out Of Time: Irish Republican Prisoners, Long Kesh, 1972–2000 (2001) . Threads (2019) Time Shadows : A Prison Memoir (2021) And Flowers Grew Up Through the Concrete: a prison memoir 1981-1992 (2025)