A book telling the story of “Free Derry” has won a prestigious literary award.
The Guildhall Press publication “Free Derry: Protest and Resistance” by local author by local author Adrian Kerr has been awarded this year’s McCrea Literary Award from the University of Ulster.
Derived from the McCrea Bequest formerly held by Magee University College, the prize is available biennially for creative writing, in the field of poetry, essay, drama, the novel or the humanities in general.
“Free Derry – Protest and Resistance” is the story of how residents of a working-class community, oppressed by a sectarian unionist government since the 1920s, decided to take control of their own destiny and took to the streets to demand change.
It tells of how their peaceful protests in the late 1960s were met with brutal force and how this led ultimately to the longest and most violent period in the protracted history of conflict between Ireland and Britain.
It is an inspiring story of how a community united challenged their oppressors, shut them out from behind makeshift barricades, and contributed to the downfall of the disgraced Stormont regime.
It is a heart-rending story of how a government’s refusal to meet peaceful demands for equality inevitably led to widespread social upheaval and the deaths of thousands in the years that followed.
It is the definitive account of an historic era and momentous events – the civil rights movement, Battle of the Bogside, Free Derry, internment, Bloody Sunday – that changed the face of Derry forever and reverberated around the world.
Local journalist and author Eamonn McCann said it was “the first book to focus on Free Derry in a way that lends it the centrality and significance which history demands it be accorded.”
