jslarkin

The 1970s was an era of bell-bottoms, selfies with your mate in a photo booth, and the music. A decade I believe, that retains a part of the teenager left behind before they changed. Maybe the one you still see in your thoughts and dreams that pins a pop-poster above your bed, washes their hair in Vosene, smokes number six, and carries a zippo in their pocket from Joe Kavanagh’s, as they make their way to their local youth club, a sanctuary from the madness of those times, and where Puppy Love began for many teenagers.

The Unpatriot Game series will be for some an emotional journey down memory lane, and it’s as much a Passage of Life tale as it is a Coming of Age story, and Love Story. A story that takes place in a War within a War, using an early power struggle between two IRA’s groups then, revealing the depth of informers within those groups. The characters are I believe representative of the time, good and bad, with corrupt cops and corrupt republicans, and while a good number of characters will die in the early books of the series, that is necessary to the evolvement of a few characters, and certainly the main one, Tim Regan.

As a writer, I’m always thinking and writing ideas down that I feel may be helpful to me in the days ahead. Ideas that may help to shape a plot, a character, develop a new character, or lead to another novel. let alone a new chapter.

I learned most of my lessons for life in Belfast, just a kid when I became a republican, yet spending enough time there to gather the experiences and knowledge necessary that give an unmistakable authenticity to The Unpatriot Game, and while the series is critical of republicanism, it is essentially aimed at those who sold it out, double agents, the real informers, and who were in those senior roles as far back as the 1970s.

Truth is that the man I now am, is not the boy or teenager I was back then, and I thank God, that I did remove my green tinted sunglasses a long time ago helping me see with clarity, the liars and deceivers within republicanism pretending to be patriotic. Pretend republicans, that were and still are, agent provacateurs/british agents, most of them belonging to the Provos.

Some of whom conspired with the British to get rid of people through two Hunger strikes, and planned operations of appeasement to those who were seen as dissenting, and a well-known fact that people like Brendan Hughes, a man I had the utmost respect for; Danny McCann, and Mairead Farrell, were seen as a threat to the waht was to become a british, bend-the knee, paramilitary group, and criminal cartel who people still refer to as the Provos.

You only have to look around you since ‘1998’ to see the benefits made by certain cartel individuals through the business enterprises they became engaged in, real estate, clubs, pubs, taxi-depots, and overseas property now renting out. However, helping to set-up people for death in Hunger Strikes, showed their committment to selling out Irish reunification, proving their worth to the british government, and eager then to help out with the ambushes of volunteers in Gibraltar and Loughgall. The Provos/Shame Feign, are the greatest ever betrayers of an ideology set in stone, and a sacred proclamation.

Literature, as the great WB Yeats, once said, is personal, and I can vouch for that having spent twelve years now on The Unpatriot Game series, many nights trawling the depths of my mind while writing, opening up a part of my mind that was closed, and the more I wrote, the more emerged, and for a time the nightmares returned, and the tears were many. There are of course still people out there who are idelogical republicans who still believe in Irish unity, in a freedom without interference from foreign government, and enemies of Ireland, both domestic and foreign, and that’s their right.

But it isn’t republicanism that defines the patriot, it’s nationalism and all we hold dear that is our traditions, culture, ancient heritage, and a proclamation, an oath that should be claimed and adhered to by every nationalist in order to fulfil the goal of an ancient brotherhood. To fight for the retainment of those things, and to rid our country of all its enemies.

As I said earlier, I learned most of my lessons for life in Belfast, just a kid when I became a republican, yet spending enough time there to gather the experiences and knowledge necessary that give an unmistakable authenticity to The Unpatriot Game Series. That’s how I now describe the rebellion I participated in, and one that began as a patriot game, and a patriotic duty every nationalist is born into, but either rejects the role, or takes that path, and those who read the Unpatriot Game series, will realise how critical it is of republicanism, and I make no apologies for that.

I earned the right a long time ago, to say, and write what I like, about republicanism, and whilst the series is essentially aimed at the double agents and real informers as far back as the 1970s, also aimed at some of those who were in senior roles in the 1970s, and through lies, deceit, and underhandedness, helped get rid of the genuine, principled patriots, and changed republicanism to gangsterism. Provo/Shame Feign, aren’t the only ones, but they are the main ones, and everytime I visit Milltown cemetery, shed more than a tear for those who continue to used as propaganda to make the bastards money.