Lighting candles

the long version

When Manny McDonnell was 12 he awoke to discover British troops surrounding his home in the toughest area of trouble-torn Belfast. Encouraged by a fiercely Republican mother, he took to the streets with other school kids, throwing bricks, bottles and petrol bombs at soldiers. Jailed at 15 for having IRA links, he became a unit commander leading deadly missions for the INLA before joining the IPLO. But his decades of commitment to a free united Ireland turned to disillusion when bombs killed two little boys. By then he was a regular visitor to Scotland, where he befriended major gangland player Paul Ferris and then became the right-hand man of Tam 'The Licensee' McGraw. This is an account of one man's nightmare journey through blood, bombs, bullets and smuggling.