Whilst at university at the end of the 1960s Conway became caught up in the then cultural zeitgeist of Proletarian revolution off the back of the Paris riots , and was influenced by the activities the South American revolutionary Che Guevara . In 1969 an outbreak of communal violence in Northern Ireland broke out , and drawn to the conflict as a means of expression for his radical politics , Conway traveled to England in 1970 to join an Official IRA unit that was setting up paramilitary operations there to wage war against the British State 's presence in the island of Ireland in the form of the Northern Ireland state . His first activities in London with the IRA consisted of taking part in a series of armed robberies of banks to raise finances for the organization . In the early 1970s he attended IRA training camps back in the Irish Republic , where he received instruction in firearms and bomb making , and became a full-time paramilitary , taking part in many gun attacks upon the British Army and bombings in Northern Ireland . In November 1971 he was arrested in Derry by the Royal Ulster Constabulary for illegal firearms possession , and imprisoned in Long Kesh prison until September 1974 , where he took part in protest hunger strikes . On being released from imprisonment in 1974 , Conway was appointed by the newly formed " Provisional Irish Republican Army " ( which he had joined after the faction had split from the " Official IRA " ) to organize from scratch a strategic level intelligence capability based in Dublin to assist in its operations . However his brief period in this role was hampered by the inherent parochialism of the PIRA , with its different units preferring to rely on their own information gathering resources in their individual localities for their gun and bombing attacks , and resenting what they regarded as outside interference from Conway 's role in this regard . On learning of the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings in England , that killed 21 civilians , Conway was " horrified " , and left the PIRA in 1975 in consequence . ( Conway later stated that Dáithí Ó Conaill told him that the " early indications " of why civilians were killed was due to phone boxes not working so the warning that was to be sent to evacuate the area was delayed ) . He rejoined the PIRA in 1981 during the Irish hunger strike , and was active in the organization in the 1980s . He left the Provisional IRA on 15 December 1993 , with conflicting sentiments upon the acceptance by its leadership of the terms of the " Downing Street Declaration " ( i.e. that the governmental status of Northern Ireland could only be altered by the democratic decision of its population ) . In part he regarded the ending of the campaign by the PIRA leadership as a " betrayal " of its political objective of the eradication of the state of Northern Ireland and the acquisition of its territory by an Irish Republican state , but at the same time he recognized that the PIRA was faced with imminent military defeat by the United Kingdom 's security forces in the early 1990s , and that calling a formal cessation of its campaign and a disciplined disbandment of itself whilst it still retained the authority of command for the decision , was an act of realpolitik on its leadership 's part
Birmingham pub bombings
Birmingham pub bombings
Kieran Conway