By Andrew “Boots” Hardy

Gerry Conlon left Northern Ireland in the 1970s in search of work and respite from the escalating violence of life in capital city Belfast. In those days, the capital city was an active war zone, torn by the struggle between Catholic nationalists and Protestants loyal to the British throne. Months later he was among four people arrested in connection with a pair of deadly IRA (Irish Republican Army) bombings. He was convicted the following year and sentenced to life in prison on the strength of manufactured evidence and a brutally-coerced confession.

Gerry Conlon and the Guildford Four, as they came to be known, were innocent. It was fifteen years before he was exonerated and his freedom restored.

After his release, Conlon told his story first-hand in his book, "Proved Innocent." In 1993, Daniel Day-Lewis starred in "In the Name of the Father," an award-winning film capturing Conlon’s fight for justice.

But the subsequent chapter of Conlon’s life had yet to be told.

As a free man, Conlon struggled courageously under the immeasurable burden of everything he’d lost to the corruption of a broken justice system. After his arrest, his father, Giuseppe, travelled to London to aid in Conlon’s defense and was himself arrested as a collaborator. Though the conviction was later overturned, it was too late for Giuseppe Conlon, who died in prison in 1980.

"In the Name of the Son" chronicles Conlon’s life after his release from prison, his descent into addiction, and his resurrection as an international activist against injustice. It was originally written in book form by Conlon’s lifelong friend, Richard O’Rawe, a former IRA bank robber turned international best-selling author.

“The play came about because Richard introduced me to Gerry Conlon in the center of Belfast one day,” recalls Irish playwright and Green Shoot Productions theater director Martin Lynch. “We went for lunch and I fell for Gerry straight-away, as most people did. He had this very strong, forceful, charming character—rawcharacter.”

Over the next couple of years, the trio would often go out drinking, and Conlon would regale and fascinate his compatriots with stories of his prison experiences and the notorious convicts he’d served time with, including the infamous Kray Twins and other East End gangsters.

When Conlon passed away in 2014, O’Rawe undertook to scratch beneath the surface and tell the deeper story. In 2017, he published In the Name of the Son: The Gerry Conlon Story.

“I didn’t know the story,” Lynch admits. “So I bought the book and I read it. Halfway through it, I knew. I said to myself: This would make a great play.”

With several decades running two Belfast theater companies, he instinctively knew this story would reach audiences, touch them at their core.

And he was right. "In the Name of the Son" began its run of sold-out performances in Belfast’s celebrated Lyric Theatre and Grand Opera House, continuing with a month-long run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Part of the show’s incredible success has been the conscription of Shaun Blaney, a phenomenal, award-winning Irish actor who took the script and made it his own, even adding to it, Lynch says.

“The injustice of Gerry being sentenced [to life in prison] for something he didn’t do is a powerful enough story,” Lynch said. “Then I read Richard’s book and saw that the trials and tribulations that Gerry went through after he got out of prison, until the day he died, were extraordinary.”

The British government awarded Conlon a large financial settlement for his unjust incarceration, and after his release he penned Proved Innocent, a book about his experience that earned him royalties. Adding to his wallet was the money he received as a co-writer for In the Name of the Father. Altogether, about £1,000,000 had fallen into Conlon’s pockets. But no amount of money could replace the agonizing loss of his father, or the years spent in merciless prison conditions.

No one knew the magnitude of Conlon’s brokenness. He suffered terrible, haunting dreams, experienced nervous breakdowns and even attempted suicide. He became addicted to alcohol and crack cocaine, and at his lowest was reduced to eating out of rubbish bins in London’s West End, the money having evaporated.

“This man hit depths that not many human beings get to,” Lynch said. “He felt that he was responsible for the death of his father. That’s what tortured him for the rest of his life.

Yet the story is not all gloom and doom. There are scenes of both joyousness and heartbreak, reflecting the humanity of Conlon himself, a man “full of craic and banter,” Lynch says, promising scenes that will have the audience in tears—and stitches.

By all accounts, Gerry Conlon was a courageous and endearing man of limitless humanity who left his indelible mark on the world. His life is a story well worth telling, not an Irish story, but a human story.

"In the Name of the Son"
Wednesday April 30, Friday, May 2 & Saturday May 3
70m | Victoria Theatre
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