Growing up a communist in Troubles-era Belfast: We were treated more like ‘comrades’ than children

Growing up in Belfast during the Troubles, Sinéad Morrissey's childhood was shaped by her parents' fervent adherence to Western Communism. In this interview with The Irish Times, Morrissey reflects on her memoir, "Among Communists," which chronicles a childhood lived between the ideological fervor of the Communist Party and the realities of state schooling in Northern Ireland.

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It was the idea that the value and riches of society should be equally shared, and that people didn’t have to suffer from the systemic inequalities that capitalism produced.

Morrissey describes a unique upbringing where the family home was a hub of radical ideas and a stark contrast to the more conventional lives of her schoolmates. Her parents, ideologically driven and unconventional, treated her and her brother like "comrades-in-arms," fostering early independence and a shared responsibility for household chores. Their meals were vegetarian feasts inspired by international communist states, a far cry from the typical fare of their peers.

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It was a total double life on so many interesting levels.

This dual existence created a "total double life," as Morrissey puts it, requiring her to constantly switch between the worlds of her family's political activism and the predominantly Unionist, middle-class environment of her state school. She recounts moments of childhood innocence juxtaposed with the serious political discourse of her parents, such as her father's quips about the revolution and his atheistic pronouncements.

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There was a double life between the family and the Communist Party and school. I went to state schools that were all Protestant by default and pretty middle class. Everybody voted Unionist and none of the parents of the kids in my school wanted a revolution. So when I went to school it was like swapping universes, you had to code switch.

The memoir also touches upon the family's broader political history, including her paternal grandfather's internment during World War II and his subsequent embrace of communism in prison. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 marked a turning point, leading to the unraveling of her family's ideological world, mirroring the backdrop of the Troubles against which her childhood unfolded.

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I wanted to be ordinary.