Proinsias de Rossa - Early Life and Political Activity

Early Life and Political Activity

Born as Francis Ross in 1940 in Dublin, he was educated at Marlborough Street National School and Dublin Institute of Technology. Soon after his sixteenth birthday, in May 1956, he joined the IRA, and was politically active in Sinn Féin from an early age. During the IRA Border Campaign, he was captured training IRA members in Glencree in May 1956, served seven months in Mountjoy Prison and was then interned at the Curragh Camp.

He worked in his family's fruit and vegetable shop and later was employed as a postman and an encyclopaedia salesman. He took the Official Sinn Féin side in the 1970 split. In 1977 he contested his first general election for the party, which that year was renamed Sinn Féin the Workers Party (in 1982 the name changed again to the Workers' Party).

He was successful on his third attempt and was elected at the February 1982 general election as a Sinn Féin the Workers Party Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin North–West constituency. He retained his seat until 2002, when he did not contest the general election in order to devote more time to his work in the European parliament.