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.
Read more about this topic: Proinsias De Rossa
Famous quotes containing the words early, life, political and/or activity:
“... business training in early life should not be regarded solely as insurance against destitution in the case of an emergency. For from business experience women can gain, too, knowledge of the world and of human beings, which should be of immeasurable value to their marriage careers. Self-discipline, co-operation, adaptability, efficiency, economic management,if she learns these in her business life she is liable for many less heartbreaks and disappointments in her married life.”
—Hortense Odlum (1892?)
“He is a man of one idea: that life has a symbolic significance. Which is to say that life and art are one.”
—Henry Miller (18911980)
“Every country has its own constitution; ours is absolutism moderated by assassination.”
—Anonymous Russian. Quoted in Count Münster, Political Sketches of the State of Europe 1814-1867 (1868)
“Who shall set a limit to the influence of a human being? There are men, who, by their sympathetic attractions, carry nations with them, and lead the activity of the human race. And if there be such a tie, that, wherever the mind of man goes, nature will accompany him, perhaps there are men whose magnetisms are of that force to draw material and elemental powers, and, where they appear, immense instrumentalities organize around them.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)