Henry McDonald

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Born in the Roman Catholic, nationalist Markets area of Belfast, Northern Ireland, and a graduate of St. Malachy's College, Henry McDonald is a writer and is the Irish Editor for the Observer, the Sunday edition of The Guardian (UK). McDonald has written extensively about The Troubles, its precedents, its consequences, its demographics, etc.

McDonald was formerly involved in the Sinn Fein the Workers Party a left republican party that emerged out of the Official IRA in the early 1970s. He travelled to the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) with the youth wing of SFWP around 1980. Much of his writing concerns Irish Republican politics and he has written a book on the Irish National Liberation Army -INLA -Deadly Divisions which he co-authored with Jack Holland. This book was first published in 1994 and has since been re-printed. More recently, McDonald has written on loyalist paramilitary groups and has co-authored books on the Ulster Volunteer Force and Ulster Defence Association with Jim Cusack.

McDonald's journalistic comment tends to be hostile to the Provisional IRA and Sinn Féin - especially to the use of force for the achievement of republican aims. His critics attribute this to his political background in the "Official" republican movement, between whom and the "Provisional" republicans there has been bitter and sometimes violent enmity since the early 1970s.