When Irish republican prisoners called off their hunger strike on 3 October 1981, following five years of intense protest in the harshest of conditions and the deaths of ten of their comrades, the prison authorities must have believed that they had crushed their spirit of resistance once and for all. Such a belief was dramatically shattered less than two years later when the IRA mounted the largest escape ever in the history of British penal institutions.
The republican prisoners did not stop at that. In the years that followed, they relentlessly waged a war of attrition against the prison authorities.

Deploying new strategies and tactics, coupled with a revolutionary mindset and politic, the republican prisoners built upon victory after victory.
In this frank, revealing and deeply personal memoir, former hunger striker Laurence McKeown leads us through the development of this new form of prison struggle in the face of internal challenges from both left and right. The new resistance contains important lessons for anyone in struggle and also helps us understand how easily republican prisoners adapted and applied themselves to the unfolding peace process years later, when all political prisoners were released under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement and the prison finally closed.

Throughout his account of that evolving prison struggle, Laurence weaves reflections on his own personal, intellectual and emotional growth. He speaks candidly and movingly, especially when recalling his relationship with his mother and father, and how he had to come to terms with their deaths while still imprisoned. This is not just a story of prison struggle; it is a story of a communal life lived, a coming to terms with material conditions so as to better challenge those conditions. It is a story of flowers growing up through concrete.