Oliver's Army - A History of British Soldiers in Ireland and other Colonial Conflicts
About the author
Aly Renwick was born in Galloway in Scotland and in 1960 he joined the British Army at sixteen years of age. He spent the first three years of his service at an army apprentice school and then the next five years in the Royal Engineers. He purchased his discharge from the army in late 1968, just after serving for a short time in Northern Ireland. Renwick then moved to London and helped organise the anti-Vietnam War protests, whose demonstrations he had attended while still a soldier. When British soldiers were sent out onto the streets of the north of Ireland in late 1969 Renwick helped establish the Irish Civil Rights Solidarity Campaign and later the Anti-Internment League. In late 1973 he was a founding member of the Troops Out Movement and was a national organiser for TOM over the next 4 years. In 1978 he helped set up Information on Ireland, which produced a series of publications about the north of Ireland over the next 12 years. Recently, he has taken part in peace and reconciliation work in Ireland and been helping Northern Ireland veterans who are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, as well as continuing to campaign for the withdrawal of British troops from the north of Ireland and on issues concerning truth, peace and justice for the Irish people.
Previous publications:
Editor of TOM publications from 1974 - 76, editing and publishing: Alternative White Paper on Ireland, TOM TOM bulletins and the Troops Out paper.
Edited British Soldiers Speak Out on Ireland, Information on Ireland's first pamphlet, published in 1978.
… last night another soldier… a novel published by Information on Ireland, in 1989.
XMG a short story in Teenage Soldiers - Adult Wars an anthology of soldiers writings from around the world, published in the US by The Rosen Publishing Group, New York, in 1991. It was then translated and published in Denmark as Kanonfode?, in 1992.
Hidden Wounds - the problems of Northern Ireland veterans in Civvy Street a book published by Barbed Wire, in 1999.
