After the 1969 Northern Ireland riots, in which nationalist areas of Belfast were attacked and burned, he joined the newly formed Provisional IRA.

After this, he was engaged in clandestine republican activities, but as late as 1971, was still attending Belfast College of Business Studies and editing a student magazine there.

In this journal, he criticised many long-standing policies of the movement, especially the Éire Nua programme which advocated a federal united Ireland with autonomy for Ulster.

At this time, he became associated with a grouping of young, left-wing Belfast based republicans, led by Gerry Adams, who wanted to change the strategy, tactics and leadership of the IRA and Sinn Féin.

[citation needed] With the rise of Adams' faction in the republican movement in the late 1970s, Morrison succeed Seán Ó Brádaigh as Director of Publicity for Sinn Féin.

[6] In reply, Sinn Féin President Ruairí Ó Brádaigh argued that the Ard Fheis should not "swap a slogan for a policy", referring to Éire Nua.

In early 1982, loyalist paramilitaries unsuccessfully attempted to kill Morrison and his first wife, opening fire on them as they walked from a local bar.

[8] After spending a week in a federal jail, Morrison was deported and later both men were convicted on a charge of making false statements to US immigration officials.

[17] His fourth book, Then the Walls Came Down: A Prison Journal (1999), was described in the Irish Times as "remarkable as a human document" and compared it to Brendan Behan's Borstal Boy.

[19] Another review in the same newspaper called it "one of the most important books to emerge from the conflict in Northern Ireland...A vividly humane account of life in prison.

Danny Morrison's prison memoirs are an honest study of a man seeking fresh solutions to the stalemate the Provos found themselves in at the beginning of the Nineties.

Current members are Gerry Adams, Danny Morrison, Tom Hartley, Jim Gibney, Brendan 'Bik' McFarlane, Sile Darragh, Caral Ni Chuilin, and Peter Madden.

[23] Journalist and author Ed Moloney republished an article he had written for the Sunday Tribune highlighting that Bobby Sands' next of kin wanted to take legal action against the BST.

[24] Moloney, with ex-IRA prisoner and journalist Anthony McIntyre, published an open letter to the BST which detailed their challenge to the legality of the trust.