The Patriot Game

MacCaig’s thoughtful, probing analysis of Northern Ireland in the throes of revolution recasts what had long been deemed a religious conflict between Protestants and Catholics in political and economic terms: as a struggle between colonizer and colonized, ruling class and working class, oppressor and oppressed. His footage of street riots, police violence and firebomb attacks, shot on the fly and often at great risk, mingle with decades worth of newsreel footage. MacCaig called the IRA’s fight “certainly the most extensive, determined working-class struggle in Europe,” and The Patriot Game is an appropriately extensive, determined work of radical advocacy.