A following article in The Times reports that U2’s opposition to paramilitary organisations in the 80s and 90s had hindered Irish Republican Army fundraising opportunities in the US, and that Gerry Adams – then leader of Sinn Féin, the political arm of the IRA – had been critical of the band's pro-peace stance. Bono reveals that Special Branch – the arm of the police responsible for national security – had informed him that his family were targets. 

 

Bono also revealed that a gangland leader in Dublin had formulated an elaborate plan to kidnap his daughters, and that the gang spent several months monitoring his home.

 

The third threat came from the American far right, in the wake of the success of U2's 1984 single Pride (In the Name of Love), a song written about Martin Luther King Jr. Touring Arizona in the 1980s, U2 donated money to a fund to impeach State Governor Evan Mecham, who had rescinded an executive order that created a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday in the state. 

 

Before a subsequent show, Bono was warned that if he sang the verse in Pride about King’s assassination, he would “not make it to the end of the song”. Bono decided to go ahead and sang the lines, ‘Shot rings out in the Memphis sky, Free at last, they took your life, they could not take your pride" before closing his eyes. 

 

Bono said, "I looked up and I could not see the crowd because [bass player] Adam Clayton was standing in front of me and he had been there for the entire verse."

 

Next month Bono will visit the UK, US, Canada, Ireland, France, Spain and Germany on a mini-tour to promote Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, for what he promises will be "an evening of words, music and some mischief." The book is set to be published on November 1 by Hutchinson Heinemann.