Theatre: Out of site, but not out of mind: Daniel Magee was a published poet by the age of 12, a brickie by 15 and a Republican for life. He'd rather be known as a 'builder's labourer who writes'.

You could say that Daniel Magee has been trying to avoid writing all his life, but it got him in the end. Paddywack, which opens at London's Cockpit Theatre tonight, is his fifth produced play; his first poems were published in an anthology when he was 12 years old. But in between there have been long years working on building sites in his native Belfast, in Dublin and in London, and an enduring political involvement with Sinn Fein. Belying his regular, rounded features and neat ginger moustache, his weathered skin and huge, ravaged hands testify to a life of manual labour and the consolation of Guinness and Bushmills.

'My father was a very poor, hard-working man,' he says. 'He was intelligent, but never got the chance to express it, so he was keen on education. Books were always around in the house, and reading was considered a good thing. Nobody ever said, 'What are you doing reading - can't you see the telly's on' in our house.'

None the less, education and Magee didn't stick. 'I was a sorehead at school,' he recalls ruefully; they expelled him when he was 14, and he went straight to work on the sites. Still, he maintained an interest in books and continued to write. 'I didn't read out my poems on the building sites' he says, 'but I wanted to express myself, and I had a facility for it. It went against type and I enjoyed that'. He began to publish stories and poems in 'Gestetner-produced literary magazines', which brought him to the attention of Philip Hobsbaum, man of letters and now Professor of English at Glasgow University.

Hobsbaum invited the 18-year-old poet- labourer to a writing group which was attended by Seamus Heaney, Michael Lonway, Bernard MacLaverty and Derek Mahon. 'Philip doesn't care who you are or where you're from, but he has a knack for finding writers.' The group met regularly for discussions which started in Hobsbaum's front room and ended in the pub, but Magee was not to be sucked out of his life and into the literary milieu.

'I enjoyed working on the building- sites,' he explains. 'It was a good crack and I enjoyed the camaraderie - I was rough enough, from a rough part of town. Besides, you got to meet a lot of writers who couldn't write down words'. Politics, meanwhile, proved a more compelling interest than poetics. His allegiances brought him to the attention of the security forces, and he was regularly picked up and held under the Special Powers Act. 'That was the normal level of political surveillance,' he shrugs. 'Much more than if you were a known criminal. That's what I was brought up on.' He is reluctant to talk about that time of his life. 'Just to say I was 'politically involved' is like saying: hang me now]'. Daniel Day- Lewis may win awards for his portrayal of Gerry Conlon, but Daniel Day-Lewis doesn't have to live in Belfast.

'A friend of mine went to see In the Name of the Father,' says Magee. 'He said it was very interesting about the Irish situation. I said it isn't about the Irish situation, it's about the English situation. Those kind of automatic perceptions are very common,' he points out. 'But that film has had an enormous impact, and that's one of the great functions of art. And theatre is still the freest form of expression there is.'

And with Paddywack opening this week, and a revival of his earlier play, Horseman Pass By, at London's Unity Theatre from 8 April, this reluctant writer isn't doing too badly for himself, I venture. 'I'm doing very badly for myself,' he retorts good- naturedly. 'I'm 48 years of age and this theatre's the only one that will touch this play, which I wrote six years ago.'

His technical skill as a playwright isn't in question. Set in a seedy Kilburn bedsit at the time of an IRA bombing campaign, Paddywack explores the reactions of the lodgers to Damien, a young new arrival from Ireland who seems secretive and opinionated and who refuses to confirm or deny terrorist sympathies.

Which, when it comes to the practicalities of fringe theatre, is just as well. As Magee's co-producer, Kate Percival explains, 'It's an unspoken rule with all the pub theatres that if a play mentions the IRA, they won't go near it. They'll all deny it, of course, but they're owned by the breweries and they don't want trouble.'

The irony is that Paddywack isn't a play about the Irish question. It's a challenging and complex dissection of the pathology of racism, whether it's the cockney thug in the play who doesn't 'hate Pakis or Paddys - I just don't see the need for 'em,' or the old Irishman who thinks that 'the blacks will be the ruination of this country'. 'What interests me about the play,' explains the Cockpit's artistic director, Abigail Morris, 'is that it's not just about violence and bigotry, it's also about a kind of middle-class racism, a fascination with and romanticisation of politial activists and revolutionaries'. Magee's talent is in revealing the persuasive articulacy of uneducated men, against which the protests of book-learned liberals are oddly powerless.

'There will be a lot of people coming along to this play because they know I'm an Irish writer, or because it's about racism, or whatever preconceptions they have,' says Magee. 'And they're going to hear things about themselves which will make them feel uneasy.' While Magee has never sought to conceal his Republican sympathies, his work is not exclusively political, yet he is subjected to what he describes as 'political racism' from those who can only see him as a commentator on 'Ireland's troubles'. Paddywack aims to confound all such preconceived ideas.

So what kind of a writer does Magee see himself? 'I would describe myself as a builder's labourer who writes. And that gives me a certain advantage because I have no illusions or delusions about building a career. I don't have a great or huge education, but I have a great respect and a deep love for writing. I was seduced by it, I suppose. I never read books because I had to. Never because, 'My God, my career in the Civil Service depends on my understanding Kafka'. And it's the same with my writing, which gives me a certain freedom.' He pauses to draw on a smouldering roll-up.

'Is it in a song that there's the line: 'Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose'?'

'Paddywack' runs to 26 March at the Cockpit Theatre, London NW8. Bookings: 071-402 5081

'Horsemen Pass By' runs to 1 May (weekends only) at the Unity Theatre, London NW1. Bookings: 071-388 1628

(Photograph omitted)