Interview with veteran Irish republican George Harrison

It has been nearly ten years since the passing of legendary Irish republican and socialist, George Harrison in December, 2004. In October of that year, just two months before his death, I and a comrade visited George in his Prospect Park apartment for a lengthy interview. I had been in contact with George for some time trying to get the trip together to New York City for the discussion. Those phone calls set the basis for the recording we did that day.

George was an immensely humble and decent man, belying all the media images of an IRA gun runner. Immediately at ease as we had cake and coffee served to us, the 89 year-old gave us recollections of a long life well lived in a room full of manifestations of those memories. Pictures of hunger strikers, of Bernadette McAliskey and her children hung on the wall, posters and papers from the movement were on the tables. His nurse and friend Prissy was there, along with her daughter, and it is Prissy’s voice you will hear at the very end of the interviews describing the beautiful relationship the two of them had and his impact on her.

In this lengthy interview George talks about his early memories of the Republican movement in Ireland, his friends and comrades in the IRA who went to fight in the Spanish Civil War with the Connolly Column, racism in Irish-America, Mike Quill and the Transport Workers Union, the Cuban Revolution, the peace process and much, much more.

It was an honor to get to know George a little in the last period of his life and talk with him at length. I disagreed with George on all kinds of things, but had deep respect for him. He was a worker, a union member, and saw the world from that point of view. He was true to his calling all of his many years and stuck doggedly and unashamedly to the side of the oppressed and the working class.

I respected most his willingness to buck much of Irish America and support gays and lesbians, the Black Panthers, the Young Lords and Fidel Castro. He was a person of principle, and yet without the slightest hint of self-righteousness. A partisan of the left who had a long friendship with the Irish and US Communist Parties, George was also an unrepetent Irish republican, and Patron of Republican Sinn Fein. A republican and an internationalist who lived through some of the crucibles of the 20th century.

Unedited, the interview is missing the first few moments and hasn’t been public before, largely because I am horrified by the sound of my own voice. So here then, for posterity, is one of the last interviews of the old man who had seen, and quietly done, so much.

Mná na h-Éireann

This photo (and the story behind it) belong in the So Cool You Must Share file, so here it is.  Taken in Carlow, 1921 after their escape from Mountoy Prison, Mae Burke, Eithne Coyle and Linda Kearns (left to right) stand on the Butcher’s Apron with a look in their eye that says it all.  A documentary on Linda Kearns fascinating life can be viewed at RTE’s Irish language station TG4 (the documentary has subtitles).

Tommy McKearney Speaks on the Working Class, James Connolly and 1916

In a post on Connolly last week I mentioned that the reality of Easter 1916 was much different than the images we have made or had handed to us.  As luck would have it Tommy McKearney, currently an organizer for the Independent Workers Union, spoke at an event organized by eirigi and bringing out hundreds on the politics of 1916 at Conway Mill in Belfast recently on just that topic.

There Tommy presented The Rising in the context of an organized Dublin working class with revolutionary leadership and a rich tradition of struggle from which to draw lessons in a detailed and absorbing speech presented below.  The role of Connolly, Larkin and the organizations they led are given close attention as is the broader situation of the European socialist movement in the midst of the First World War.

Other speakers included Feargal Mac Ionnrachtaigh on the cultural revival that proceeded 1916, Damian Lawlor spoke on the the role of the youth organization Fianna Eireann before and during The Rising, Brendan Mac Cionnaith discussed the Fenian tradition, including its relationship to the First International and the Irish Republican Brotherhood.  A report of that meeting as well as videos of the other speakers can be found on the eirigi site here. Highly recommended viewing comrades. Vodpod videos no longer available.

The Internacionalista and The Internationale

Bob Doyle died this week.  He was the last of the Irish volunteers who went to fight in Spain against fascism.  Indymedia in Ireland has some interesting remarks, photos and videos, including of his last interview, of Doyle here.  There is rarely a mention when these old heroes die of the perfidious role of Stalinism in the Spanish revolution.  That is not for the here and now, but it should be noted.

As I have sat here most of the weekend hovering under a blanket and drinking warm beverages to hold back the aches and shakes of the flu I watched and read of Doyle’s life.  One video of a recent unveiling of a Internacionalista monument in Belfast where Doyle was present included a rendition of the Internationale in Irish.  I had never heard it in Irish before and it made me search out other relatively obscure renditions.

So here’s a few- for Bob Doyle who remained an activist his entire life, for the genuine internationalists who fought and died in Spain and for the present internationalists organizing around Gaza and so much else.  Some of these are downright strange, some are strangely wonderful and some are just wonderful.  We are a world movement comrades and let’s not forget it!

A stadium rock version by the Chinese metal band “Tang Dynasty”!

A Japanese version…maybe by the Chipmunks?

The version in Irish from the Belfast unveiling song by Pól Mac Adaim.

By Mongolian Tuvan throat singers!

From the roof of the world…in Nepalese!

In Yiddish

And finally in Catalan

Eilish McAnespie McCabe: Tireless Fighter for Freedom, for Justice

By Patricia Campbell

It threatened to rain as we walked behind the tri color draped coffin in Aughnacloy. The mass had been officiated by well know human rights campaigner, Fr Raymond Murray and the congregation had listened to Niall Farrell’s heart felt and moving tribute to Eilish. The large crowd of mourners slowly made their way to the County Tyrone burial ground which over looks the green fields of County Monaghan.

Just as she was to be laid to rest the grey skies could no longer contain its spillage, the mourners tried to take cover in every form, heads covered, umbrellas opened and people huddled together to try and escape the down pour of rain as they said good bye to one of Ireland’s finest daughters on a Summer August afternoon.  Mother Ireland was crying too.

Eilish McCabe nee McAnespie has taken her place in the history journals along side many other brave women of Ireland,  women like  Kathleen Clarke, Elizabeth O’Farrell, Marie Combeford and others too numerous to mention. Like Eilish they were not just Irish revolutionaries they were socialists and Internationalists and they too knew sacrifice, pain and conviction.

Eilish was an exceptional woman. She demonstrated a steely courage through out the darkest and most dangerous days of the war and she showed that same courage in the face of death. She knew she was dying she had fought cancer for five years. She did not accept medical opinion some three years earlier, which advised she had only six months to live.

Her determination to live proved stronger than medical opinion. However she knew the cancer raging through her body would eventually overcome her so she cherished every living moment and forged ahead with her quest for truth and Justice.

Described as a campaigner for truth and justice, she never stopped campaigning for the truth about the murder of her brother Aidan McAnespie, shot dead at a British check point on his way to a Gaelic game one cold Sunday afternoon in January 1988. Her motivation to fight for the truth was not solely driven by personal pain and loss or that she had arrived on the scene of Aidan’s murder and held the brother she adored as he lay fatally wounded, his life taken by one single carefully aimed bullet discharged from the gun of a British Soldier.

Eilish would have campaigned for truth and justice regardless she was a political activist long before her brother was murdered. She and Aidan experienced persecution on a regular basis at the hands of British Soldiers and especially at Aughnacloy Checkpoint

One might get the impression that all her fighting, struggling, fear and determination would leave her cynical and perhaps inflexible – far from the truth she was fun loving, her smile lit up her face and her presence lit up the atmosphere. She was passionate and full of life, full of devilment. She loved life and she loved people.

I thought about her the day Tyrone football team brought the Sam Maguire cup across the Aughnacloy border for the third time in September. She had been there to celebrate and greet the team on previous occasions, win or loose. In the early days of this years championship when Tyrone were replaying Down she was receiving treatment in Belfast’s City Hospital. Despite being attached to her lifeline, an intravenous drip she longed to go and shout for her team she felt mentally able but she wasn’t physically able, her mental strength far outweighing her frail body

I said my last good bye to her a few days before she died. She was surrounded by her family who loved her and no doubt must miss her desperately, especially their first Christmas without her. She maintained that quiet dignity and strength right up to the end

I will remember her with pride and sadness, proud that she was my friend and sad that she is gone. In her final months she taught me how to cherish every moment of life and how not to be afraid to die.