Remember George Harrison 1915

Remember George Harrison 1915 - 2004
This post was lost when the IRBB was searching for a new host... It should not be lost again. - Saer. George Harrison 1915 - 2004

George Harrison a life-long faithful Irish Republican and unrepentant Fenian died at his home in Brooklyn New York on Wednesday October 6th 2004. Statement by Cumann na Saoirse Náísiúnta The National Irish Freedom Committee – (Cumann na Saoirse Náísiúnta) joins with all true Republicans in Ireland, Scotland, England and throughout the world to mourn the passing of a lifelong Irish Republican and Eternal Fenian, George Harrison of Brooklyn, New York, New Hampshire and the County Mayo. We empathize with his family and innumerable friends during this time of their profound loss and grief at the passing of this modern Irish hero. He shall be remembered forever. And as we remember this dedicated man, we rejoice in his long consecrated and meaningful life. A life that was dedicated to the unification of Ireland by any and all means possible. To this end, George and a committed cadre of his fellow physical force Republicans organized a weapons procurement programme which had three decades of success in supplying the Freedom Fighters of the Irish Republican Army with the wear with all to sustain their campaigns. Unfortunately, the fruits of George’s and his friends’ labor is now being bartered as the price of admission for revisionist former Republicans to participate in British direct rule of the six occupied counties in the north of Ireland. Adams and his purloined posse are swapping semtex for summer homes, guns for governmental positions, and they are cementing over arms dumps to secure their status as second class citizens in their Loyalist controlled state – not what George and his compatriots had in mind when they set about their clandestine weapons quest. We would be remiss if we didn’t mention George’s support of freedom movements worldwide. Of George it was said, “Never met a revolution he didn’t like.”, and to paraphrase the old ballad, “God grant you glory, old George, and open heavens to all your men, the cause that called you may call tomorrow in another cause for the Green again.” Statement by Sinn Féin Poblachtach / Ruairí Ó Brádaigh “George Harrison who has died in New York was Patron of Republican Sinn Fein since 1994. A native of Shammer, Kilkelly, Co Mayo, he was a veteran of the East Mayo Battalion IRA. He emigrated to the USA in 1938 and from then on he was a life – long Irish American activist and an active supporter of international liberation struggles. In 1982 along with the late Michael Flannery and three others he was acquitted in an American court on a charge of supplying arms to the IRA. George was in his ninetieth year and his passing leaves a huge gap in the ranks of Irish American supporters of the Republican Movement in Ireland. Leaba I measc na bhFinini go raibh aige.” An Appreciation “Respect to those who refuse to be mastered.” From “Unrepentant Fenian Bastard” Words and Music by Chris Byrne Sandy Boyer • 12 October 2004 George Harrison was perhaps the most unrepentant Fenian of them all. He was, as they say, baptized in the Fenian faith at a very early age in his native Shammer, Co. Mayo. He held to that faith unflinchingly until he died sitting in his apartment in Brooklyn, New York on Thursday. October 7th. Of course the Fenian faith has as many variations as any other. George Harrison’s was the fenianism of Liam Ryan and James Connolly, two of his heroes. It was also the fenianism of Republican Sinn Fein, whose Patron he was proud to be. His vision was of a 32-county socialist Ireland. He believed firmly that nothing but physical force would ever get the Brits out. And George judged every new development in Ireland by that very basic criterion – would it help get the Brits out? But his internationalism was integral to his republicanism. He held that if you wanted to free Ireland, you had to support the struggles of oppressed people everywhere in the world. George was fond of saying that the US had no more right in Puerto Rico than the Brits did in Ireland He is best known for providing the IRA with arms and equipment for over 25 years. George purchased the weapons, the most vital and dangerous part of the job. Others raised the money, stored the arms and ammunition and arranged to ship them to Ireland. Owen MacNamee, who George referred to as the “Emissary,” was their link with the IRA. Jack Holland, in his book The American Connection, says that there were never more than a dozen people involved with the network. George estimated very conservatively that they supplied the IRA with 2,000-2,500 weapons and more than a million rounds of ammunition. The trial of the “IRA 5” - George, Tom Falvey, Michael Flannery, Paddy Mullens and Tommy Gormley – has become legend. The prosecutor opened the case by charging that George had been running guns to the IRA for the last six months. It is reported that at the defense table George was heard to mutter “It was 25 years if it was a day.” Frank Durkan, his attorney, opened the case for the defense, saying “My client is charged with conspiring to ship arms to Ireland over a short period of months – December of ’80 to June of ’81. Mr. Harrison feels somewhat insulted, because, as the government well knows, he has aided, abetted, and shipped arms to the rebels in Northern Ireland for a quarter of a century. And makes no bones about it.” Some of the political differences between George and Michael Flannery, who he admired greatly, were revealed in their choice of character witnesses. Flannery, who was a daily communicant, chose a bishop. George brought Bernadette McAliskey and David Ndaba, secretary to the ANC Mission to the UN. The prosecutor cross-examined the bishop. He couldn’t get Bernadette off the stand fast enough. The defendants were all acquitted. But George’s gun running career was over. In later years he would say repeatedly that he only regretted that he hadn’t send enough to get the Brits our of Ireland. For that, he said, he would apologize to the young people of Ireland. After the trial George, who was probably the most thoroughgoing anti-imperialist I ever met, had the time to actively support the national liberation movements he had believed in for years. Bernadette McAliskey describes spending a Saturday afternoon with George visiting every picket line in New York. They went from the “Long Green Line” picket at the British consulate to demonstrations against apartheid and to support the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and political prisoners in Puerto Rico, Argentina and Chile. At every stop George was known and greeted as a respected comrade and friend. At each demonstration he picked up leaflets announcing future protests and handed them out on the next. George had become the link between very national liberation movement in New York. You can’t appreciate George Harrison without his passionate hatred of racism. He worked day in and day out to elect David Dinkins as the first African-American Mayor of New York City. Even after Dinkins lost his race for a second term, George called him “the people’s Mayor.” George would no more recognize Rudy Giuliani as the Mayor of his city that he would recognize British rule in Ireland. I remember how thrilled George was when we organized an Irish event that raised $10,000 to rebuild the burned Black churches in the South. He called me the next morning to say “We gave racism and imperialism a good kick in the ass.” Throughout his long life, George never budged an inch off his core principals. That didn’t mean he couldn’t learn and progress. I met George in 1980 at a weekly picket line at British Airways on Fifth Avenue, supporting the first hunger strike. Every week he would show up with the tricolor and the American flag. Although no one said anything about it, George somehow realized that many of us who had been through the anti-Vietnam war movement saw the American flag as the banner of US imperialism. It never appeared again. Years later, when George was in his 70’s, someone from the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization (ILGO) told me that he was flabbergasted to meet him working for an openly Gay candidate for Congress. George felt he was just supporting a very progressive candidate and didn’t particularly care about his sexual orientation. Well into his eighties, George asked a friend what transgendered people were. She explained, and he said it sounded like they had a hard time of it. Another side of George was his amazing generosity. Even when he was retired and living on a pension and Social Security, no one could stop George from giving his money away. I remember him saying, when the New York H-Block/Armagh Committee was considering supporting INLA prisoners, that he had been sending money to families of republican prisoners for years. I suspect that there are many families throughout Ireland who remember getting a totally unexpected check in the mail one day from George Harrison of Brooklyn, New York. And even after the contributions for prisoners, and for Republican Sinn Fein, there were the innumerable good causes that George felt bound to support. I wasn’t surprised when Priscilla McLean, the nurse who cared for cared for him throughout his last years, told me that he was living from check to check. I am very conscious of everything I have left out. Things like his passionate devotion to the republican veterans of the Spanish Civil War, his attachment to New York City, his occasional stubbornness and obstinacy and his great affection for his family and many friends. Other people who knew George would no doubt include much more. Maybe, at the end, we can say with Shakespeare that “Take him all and all, we shall not look upon his like again.” Of course George might disagree. He would probably have said that he did he did the best he could, and now it is up to us to do the rest. Tribute to George Bernadette McAliskey • 20 October 2004 I met George the very first time I went to America, in 1969 ‘straight from the Bogside front-line.’ I met a lot of people then, and thereafter, but there remains a small core of stalwarts, who have been my friends, compatriots, and companeros ever since that momentous trip; foremost amongst these, were my two great mentors Paul O’Dywer and George Harrison, both gone from us now. I know that George had no belief or expectation that his life, having quietly been brought to a close in the comfort of his own sitting room, he might, against all the odds, find himself before a court once more. He was probably right. But in the possibility however remote of it happening, a celestial emergency call to George’s saviour, Frank Durkan was on the cards. ‘Hi Frank, it’s Paul here. George is at the Pearly Gate, refusing to recognise the court, unionising the gate keepers and demanding to know the calibre of the occupants before pleading. He has also suggested to Peter that his boss isn’t a patch on Fidel, and indicating that some of his character witnesses might need temporary release from a warmer place in order to testify. Should I take the case?’ I suggested a plan B for Frank – Leave the phone off the hook, just in case. You will each, today, be paying tribute and sharing memories of George’s unique contribution to all our lives, his political commitment and principle, his personal generosity, and his lifelong involvement in the struggle for a better world for human beings to live in. When George decided that Eoin McNamee, himself and myself would organise the fundraising for a memorial to Tommy Patten, a young Mayo man who fought and died in the Spanish Civil War, he told me how Eoin and George had been refused permission to go to Spain by the republican leadership, on the grounds that they didn’t speak Spanish. They protested that young Patten didn’t speaking Spanish either. ‘Nor does he speak English’ was the reply. They said their goodbyes and parted with their Gaelic speaking comrade at Paddington Station, London. Young Patten headed to Spain with a ‘soda round’ his mother made and a change of underwear both tied in a brown paper parcel. Eoin was en route to America, where, in California, he quickly learned Spanish from Mexican workers in a bid to get to Spain, and George headed briefly to unionise the Irish Navvies of N. England before following his O.C. to the USA. Many years later, George reassembled the last of his old unit, and those he felt represented them adequately in their absence; he detailed their last duty, which he personally led, until its conclusion – the daily health care of their comrade and commanding officer, who was terminally ill. George saw to it that Eoin’s needs in life and his wishes in death were attended to, and his ashes are buried on the mountainside in Broughderg, Co, Tyrone, where his inscription reads in Spanish, Irish and English. I could not persuade George to make the trip for the funeral. His work was done. There was no need, no reason for him to come. These conversations lead to talk of such things and I was somewhat surprised at the strength of opinion with George dismissed his own ashes returning to Mayo. The land which buried one Mayo man in six-foot of concrete hardly needed to be graced with the remains of another. Forgiveness was not high on George’s agenda, except where his friends were concerned and the ordinary weaknesses of their human nature. The names many of us identify as ‘disembodied’ heroes, from many cultures and struggles, George knew as real flesh and blood people who had their strengths and weaknesses, people he had worked with in the vast canvass of his political activity. Loyalty, reliability and discretion were the hallmarks of this old soldier although on occasion he would remark to me, with glee: ‘If Joe Cahill gets to hear of this we’re court-martialled’ – I would always reply ‘you’ll be court-martialled, George. I’m not one of ye.’ – ‘You’ll be court-martialled, anyway, my girl, if Cahill gets wind of this.’ I only once knew George to pull rank. We were on a Noraid picket line and George as usual was cross pollinating the revolution by distributing leaflets from other organisations – Cuba Solidarity, Puerto Rico were to the fore. He was asked to stop and declined to do so. Negotiation was minimal, if he didn’t stop he would be evicted from the picket. ‘Evict’ was an unfortunate choice of word. He threw back his square shoulders and stuck out his solid Mayo neck; ‘You don’t have the strength for it,’ he challenged, and the hapless organiser seeking no public confrontation with George retreated from the threat but insisted that George was ‘harming the cause’ and proffered a new sanction; he would report this altercation to the leadership. ‘You don’t have the credentials,’ retorted George with undisguised disdain, and continued his revolutionary duty of spreading the word. George Harrison was above all other things a modest, quiet man. Even in the prime of his youth, a stranger passing him in the street, would have no hint, no signal, no reason to suspect that this was an uncompromising radical, a committed internationalist and socialist, a militant, an activist, a man whose every waking hour was devoted to struggle armed or unarmed, to bring about revolutionary change in the world into which he was born. Only a fool like George Bush and a braggart like Tony Blair could delude themselves that the George Harrison’s of this world can be defeated by their military intelligence, satellite surveillance, warmongering, human rights denial, and pathetic attempts to seal their borders. George Harrison, Mayo man, Irish Republican, Socialist, Internationalist Humanitarian and Labour Organiser led them all a merry dance for 70 years of adult life and lived and died on his own terms. We shall miss him. Could any of us ask for more? - except - I hear George add - the birth of the 32 County Socialist Republic. Harrison's Life Remembered By Stephen McKinley smckinley@irishecho.com The wake had an Irish flavor, as befitted a man from Ireland -- but at George Harrison's memorial last Wednesday, at the Local 1199 Union Hall in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan, speakers reminded the audience that Harrison's principles and political activism were international in their application. Harrison, who died aged 89 at his Brooklyn home on Oct. 7, was a legendary Irish republican, activist and gunrunner who emigrated from his County Mayo home in 1938 and, though he fought for Ireland's independence from British rule all his life, never saw an Ireland freed from the influence of what he called "the British Empire from hell." Indeed, he never once returned to Ireland after he left. Harrison's socialist ideals, forged in Ireland in the aftermath of Partition, gave him a steely resolution in the face of imperialism and oppression. Speakers at the event paid tribute to the man and his principles, courage and stubbornness. Fittingly, Frank Durkan, a fellow Mayo man and veteran of many Harrison-initiated battles, emceed the memorial, introducing as first speaker to lead the tributes, former New York City Mayor David Dinkins. Dinkins, whose candidacy for the office was supported with all Harrison's might, spoke of the man who dedicated his life to the cause that others might "live full and productive lives, accorded dignity and respect by virtue of their humanity." Or, in blunter terms, as preferred sometimes by Harrison, "to give racism a good kick in the ass." In Jimmy Breslin perhaps Harrison recognized a fellow ass-kicker, for Breslin recounted that he was one of the privileged recipients of frequent letters from Harrison, thick, bulging packages that contained a copy of the Irish republican standard, Saoirse, and a letter highlighting a new or longstanding outrage. Sometimes, Breslin said, Harrison thrust a flier into his hand from a picket outside the British information services office on Third Avenue, scene of the Irish republican "long green line" protest. "Read this and act upon it," came Harrison's instruction. By the time he would finished with Saoirse, Breslin said, his mind would be whirling with "somebody in 1916 who was shot, and somebody in 2004 who should be shot." It was perhaps the closest that any of the evening's speakers came to addressing Harrison's lifelong association with political violence, having spent upward of 25 years running guns to the various manifestations of the IRA until he was caught by the FBI and tried with four colleagues in 1981. It seemed like a cast-iron indictment, but the five beat the rap because of evidence provided by a source connected to the CIA. Regardless, Harrison's gun running remains an awkward topic for many of his supporters, who emphasized instead his tireless campaigning and activism on behalf of the oppressed or disenfranchised around the world, such as the cause of Nelson Mandela, for 30 years a political prisoner in Apartheid South Africa, or those in Puerto Rico who demanded independence from the United States. But it was from the cause of Irish freedom that Harrison drew strength to maintain his unflinching principles. Perhaps it was because in Ireland as a youth, he first understood the series of British-shaped compromises that left Ireland at his death still partitioned. Sandy Boyer, an activist and friend of Harrison's for many years, recounted what he said was frequently unknown about Harrison: his "unbelievable generosity." The only way to mourn a fallen freedom fighter, Boyer remembered Harrison saying, was to "pick up the rifle that fell from his dead hands." Throughout his life, Harrison took what he could of his earnings and gave to the needy. Harrison's nurse, Priscilla McLean, recounted that on the day Harrison died, she was in Manhattan to ensure that he had an absentee ballot to vote for John Kerry in the election for president on Nov. 2. And a note had been sent from Ireland in time to be read aloud at the memorial. Recounting how Harrison had -- not always to his satisfaction -- managed to escape the law all his life, Bernadette Devlin McAliskey's tribute stated: "For 70 years of his adult life he led them all a merry dance, and lived and died on his own terms." Tribute Artwork by Brian Mór Ó Baoighill

We're coming up on the First Anniversary of George's passing, so I felt it fitting to move this post to the Main Board for awhile. George, like his comrade Michael Flannery (who's passing anniversary just occurred last week), were lifelong Republicans that continue to inspire our lives and actions. May their hardworking souls finally find some well earned rest.

George Harrison: Irish Revolutionary and American Activist by Matt Siegfried, for Fourthwrite Just weeks before the indomitable George Harrison passed into history, a history he consciously took part in, my comrade, Brian Mullin, and I traveled to George’s Brooklyn apartment. There we spent the day with him talking informally; visiting with his wonderful companion and nurse Priscilla McLean and recording what would become a lengthy and wide ranging interview. I hope this interview will be made available in the near future. As many socialists and radicals in the United States and around the world, I have known of George for what seems like my entire active life. He was old enough to be my grandfather and had lived, it seemed, several lifetimes, witnessed and engaged in the struggles of several generations on several continents. We knew him not only as the media’s gunrunner from Mayo and Irish republican of the old school, but also as a stalwart of the social struggles in this country. A man who never met a picket line he would cross or not gladly join in. We wanted to tell that story, we wanted George to illuminate in his own words the world view that traveled with him from across the Atlantic and informed his active life as a socialist, an internationalist and revolutionary in this country. Immediately put at ease by his disarming (how ironic to use that word to describe George Harrison!) charm we sat down and listened and asked and learned of a life of service. A unique, even singular life. But his was a life lived not in dogmatic isolation from the changing world around him, but a life informed by the tumultuous events of the 20th Century. As a young man and IRA volunteer he resisted the, seemingly cyclical, counterrevolutions in Ireland following the War of Independence and Civil War. As a working class person, the revolution and Civil War in Spain became a great passion for the then young revolutionary. Spain would continue to instruct his politics until his last days. He held his highest admiration for those from around the globe that selflessly went to defend the Republic and nascent workers’ revolution against the fascist generals, reactionary priests and Nazi Luftwaffe. As he himself said, his greatest regret was to not travel to Spain with his friends and comrades, some of which lay still under the battlefields of Jamara and Madrid. To join with Frank Ryan, Tommy Patton, Mick Riordan and so many others to fight arms in hand for the freedom of Spain and the Workers’ Republic. His regret was our, all of our, fortune as he lived another seven decades in the service of the ideals of those who fought and died in that heroic struggle. The struggle for socialism whose prospect seemed then so near you could hold it in your hand. While nothing about George was ordinary he was and remained a working man. Not common but alive in commonality. He was one of a multitude of immigrants who traveled to this land seeking work, seeking freedom from poverty and oppression and often the adventure of beginning a new life. Though Ireland was always intimately on his mind. Many of those immigrants brought with them a radicalism learned, often painfully, in the conditions of their native lands. Many of those immigrants who came without politics learned them in the disappointing lie of the American Dream, the hypocrisy of a democracy which acts in the service of the US oligarchy, the ruling class, the capitalists. The daily humiliations visited on working people; especially immigrants in the hard scrabble toil of survival to make ends meet in a land where the streets were said to be paved with gold. Many became leaders of workers’ struggles, the civil rights and women’s movements. Some fought long, quiet, dignified struggles as rank and file activists. Nearly all informed the US born working class of the world beyond their borders, yet so affected by the action of the United States and often the very same bosses that exploited them at home. George’s name will rightly be mentioned with others of that tradition, Nagi Daifallah (Yemen), Harry Bridges (Australia), Carl Skoglund (Sweden), Mother Jones (Ireland), and many others. Read Mother Jones’s marvelous biography; she and George must be relations, however distant. The conditions in the United States are such that labor’s voice has largely been excluded from the political process. The laws governing working conditions as well as the ability to organize are so severely restrictive and draconian, a strike or union battle in the United States has more than once resembled a civil war. The history of the United States’ left is one of a relationship between the experiences and ideas brought by immigrants mutually enriching and combining with the native class struggle, the battle against racism, for women’s emancipation, for civil rights, for a socialist future. George Harrison’s life was an exemplary confirmation of this dynamic. George Harrison, the Irish republican came to the United States in 1938 after a brief stint as a laborer and activist in England. He found himself working on the docks of Brooklyn and immediately threw himself into his union, which was at the time heavily influenced by the politics of the Communist Party, with which George had a long and cordial relationship. The union turned right and increasingly buearcratic after the left purges in the late ’40s. He developed, quietly, a relationship with the legendary transport workers’ leader Michael Quill who would on occasion pass money to George to assist in George’s life long commitment to supply the resistance in Ireland with the means to resist. Quill knew how the money might be spent and gladly gave it anyway. George spent thirty years as a driver for Brinks and a member of Teamsters local 820. The Union went through changes in leadership and direction. George remained an active member of the union regardless of its changes in leadership, developing relationships with his co-workers both politically and personally. Some of those co-workers were to testify on his behalf at he and Michael Flannery’s famed 1983 trial. The old Wobbly code of class solidarity: “an injury to one is an injury to all” was not just a slogan to George, it was a way of life. He was not just a familiar face on the picket lines of every nearly strike in New York City for several decades, but helped to organize material solidarity. Getting funds and provisions to strikers, handing out leaflets, passing resolutions in his union. Connecting the struggles, seeing their confluence. But the thing, more than any other, that made George a uniquely American activist was his early introduction to the reality of white supremacy in the United States. When he first arrived here and found a job tending bar in which blacks were sometimes refused service and treated vilely at the pub frequented by Irish immigrants like himself. He could not countenance that his own country folk, those who had suffered so grievously under the yoke of the bloody British Empire could not see and make common cause with black people here. Because of George’s worldview, his certain knowledge of human equality and his enormous wealth of empathy he could not abide the racism endemic, still, in the United States. George was often the only white man at demonstrations, marching for civil rights and desegregation, against police brutality and with those who would espouse “Black Power” to the embarrassment of members of the Irish community, including in the republican community. As he said in the interview he saw no difference in the legitimate rage of a black community in the late ’60s and early ’70s, under siege and ghettoized with what the “lads in Belfast” were doing. Harrison’s great American hero was the white abolitionist and martyr John Brown and he proudly marched with the Black Panther Party, the Puerto Rican Young Lords and the Chicano Brown Berets. He was no liberal; he was a militant anti-racist who saw no threat from those without power demanding power over their own lives. He saw the Black and Brown Power movements of the time as natural and integral to a global struggle, of which Ireland was apart, and Vietnam and Cuba and South Africa and Nicaragua and so many other places of contest between the past and the future. Between imperialism and solidarity. George Harrison was the least nostalgic 89-year-old I have ever met or will ever meet. When he spoke of the past it was to inform the future. When he remembered his many comrades who proceeded him, some far too young, into history it was with regret, not just for their passing, but that their contributions to the movement that they had lived there lives for were cut short. His thoughts were always on tomorrow; it’s activities and struggles. George remained an Irish republican because he was an anti-imperialist and a socialist. Consequently he was the Patron of Republican Sinn Féin and an implacable foe of the Good Friday Agreement. He spoke of Marx and Che and Fidel with the same admiration that he spoke of Tone and Emmett and Connolly (how he wished that Connolly and Lenin could have met!). What I learned from George and will keep with me as I remain an activist, trade unionist and revolutionary is that the struggle is not sectoralist, it is combined and only in it’s active combination will we have anything like the victory we seek. We, who seek the world George sought, cannot simply trod the path marked by the deep and lasting imprints of George’s enormous shoes. George has walked his path and we are left seek out the path to a future George would not live to see, but nonetheless, would not come into being without him. Him and the millions like him who refuse to be broken, who refuse to compromise the future to this present. Those, like George who see with the clarity of a supremely calm, confident and humble man that only by the actions of those who engage in the process going on all around us, fully and consciously with the goal in mind is the goal achieved. It is our great fortune and our enemy’s great torment that there will be other George Harrisons. Imperialism made George Harrison a revolutionary and will continue to make others like him, though one can say that George was a superlative example of the best of his class, he will not be the last. Let imperialism and capitalism shudder at the idea of a new generation of George Harrsions, for they have reason to fear. Even when I disagreed strongly with him, talking with George as I did frequently from before we interviewed him until several days before he died, I became convinced of the optimism he exuded for the youth of today internationally. That and the “actuality of the revolution” that he lived every day of his long and remarkable life. I cannot imagine a more fitting tribute to George than to commit to carry on, regardless of the obstacles and difficulties ahead. To continue, relentlessly, in pursuit of world of solidarity, emancipation and socialism that George sought. That is the only homage worthy of such a man. Indeed, as George knew and proved in deed, a life in the service of human freedom is the most honorable and noble profession in which a thinking person could engage. George Harrison, Presenté! October, 2004 http://www.fourthwrite.ie

Trials of The Brooklyn 5 Event: http://admin2.7.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=2757

George Harrison: Irish Revolutionary and American Activist That was a great article, thanks for posting it.

I would be remiss if I did not mention the U.S. Republican organisation that Harrison co-founded or the radio programme that he participated in through his final days.

http://www.irishfreedom.net/

http://www.irishfreedom.com/ or http://www.wbai.org/ Let no revisionists soil this hero's memory.

George Harrison was an outstanding Republican and a true internationalist. He will remain an inspiration to all those who follow in the footsteps of Tone and Connolly.

Wednesday, February 23, 2005 The rebel with a cause… By: Marion Harrison With the IRA’s commitment to the Northern Ireland Peace Process under intense scrutiny, Marian Harrison traces the extraordinary life of the Mayo-born gun-runner, George Harrison, who died in the US last year. Overlooking Shammer Lake sits a decrepit, deserted cottage, steeped in IRA history. The roof of the Harrison homestead has fallen in, the windows are rotten but inside you can still make out the shell of a fireplace. It was here that the villagers gathered a couple of nights a week for a game of cards and to swap republican stories. The older generation would talk about the famine, loved ones overseas and their commitment to a thirty-two county Republic. It was here that George Harrison got his first glimpse of an Ireland torn apart by political violence. In the early 1900s every second family in Shammer, on the outskirts of Kilkelly, were members of the IRA committed to the fight. The war against the British was raging and all of Ireland seemed up in arms. Secret meetings were held in kitchens around the village and youngsters were given the honour of looking out for the enemy. Any blue shirts were spied on and reports of their movements were sent back to the branch. “Members of the IRA in Shammer at the time passed on messages and reported back on Blueshirts in the village. Underground bunkers were spotted around the countryside with one in Shammerbawn,” noted one local. George’s parents, Tom ‘Yank’ and Winnie McDermott, a native of the bordering village of Barnacogue had returned from America to a plot of land on the banks of the Siuleen River, donated by Tom’s sister. Tom was a stonecutter and Winnie ran the village shop, rearing ten children. The shop was something of a landmark in Shammer, where people from both sides of the river, Shammer Ban and Shammer Dubh met to play cards and talk politics. While the youngsters played handball against the gable wall, held boxing matches in a nearby field or tied up a couple of old socks as a football. Like many houses of its time the Harrison homestead was overlooked by the tricolour, which proudly flew from a post along the riverside. A Sinn Féin banner also flew in the village, with the words The Thomas Ashe Cumman, Sinn Féin and United We Stand. In 1916 Thomas Ashe led the rebels and was one of the last to surrender. He was deemed a hero after his arrest and conviction when he went on hunger strike. In later years Harrison became close friends with Paddy Logan, a comrade who had been on hunger strike with Ashe. Republicanism was rife in the small village. A company of the IRA was founded, commanded by Martin Casey, a native of the area and a Sinn Féin cooperative was organised, of which Tom Harrison, George’s father, was a member. But George’s first hands-on experience of the War of Independence was late one night when his home was raided by the Black and Tans. Butter was taken from his mother before the soldiers threw George into a corner for wearing a green jumper. This experience stayed with him throughout his life and further increased his hatred for the British. When Martin Casey led an attack against the Black and Tans in Kilkelly and burnt their station to the ground he was captured but efforts to negotiate between the British and the IRA led to his release. Harrison stood along the bonfires, as Casey was welcomed back into the village as a hero. This accompanied with the fact that the Civil War claimed a Shammer native, Michael Duffy, a cousin of Harrison, when he sustained gun wounds fighting with Irish Government troops led to Harrison’s growing republicanism. The environment in which he was reared was one raging with the republican movement and those who fought for their country were deemed to be heroes. Harrison’s own role in the republican movement first began when he delivered copies of An Phoblacht to homes around the village. Rarely did a week pass that George’s views on the affairs of the world did not appear in some publication or other and no later than the morning of the day he died, he penned the following sentiment for the inclusion in the newspaper ‘Saoirse’, of which he was a founding member. May the spirit of those who suffered in the torture chambers Of the Empire of Hell animate us with enough strength to Free the land of our heart’s desire. In dedication to all my comrades, the living and the dead It was tradition that youngsters would join the army and at the age of 16 George Harrison joined the IRA, he was attending weekly meeting and running messages between local IRA units. He was trained to use a rifle in derelict buildings before being taken out to a nearby bog to fire two rounds of ammunition. But the hopes of the Shammer unit were never fulfilled and the East Mayo Brigade never saw any real action. In the mid-30’s Harrison crossed the Irish sea where he did ‘pick and shovel’ work and at harvest time he, like many other Irish, picked potatoes on the English farms. Money was scarce at the time and while the Harrisons were reasonably well off, the few pounds sent home by George were welcomed. George set foot on Shammer soil in 1938 before leaving his homestead for the last time to emigrate to the supposed land of opportunity. The Kilkelly man served in the US army from April 1944 to February 1946 attaining the rank of corporal and in the 1940’s he became active in numerous Irish-American organisations. He was an avid member of the James Connolly Club and it was during this time that he became friendly with Liam Cotter. The Kerry native, a seasoned member of the IRA, shared Harrison’s goal for a united Ireland disconnected from British rule. Cotter and Harrison were close comrades, always anxious for news from the home front. Until his death, three months ago, Harrison was in contact with home at least once a week. Kathleen Knowles McGuirk, former General Secretary of Sinn Féin, received a phone call from Harrison every Sunday looking for an update on the Northern situation. He was also in contact with friends from Shammer with every conversation ending with the expression ‘Up Shammer’. Harrison never forgot his home place and when he and Cotter were approached by the IRA to supply weapons to his native country, they agreed but not without some hesitation. It was the death of Paddy McLogan, a friend of George’s that spurred the two men on. Suicide was suggested at the time but Harrison was suspicious and feared the M15 was behind his death. It was in the 1950’s that his role in the IRA deepened and he began to supply guns to the IRA. When the troubles began in the North of Ireland he became the IRA’s main gunrunner supplying more than 3,000 weapons and one million rounds of ammunition to the IRA over three decades. Handguns, Armalites and Bazookas were all sent to Ireland but George Harrison was unrepentant to the end. “We got everything we could lay our hands on and sent them to Ireland. It wasn’t easy, you had to rely on people coming over.” George De Meo, an Italian neighbour of Harrison family, George had moved his parents and brother to Brooklyn in 1949, appeared to have strong mafia connections and was interested in guns, running a gun store outside the city. With De Meo connected to arms shipments for Cuban rebels, it wasn’t long before he became a crucial link in the Chain, supplying Harrison with arms for the IRA. Despite having close encounters with the law, thousands of weapons were brought to the hands of IRA members in Ireland, all passing through George Harrison. However, the Harrison network was brought to a sudden halt in 1981 in an FBI sting operation, known as Operation Bushmill. The charge was gunrunning, the cast of characters might have come straight out of a film and the plot gimmick would have made the most experienced directors proud. It seemed like a cast- iron case against the IRA supporters but Harrison and four others were acquitted of illegal gunrunning. In defending the five, their attorneys had put the CIA on trial. The five Irish-born defendants could not be guilty of crimes against the United States Government, they claimed, because for 25 years the silent partner in their gunrunning operations had been the Government, specifically the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Thanks to evidence provided by a source connected to the CIA the five men had a simple defence and it worked. When it was suggested during the court hearing that he had only been running guns for six months, Harrison was outraged. So much so in fact that his lawyer, shrewd, silver-tongued Mayo born Frank Durkan, told the Judge: “Your honour, the prosecutor has just charged my client with running guns for six months. My client feels somewhat insulted. Because as the Government well knows, he had aided and abetted and supplied arms to the rebels in Northern Ireland for a quarter of a century.” Harrison and the other four IRA gunrunners were described as terrorists but to the end they argued that they were not terrorists but patriots, Irish patriots and patriotic Americans as well. They claimed that they had served the US in World War 11, Korea and Vietnam but they insisted that they would never turn their backs on the land of their birth. The trial made for interesting viewing with a number of interesting character witnesses. 86-year-old Samuel P. O’Reilly took to the stand. The freedom fighter had been among the people in the GPO during the Easter Rising. Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, who sent a message from Ireland to be read at Harrison’s memorial, described Harrison and Falvay as among “the finest people living in this country, people who would never do anything that would dishonour either the country they were born in or the country they live in”. Her sentiments had two jurors in tears as she left the stand. The jury accepted their unsubstantiated claim that the CIA was backing them. “Up the IRA” declared George Harrison as he raised his arm like a victorious boxer after the trial, unrepentant to the end. It was the cause of Irish freedom that fuelled his zeal; he fought for Ireland’s Independence from Britain all his life referring to Britain only as “the British Empire from Hell”. Speaking at George Harrison’s memorial service in Manhattan, Frank Durkan spoke of Harrison’s charitable nature outside his usual activism. “Harrison’s passion for the cause of the underdog was exceeded only by his dedication to the relief of their suffering. He was a soft touch”. In spite of his avowed antipathy to many of the policies of organised religion, he gave generously, whether it was his new coat to a homeless man on the streets or a committee working to restore a church in his native village. Today people across the country enjoy the fruits of his labour. The church in Kilkelly was repaired with help from Harrison. Ballintubber Abbey and the stone to the Spanish Civil War Martyr Tommy Patton on Achill Island also received funding from the Mayo man. Times have changed since Harrison set foot on Irish soil and so has political opinion. A lot of people on the island changed their political opinions but not George Harrison. He didn’t change one whit and what’s more he was proud of it. There was a time when being an IRA gunrunner was enough to get you a medal and a postage stamp with your name on it but that Ireland that Harrison left in the 1930’s has changed dramatically. Guns have been swapped for debates and bombs for peace talks, something George Harrison and his compatriots hadn’t in mind and he made his feeling on Northern Ireland clear. He described electoral politics as a dangerous distraction and believed that physical force was a means “to drive the Brits out, lock, stock and barrel”. As far as George Harrison was concerned the peace process was a “sell-out”. Despite your political opinion one must agree that Harrison was determined in his cause to the end. He had survived a hail of bullets fired on him in a subway and was the victim of several muggings. He threw in his lot with Republican Sinn Féin and the Continuity IRA in 2004, when RSF was put on the US State Department foreign terrorist list. He promised to increase his donations to the party and was reported to say, “If the Bush administration want to jail me, I’m ready.” Harrison’s nurse, Priscilla McLean, was in Manhattan on the day he died ensuring that he had an absentee ballot to vote for John Kerry in the election for President in November. One message from Ireland, recited at Harrison’s memorial service summed up his shrewdness. He was always one step ahead. “For 70 years of his adult life he led them a merry dance and lived and died on his own terms.” George Harrison died in New York at the age of 89, never having returned to his family cottage in Shammer for 66 years. Some believe that he made a vow never to return to the hearth of his home place until a united Ireland had been carved out. - Western People (Poster's Comment: I could be mistaken, but I believe Harrison suspected that McLogan was murdered by revisionists within the Republican Movement at the time, not MI5. Please correct me if I'm wrong.)

View Full Version: Remember George Harrison 1915 - 2004