Feature: George Harrison ( no ,not the one of Beatles fame)

By Sandy Boyer (for the Blanket)


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.