George Harrison (Irish republican)

Harrison was born in May 1915 in Shammer, Kilkelly, County Mayo, Ireland to parents Tom ‘Yank’ Harrison and Winnie McDermott. The Shammer Harrison grew up in has been described as fiercely Irish Republican, and it was there that the young Harrison experienced the chaotic years of both the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War. In one incident that stayed with him for the rest of his life, he remembered a visit by the Black and Tans to his mother's shop that ended with them assaulting him. During the Civil War a cousin of Harrison, Michael Duffy, was shot while fighting as a part of the Anti-Treaty IRA. Both these incidents contributed to his growing belief in Irish Republicanism.{{cite news |author= |date=23 February 2005 |title=The rebel with a cause… |url=http://archives.tcm.ie/westernpeople/2005/02/23/story23855.asp |url-status=dead |work=Western People |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100129051240/http://archives.tcm.ie/westernpeople/2005/02/23/story23855.asp |archive-date=29 January 2010 |access-date=6 October 2019}}

At age 16 in 1931, Harrison joined what remnants remained of the Irish Republican Army. However, by this point, the IRA was at a low ebb and his unit never saw any actual fighting. By the mid-1930s, he had emigrated to England where he worked as a farm labourer. He briefly returned to Ireland in 1938 before emigrating again, this time to the United States, settling in New York City. Between April 1944 and February 1946, he served with the US Army in World War II in the Pacific Theatre.{{cite news |author= |date=23 October 2004 |title=Republican who preferred the gun to politics |url=https://www.irishtimes.com/news/republican-who-preferred-the-gun-to-politics-1.1163351 |work=Irish Times |access-date=6 October 2019}} Following the war, he became active in Irish-American political organisations such as Clan na Gael and the James Connolly Club. It was during this time Harrison became affiliated with Liam Cotter, a fellow Irish immigrant from County Kerry who had also spent time in the IRA.

At some point in the mid-1950s, the IRA approached Cotter and Harrison about supplying them arms for their Border Campaign, a request which the pair accepted, beginning a gun running career which would last for several decades. Harrison was able to source arms for the IRA through George de Meo, an Italian-American neighbour of his who had connections to the Mafia as well as gun runners who were supplying rebels in Cuba.

In 1962, Cotter and Harrison cut their ties with the IRA as it became apparent the Border campaign was a failure. However, after the start of the Troubles, Dáithí Ó Conaill was able to convince them to support the Provisional IRA in 1970; once again, they began supplying arms to the IRA. Almost all smuggled guns went through the network run by Harrison.{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/jul/18/usa.northernireland|title=Ex-gunrunner fights ban on rebel Sinn Fein|date=17 July 2004|author=Henry McDonald|work=The Guardian}} In 1975, Harrison appeared before a grand jury investigating arms trafficking; however, he was released without charge.

By 1975, the United States Department of Justice started to significantly weaken the Harrison network by prosecuting dozens of IRA arms trafficking cases since the start of the Troubles in 1969, and as early as 1973, the IRA already found more lucrative sources of funding and weapons from foreign states, including Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.{{cite thesis|url=https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/323062074.pdf#page=33|title=Her Majesty's Most Disloyal Opposition: Irish America and the Making of US Policy Toward Northern Ireland|date=May 2020|author=Abi McGowan|publisher=Ohio State University}} The prosecutions of IRA gunrunners in America were so great that according to Belfast author Jack Holland, "Harrison was not aware of any major shipments of arms that had successfully reached the IRA from the U.S. since the late 1970s; that is, before his network's destruction [in 1981]."{{cite book|last=Holland|first=Jack|date=February 1, 2001|title=The American Connection, Revised: U.S. Guns, Money, and Influence in Northern Ireland|publisher=Roberts Rinehart Publishers|page=111|isbn=9-7815-6833-1843}} U.S. House Speaker Tip O'Neill told Northern Ireland Secretary of State Roy Mason in mid-October 1977 that "[t]he flow of guns and money had been greatly reduced."{{cite book|last=Sanders|first=Andrew|date=September 1, 2022|title=The Long Peace Process: The United States of America and Northern Ireland, 1960-2008|publisher=Liverpool University Press|pages=103–104|isbn=978-1-8020-7690-5}}

In 1981, Harrison was arrested by the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force during a sting operation called "Operation Bushmill".{{cite book|last=Holland|first=Jack|date=February 1, 2001|title=The American Connection, Revised: U.S. Guns, Money, and Influence in Northern Ireland|publisher=Roberts Rinehart Publishers|page=100|isbn=9-7815-6833-1843}} Harrison, Tom Falvey, Michael Flannery, Pat Mullin, and Danny Gormley, all Irish immigrants, were acquitted in a criminal trial held in New York City, which lasted from December 1980 to June 1981. Their acquittal was widely attributed to the unconventional efforts of Harrison's personal attorney, Frank Durkan; the men admitted to their activities but claimed that they believed the operation had Central Intelligence Agency sanction.Cox, Thomas J. _The Trial of the IRA Five_. Riverside Books, 1992.{{Cite book |last= |first= |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0ucCAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA58 |title=New York Magazine |date=1982-11-22 |publisher=New York Media, LLC |language=en}} During the trial, a number of people spoke on the defendants' behalf, including Bernadette Devlin.

Although he had spent much of the previous decade involved in this operation, his acquittal marked the end of his active career as an IRA gun-runner as well as the IRA's considerable source of American arms supply (by 1980, the IRA was already importing a large number of weapons from mainland Europe and the Middle East).{{cite journal|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/27041321|title=The Canadian Dimension to the Northern Ireland Conflict|page=201|author=Andrew Sanders and F. Stuart Ross|date=2020|journal=The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies|volume=43 |jstor=27041321 }}{{cite book|last=Holland|first=Jack|date=February 1, 2001|title=The American Connection, Revised: U.S. Guns, Money, and Influence in Northern Ireland|publisher=Roberts Rinehart Publishers|pages=110–111|isbn=9-7815-6833-1843}} Throughout his life he would devote his time to other various socialist and communist causes, including support for the African National Congress, the Sandinista movement, the Cuban Revolution, the Second Spanish Republic and the Independista (Puerto Rican nationalist) campaign against Puerto Rico's status as an American Commonwealth.{{cite news |last=Bono |first=Gary |date=29 October 2004 |title=George Harrison, Irish American activist, 89 |url=https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/george-harrison-irish-american-activist-89/ |work=People's World |access-date=6 October 2019}}

Harrison broke with the Provisional Republican Movement in 1986 when Provisional Sinn Féin dropped the traditional Republican stance of not taking their seats in Dáil Éireann. He joined Republican Sinn Féin and was a founder and activist of the Republican support group Cumann na Saoirse/Irish Freedom Committee in the US. He was a patron of Republican Sinn Féin until he died.{{fact|date=November 2021}}

He also took a number of controversial stances within the broader Irish-American community in New York City, including outspoken support for former Mayor David Dinkins, support for the inclusion of LGBT marchers in the New York Saint Patrick's Day Parade{{cite news |last=Wadler |first=Joyce |date=16 March 2000 |title=Unbowed, and Unashamed of His I.R.A. Role |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2000/03/16/nyregion/unbowed-and-unashamed-of-his-ira-role.html |work=New York Times |access-date=6 October 2019}} and his open defiance of the Ancient Order of Hibernians.{{citation needed|date=November 2021}}

He died at the age of 89 in October 2004 from natural causes at his home in Brooklyn, New York City.[https://www.ancestry.co.uk/family-tree/person/tree/114266600/person/220134067810/story?_phsrc=OzZ5757&_phstart=successSource Ancestry: George Harrison LifeStory]{{Better source needed|date=May 2021}}

{{reflist}}

• [http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1263854,00.html Ex-gunrunner fights ban on rebel Sinn Fein]
• [https://findingaids.library.nyu.edu/tamwag/aia_009/ George Harrison Papers], Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at New York University Special Collections

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Category:1915 births

Category:2004 deaths

Category:United States Army personnel of World War II

Category:Arms trafficking

Category:Irish Republican Army (1922–1969) members

Category:Irish emigrants to the United States

Category:Irish republicans

Category:Irish socialists

Category:New York (state) socialists

Category:People from Brooklyn

Category:People from County Mayo

Category:Provisional Irish Republican Army