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Liam O Ruairc đźŹ´ with some reminiscences of an old friend who died in October.

Kevin Bean (1955-2024) 

This is not an actual obituary of Kevin Bean (1955-2024) since there are many aspects, events and people in his life that I am not well acquainted with. The purpose of this article is to provide some personal reminiscences of him. This will be about the Kevin Bean I knew, not as he has been represented in fiction – he was either an actual character in a novel or some fictional character had been based on him in a novel written by an acquaintance of his. I unfortunately can no longer remember the author or the title of the novel, and since he passed away on 12 October have asked a number of people who knew him well about it. While a few were familiar with this story none could come up with the exact details.

It was on Friday 31 October 1997 – actually the 80th anniversary of the October Revolution had been marked that day – that I first heard about Kevin Bean when reading for the first time the new sections of the second edition of Henry Patterson’s The Politics of Illusion: A Political History of the IRA which had been published some weeks earlier. Patterson was discussing the version of Kevin’s MA thesis as it had been published by the University of Liverpool in small numbers. This is a very hard to find publication that I only read years later, although the bulk of its ideas were summed up by Kevin in an Irish Studies Review article in 1995. The name Kevin Bean struck me as at that time Rowan Atkinson’s comedy show Mr Bean was everywhere in the media. I recall Kevin later telling me about how this MA had actually been written. He was working on it in his car while waiting to have an interview with Sinn FĂ©in councillor Bobby Lavery somewhere in North Belfast in the hours preceding the 1994 ceasefire.

The first time I actually met Kevin in person was at the founding meeting of the Irish Republican Writers Group where the pre-print version of the first issue of Fourthwrite was discussed. That took place on 22 January 2000 in the office of the Lower Ormeau Road Residents Association. Kevin had a very good article in it entitled Every picture tells a story. (It is not available online right now, but I scanned a copy that will be added to the Kevin Bean Library website in January 2025) He initially made contact with Anthony McIntyre when he had read that he was doing a PhD at Queen’s University Belfast and posted him the published version of his MA thesis. I don’t think that I really had the occasion to speak to Kevin that day simply because too much was happening and there were quite a few people present which probably made me distracted.

I really became friends with Kevin on 20 May 2000. That day Des Wilson had organized a conference entitled Republicanism – The Way Forward at the Europa Hotel in Belfast. Almost every group claiming allegiance to Irish republicanism from Sinn FĂ©in to the 32 County Sovereignty Movement and the IRSP was present. (That day was also the very first time I met Marian Price in person, but that’s another story). I can’t recall how I ended up talking to Kevin but we spent a large amount of time discussing various issues. After that conference he posted me a copy of his chapter Defining Republicanism: Shifting Discourses of New Nationalism and Post-republicanism in the book edited by Marianne Elliott that had just been published by Liverpool University Press.

One evening in August 2003 in Anthony McIntyre’s house in Springhill, Kevin told me that the beginning of his serious interest in the politics of Irish republicanism dated from the moment he came across the very first issue of An Phoblacht in 1970 when he was about 15 years old. Another very important occasion was in the summer of either 1973 or 1974, I can’t recall exactly. He was in Dublin at the time and was staying at a place where young IRA volunteers from Tyrone (I am almost certain they were from Strabane or its proximity) - possibly on the run - were lodging. What interested Kevin is that at least one of them (if not more) were former members of The Militant Trotskyist group incarnation before moving to Provisional republicanism. This or these individuals were later killed in a premature explosion. I recall telling Kevin about Gerard Magee’s Tyrone’s Struggle for Irish Freedom book as it is most likely to have information about the people he was talking about, But I am unable to recall if he ever was able to check it.

Kevin Bean had not just a great interest in Irish republicanism, he also had strong connections to the British left. When an Irish Republican Writers Group meeting took place in the Teachers Club in Parnell Square Dublin on 4 November 2000 to organise a response to the pickets and intimidation that had been organised by members of Sinn FĂ©in outside the homes of Anthony McIntyre, Tommy Gorman and their families after the assassination of Joe O’Connor, Kevin had been tasked to convince the British Left (whatever that is) to provide unconditional (but possibly critical) support. I can’t recall if anything came out of that.

Unfortunately the Irish Republican Writers Group broke up after a meeting on 10 March 2001 which took place at the Ulster People’s College (at that time in Adelaide Park). The fall out came after a vote to set up an editoral committee, 9 people voting in favour, 2 people voting against (Anthony McIntyre and Carrie Twomey) and 3 abstentions (Kevin Bean, Tommy Gorman and myself). On the same occasion Bernadette McAliskey handed in a resignation letter from the group. Note that Brendan Hughes had not been present at that meeting.

That meeting was also the first time I saw the pre-print version of Republican Voices, a book of interviews with republican activists edited by Kevin Bean and Mark Hayes which was to be launched later that summer. Among the literature available on the subject at the time this was probably the best there was. The problem is that the book had serious difficulties being distributed and its condition was very fragile. I know what I am talking about as I was amongst those who were trying to get shops to stock it. Bizarrely the book fared far better in German translation. The book is still in print and for sale in German, whereas it is only possible to get the book in English on the second hand market at very expensive prices.

The distribution problems were not just limited to the book. In 2002 -2003 there were attempts to produce a print version of The Blanket – A Journal of Protest and Dissent. Only two issues ever came out. Kevin Bean was in charge of the material production of the magazine after the first issue, and the second and final Spring 2003 issue was produced by him and people he knew in Lancashire. This was a very laborious and complicated process, much more so than the first issue had been. But given the serious distribution problems, it was later decided that the journal would remain solely online.

Brendan Hughes was apparently quite fond of Kevin. He stayed in his house in Lancashire in January 2001 (if I recall the date correctly) and told him that the area reminded him a bit of the old Lower Falls. On 18 February 2008 Kevin set out to come to The Dark’s funeral the following day, but despite spending £400 to come over and drive at least 100 miles due to technical problems he did not make it to his major regret.

On 29 May 2003 I was present with Kevin at the opening of the new Belfast Exposed Gallery 23 Donegall Street in the centre of Belfast that had been organised by it director Pauline Hadaway with whom Kevin had become very close to. Kevin and to an extent myself would become frequently (in his case) and occasionally (in my case) associated with the gallery.

In late spring 2005 Kevin Bean insisted that I become associated with a project called Portrait From A 50s Archive. A book associated with the exhibition was published with essays by Kevin Bean, Marianne Elliott and myself. It was about family photographs that people had kept from the 1950s in Northern Ireland and what these could tell us about those times. While Kevin’s essay dealt with the period in political, social and economic terms, my essay was about the actual photographs. This was the most difficult essay I ever had to write. Aesthetically speaking the photographs were of no interest, and an instrumental view of the pictures allegedly “proving” that people were experiencing modernisation was a non-starter. How to write something interesting about these photographs proved very challenging and demanded a lot of work.

Kevin was frequently invited as a speaker to the gallery. On 16 March 2010, Kevin and I were joint speakers at an event entitled Enlightenment, Democracy and Republicanism which was advertised in the following words:

One of the predominant themes in public life in Western societies over the last twenty years has been that we live in a post-ideological age. Kevin Bean and Liam Ă“ Ruairc ask, can Northern Ireland develop new form of politics by re-assessing the origins of modern politics in the eighteenth century Enlightenment?

This very well illustrates the kind of issues that Kevin was passionate about and could speak really well of. Aside from Pauline who was managing the gallery that evening, only four people turned up to the event. Two of them were Marian Price and the German journalist and author Marianne Quoirin, who sadly passed away in 2022. Kevin wrote a foreword to her 2011 book Töchter des Terrors: Die Frauen der IRA which was about women involved in the IRA.

By that time Kevin was a professor at the University of Liverpool. Getting that job had been a complicated matter. His PhD had not been completed at that stage, and it was imperative that he finished it. It is really when Kevin had to transform the PhD into a book that it received my full attention. In early summer 2005 he stayed with me in Mayfield Street in Belfast while working on the book. This actually involved almost re-writing the PhD because the book form was to include new interviews, new material and so on.

Writing the book The New Politics of Sinn FĂ©in was difficult for Kevin. He missed several editorial deadlines. The continuation of his job depended on this book being published, so the whole issue was a source of real stress for him. Reviews were unanimous on how excellent the book was. However after it went to the printers in December 2007, the book was unfortunately poorly distributed. The Bookshop At Queen’s in Belfast which boasted stocking almost every publication in the field of Irish history and politics never had any copies on sale. After I reviewed the book for The Sovereign Nation readers were actually asking “But where can we get this book?!”

Kevin was a frequent visitor to Ireland. He regularly stayed with Mark Hayes in Kinawley in County Fermanagh. The three of us would meet on numerous occasions. In 2011 there was talk of working together on an article about so-called “dissidents” for Democracy and Security, but despite a working draft existing, nothing came out of it. There was also his other friend John Shaw I got on with really well. Kevin met my comrades from the Ireland Information Group Sweden and was invited to Stockholm in September 2008 to give a talk (Marian Price was the other speaker) about the state of politics ten years after the Belfast Agreement. Their speeches were translated into Swedish by a US army desertor who had fled to Sweden to escape the Vietnam War. There remain photographs of us all drinking in Derry on the day of the Easter commemorations in 2010.

Kevin was often here due to academic conferences and events. In is in this context that I first met with him, people like Jonathan Tonge, Peter Shirlow, Stephen Hopkins, Conal Parr, Aaron Edward, Maria Power or Marisa McGlinchey. He also told me about Lorenzo Bosi and Paddy Hoey years before I ever met any of them in person. Bizarrely Kevin used to sleep over at the QUB student union during his visits, not at hotels and the like. We would eat and drink in places like The Morning Star or The Duke of York. While these events were academic in nature, sometimes really bizarre incidents happened. At one event a very elderly man from the Indian subcontinent approached Kevin. He said that he had been jailed by the British for translating Dan Breen’s My Fight For Irish Freedom in on of the Indian languages and was seeking advice from Kevin on how to get compensation for his imprisonment!

But it is important to stress that Kevin was not primarily an academic. He also regularly attended politically engaged gatherings. He was a speaker at a number of Republican Sinn FĂ©in meetings. He attended at least three in the Conway Mill in Belfast. He was a speaker at their Anti-Imperialist Forum on 13-15 June 2013 which was the party’s G8 counter-summit. I recall this very well, because I took a very severe hypoglycemia and had problems speaking coherenly at one stage – Cáit Trainor was saying I was not making sense and only Kevin knew what was wrong and went to get me sugar. He was also a speaker at the 2014 RuairĂ­ Ă“ Brádaigh Summer School in June of that year. He also gave talks in the workers co-operative Na Chroisbhealai CafĂ© (aka Fresh Claims) in a place that used to be called BX in King Street Belfast.

From about 2001, Kevin and I used to talk on the phone about once every week or ten days. To give a few random examples of what we used to talk about, Kevin was convinced that the most significant historical opportunity missed over the last 200 years was that Napoleon did not invade England. Had it been succcessful it would have been possible to unite the power of the industrial revolution with the democratic ideals of the French revolution and with that transform the world. To which I would reply that had the Bolsheviks won the batlle of Warsaw in August 1920 revolution would have spread to Germany and the entire tragic history of the 20th century would have been very different. Kevin also had a keen interest in Frisian languages and we wondered if a translation of Stalin’s Marxism and the Problems of Linguistics would be worthwhile. We would have many keen discussions about Beethoven, and how the opening of his 3rd Eroica symphony relates to the opening of Tolstoy War and Peace. Kevin actually went to Heiligenstadt in 2015 if I recall and bought a poster of Beethoven’s Heiligenstadt Testament. We both had major interest in the Ukrainian Marxist scholar Roman Rosdolsky’s book Engels and the 'Nonhistoric' Peoples: the National Question in the Revolution of 1848, which raised the question to what extent could the Loyalists in the six counties be characterized as Völkerabfälle (historical refuse of peoples or a “non historical nation”) "fanatical standard-bearers of counter-revolution" like the Jacobites, the Chouannerie or the Basques supporters on Don Carlos.

In August 2018 Kevin Bean wrote a nice epigraph for my book Peace or Pacification? Northern Ireland After The Defeat of the IRA. This was one of the last occasions we were to be in contact. We used to communicate mainly via email, but when he retired from Liverpool University, his email was no longer working and Hotmail had blocked my access to all the contacts I used until then. I also lost my phone and all the numbers I had. Losing my job and the period of the Covid lockdowns made things very difficult. Unfortunately I learned too late of his serious health problems and to my regret never had the chance to speak to him one last time. When I attended his funeral mass in Liverpool on 14 November, I nevertheless managed to smile because I could exactly see what conversations we would have had about that mass: compared to Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis how could one even dare call this a funeral mass? How could this be an authentic Catholic mass since it follows the revisionist rituals of self-proclaimed and illegal so-called “Second Vatican Council”? But that day was very foggy, and Kevin would have been happy to be buried in the foggy dew...

Liam Ă“ Ruairc is the former co-editor of The Blanket.

Kevin Bean

Liam O Ruairc đźŹ´ with some reminiscences of an old friend who died in October.

Kevin Bean (1955-2024) 

This is not an actual obituary of Kevin Bean (1955-2024) since there are many aspects, events and people in his life that I am not well acquainted with. The purpose of this article is to provide some personal reminiscences of him. This will be about the Kevin Bean I knew, not as he has been represented in fiction – he was either an actual character in a novel or some fictional character had been based on him in a novel written by an acquaintance of his. I unfortunately can no longer remember the author or the title of the novel, and since he passed away on 12 October have asked a number of people who knew him well about it. While a few were familiar with this story none could come up with the exact details.

It was on Friday 31 October 1997 – actually the 80th anniversary of the October Revolution had been marked that day – that I first heard about Kevin Bean when reading for the first time the new sections of the second edition of Henry Patterson’s The Politics of Illusion: A Political History of the IRA which had been published some weeks earlier. Patterson was discussing the version of Kevin’s MA thesis as it had been published by the University of Liverpool in small numbers. This is a very hard to find publication that I only read years later, although the bulk of its ideas were summed up by Kevin in an Irish Studies Review article in 1995. The name Kevin Bean struck me as at that time Rowan Atkinson’s comedy show Mr Bean was everywhere in the media. I recall Kevin later telling me about how this MA had actually been written. He was working on it in his car while waiting to have an interview with Sinn FĂ©in councillor Bobby Lavery somewhere in North Belfast in the hours preceding the 1994 ceasefire.

The first time I actually met Kevin in person was at the founding meeting of the Irish Republican Writers Group where the pre-print version of the first issue of Fourthwrite was discussed. That took place on 22 January 2000 in the office of the Lower Ormeau Road Residents Association. Kevin had a very good article in it entitled Every picture tells a story. (It is not available online right now, but I scanned a copy that will be added to the Kevin Bean Library website in January 2025) He initially made contact with Anthony McIntyre when he had read that he was doing a PhD at Queen’s University Belfast and posted him the published version of his MA thesis. I don’t think that I really had the occasion to speak to Kevin that day simply because too much was happening and there were quite a few people present which probably made me distracted.

I really became friends with Kevin on 20 May 2000. That day Des Wilson had organized a conference entitled Republicanism – The Way Forward at the Europa Hotel in Belfast. Almost every group claiming allegiance to Irish republicanism from Sinn FĂ©in to the 32 County Sovereignty Movement and the IRSP was present. (That day was also the very first time I met Marian Price in person, but that’s another story). I can’t recall how I ended up talking to Kevin but we spent a large amount of time discussing various issues. After that conference he posted me a copy of his chapter Defining Republicanism: Shifting Discourses of New Nationalism and Post-republicanism in the book edited by Marianne Elliott that had just been published by Liverpool University Press.

One evening in August 2003 in Anthony McIntyre’s house in Springhill, Kevin told me that the beginning of his serious interest in the politics of Irish republicanism dated from the moment he came across the very first issue of An Phoblacht in 1970 when he was about 15 years old. Another very important occasion was in the summer of either 1973 or 1974, I can’t recall exactly. He was in Dublin at the time and was staying at a place where young IRA volunteers from Tyrone (I am almost certain they were from Strabane or its proximity) - possibly on the run - were lodging. What interested Kevin is that at least one of them (if not more) were former members of The Militant Trotskyist group incarnation before moving to Provisional republicanism. This or these individuals were later killed in a premature explosion. I recall telling Kevin about Gerard Magee’s Tyrone’s Struggle for Irish Freedom book as it is most likely to have information about the people he was talking about, But I am unable to recall if he ever was able to check it.

Kevin Bean had not just a great interest in Irish republicanism, he also had strong connections to the British left. When an Irish Republican Writers Group meeting took place in the Teachers Club in Parnell Square Dublin on 4 November 2000 to organise a response to the pickets and intimidation that had been organised by members of Sinn FĂ©in outside the homes of Anthony McIntyre, Tommy Gorman and their families after the assassination of Joe O’Connor, Kevin had been tasked to convince the British Left (whatever that is) to provide unconditional (but possibly critical) support. I can’t recall if anything came out of that.

Unfortunately the Irish Republican Writers Group broke up after a meeting on 10 March 2001 which took place at the Ulster People’s College (at that time in Adelaide Park). The fall out came after a vote to set up an editoral committee, 9 people voting in favour, 2 people voting against (Anthony McIntyre and Carrie Twomey) and 3 abstentions (Kevin Bean, Tommy Gorman and myself). On the same occasion Bernadette McAliskey handed in a resignation letter from the group. Note that Brendan Hughes had not been present at that meeting.

That meeting was also the first time I saw the pre-print version of Republican Voices, a book of interviews with republican activists edited by Kevin Bean and Mark Hayes which was to be launched later that summer. Among the literature available on the subject at the time this was probably the best there was. The problem is that the book had serious difficulties being distributed and its condition was very fragile. I know what I am talking about as I was amongst those who were trying to get shops to stock it. Bizarrely the book fared far better in German translation. The book is still in print and for sale in German, whereas it is only possible to get the book in English on the second hand market at very expensive prices.

The distribution problems were not just limited to the book. In 2002 -2003 there were attempts to produce a print version of The Blanket – A Journal of Protest and Dissent. Only two issues ever came out. Kevin Bean was in charge of the material production of the magazine after the first issue, and the second and final Spring 2003 issue was produced by him and people he knew in Lancashire. This was a very laborious and complicated process, much more so than the first issue had been. But given the serious distribution problems, it was later decided that the journal would remain solely online.

Brendan Hughes was apparently quite fond of Kevin. He stayed in his house in Lancashire in January 2001 (if I recall the date correctly) and told him that the area reminded him a bit of the old Lower Falls. On 18 February 2008 Kevin set out to come to The Dark’s funeral the following day, but despite spending £400 to come over and drive at least 100 miles due to technical problems he did not make it to his major regret.

On 29 May 2003 I was present with Kevin at the opening of the new Belfast Exposed Gallery 23 Donegall Street in the centre of Belfast that had been organised by it director Pauline Hadaway with whom Kevin had become very close to. Kevin and to an extent myself would become frequently (in his case) and occasionally (in my case) associated with the gallery.

In late spring 2005 Kevin Bean insisted that I become associated with a project called Portrait From A 50s Archive. A book associated with the exhibition was published with essays by Kevin Bean, Marianne Elliott and myself. It was about family photographs that people had kept from the 1950s in Northern Ireland and what these could tell us about those times. While Kevin’s essay dealt with the period in political, social and economic terms, my essay was about the actual photographs. This was the most difficult essay I ever had to write. Aesthetically speaking the photographs were of no interest, and an instrumental view of the pictures allegedly “proving” that people were experiencing modernisation was a non-starter. How to write something interesting about these photographs proved very challenging and demanded a lot of work.

Kevin was frequently invited as a speaker to the gallery. On 16 March 2010, Kevin and I were joint speakers at an event entitled Enlightenment, Democracy and Republicanism which was advertised in the following words:

One of the predominant themes in public life in Western societies over the last twenty years has been that we live in a post-ideological age. Kevin Bean and Liam Ă“ Ruairc ask, can Northern Ireland develop new form of politics by re-assessing the origins of modern politics in the eighteenth century Enlightenment?

This very well illustrates the kind of issues that Kevin was passionate about and could speak really well of. Aside from Pauline who was managing the gallery that evening, only four people turned up to the event. Two of them were Marian Price and the German journalist and author Marianne Quoirin, who sadly passed away in 2022. Kevin wrote a foreword to her 2011 book Töchter des Terrors: Die Frauen der IRA which was about women involved in the IRA.

By that time Kevin was a professor at the University of Liverpool. Getting that job had been a complicated matter. His PhD had not been completed at that stage, and it was imperative that he finished it. It is really when Kevin had to transform the PhD into a book that it received my full attention. In early summer 2005 he stayed with me in Mayfield Street in Belfast while working on the book. This actually involved almost re-writing the PhD because the book form was to include new interviews, new material and so on.

Writing the book The New Politics of Sinn FĂ©in was difficult for Kevin. He missed several editorial deadlines. The continuation of his job depended on this book being published, so the whole issue was a source of real stress for him. Reviews were unanimous on how excellent the book was. However after it went to the printers in December 2007, the book was unfortunately poorly distributed. The Bookshop At Queen’s in Belfast which boasted stocking almost every publication in the field of Irish history and politics never had any copies on sale. After I reviewed the book for The Sovereign Nation readers were actually asking “But where can we get this book?!”

Kevin was a frequent visitor to Ireland. He regularly stayed with Mark Hayes in Kinawley in County Fermanagh. The three of us would meet on numerous occasions. In 2011 there was talk of working together on an article about so-called “dissidents” for Democracy and Security, but despite a working draft existing, nothing came out of it. There was also his other friend John Shaw I got on with really well. Kevin met my comrades from the Ireland Information Group Sweden and was invited to Stockholm in September 2008 to give a talk (Marian Price was the other speaker) about the state of politics ten years after the Belfast Agreement. Their speeches were translated into Swedish by a US army desertor who had fled to Sweden to escape the Vietnam War. There remain photographs of us all drinking in Derry on the day of the Easter commemorations in 2010.

Kevin was often here due to academic conferences and events. In is in this context that I first met with him, people like Jonathan Tonge, Peter Shirlow, Stephen Hopkins, Conal Parr, Aaron Edward, Maria Power or Marisa McGlinchey. He also told me about Lorenzo Bosi and Paddy Hoey years before I ever met any of them in person. Bizarrely Kevin used to sleep over at the QUB student union during his visits, not at hotels and the like. We would eat and drink in places like The Morning Star or The Duke of York. While these events were academic in nature, sometimes really bizarre incidents happened. At one event a very elderly man from the Indian subcontinent approached Kevin. He said that he had been jailed by the British for translating Dan Breen’s My Fight For Irish Freedom in on of the Indian languages and was seeking advice from Kevin on how to get compensation for his imprisonment!

But it is important to stress that Kevin was not primarily an academic. He also regularly attended politically engaged gatherings. He was a speaker at a number of Republican Sinn FĂ©in meetings. He attended at least three in the Conway Mill in Belfast. He was a speaker at their Anti-Imperialist Forum on 13-15 June 2013 which was the party’s G8 counter-summit. I recall this very well, because I took a very severe hypoglycemia and had problems speaking coherenly at one stage – Cáit Trainor was saying I was not making sense and only Kevin knew what was wrong and went to get me sugar. He was also a speaker at the 2014 RuairĂ­ Ă“ Brádaigh Summer School in June of that year. He also gave talks in the workers co-operative Na Chroisbhealai CafĂ© (aka Fresh Claims) in a place that used to be called BX in King Street Belfast.

From about 2001, Kevin and I used to talk on the phone about once every week or ten days. To give a few random examples of what we used to talk about, Kevin was convinced that the most significant historical opportunity missed over the last 200 years was that Napoleon did not invade England. Had it been succcessful it would have been possible to unite the power of the industrial revolution with the democratic ideals of the French revolution and with that transform the world. To which I would reply that had the Bolsheviks won the batlle of Warsaw in August 1920 revolution would have spread to Germany and the entire tragic history of the 20th century would have been very different. Kevin also had a keen interest in Frisian languages and we wondered if a translation of Stalin’s Marxism and the Problems of Linguistics would be worthwhile. We would have many keen discussions about Beethoven, and how the opening of his 3rd Eroica symphony relates to the opening of Tolstoy War and Peace. Kevin actually went to Heiligenstadt in 2015 if I recall and bought a poster of Beethoven’s Heiligenstadt Testament. We both had major interest in the Ukrainian Marxist scholar Roman Rosdolsky’s book Engels and the 'Nonhistoric' Peoples: the National Question in the Revolution of 1848, which raised the question to what extent could the Loyalists in the six counties be characterized as Völkerabfälle (historical refuse of peoples or a “non historical nation”) "fanatical standard-bearers of counter-revolution" like the Jacobites, the Chouannerie or the Basques supporters on Don Carlos.

In August 2018 Kevin Bean wrote a nice epigraph for my book Peace or Pacification? Northern Ireland After The Defeat of the IRA. This was one of the last occasions we were to be in contact. We used to communicate mainly via email, but when he retired from Liverpool University, his email was no longer working and Hotmail had blocked my access to all the contacts I used until then. I also lost my phone and all the numbers I had. Losing my job and the period of the Covid lockdowns made things very difficult. Unfortunately I learned too late of his serious health problems and to my regret never had the chance to speak to him one last time. When I attended his funeral mass in Liverpool on 14 November, I nevertheless managed to smile because I could exactly see what conversations we would have had about that mass: compared to Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis how could one even dare call this a funeral mass? How could this be an authentic Catholic mass since it follows the revisionist rituals of self-proclaimed and illegal so-called “Second Vatican Council”? But that day was very foggy, and Kevin would have been happy to be buried in the foggy dew...

Liam Ă“ Ruairc is the former co-editor of The Blanket.
Liam O Ruairc Obituary

3 comments:

  1. Steve R7:21 AM, January 01, 2025

    Not having a dig but did they ever work out who was working for the Stasi? I remember hearing something along those lines in the late 80's.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. AM3:02 PM, January 04, 2025

      That sort of charge was usually laid against the Official Republican Movement because of its connections to the USSR and North Korea.

      Delete
  2. AM3:10 PM, January 04, 2025

    A very comprehensive piece of work Liam which offers a window to Kevin's life. There is a lot of good detail in it which had completely been lost to me!!
    I too stayed with him in Colne. I think it was around November 2000 that myself and Brendan were out there doing solidarity with the Turkish hunger strikers. A lot of events going on in London at the time. Brendan got stopped at Liverpool port on the way in - all the cops wanted to talk about were the blocks and the hunger strikes. They asked him for his autograph at the end of it.
    I really liked Kevin despite serious differences of opinion with him towards the end. By the time I heard he was dying, there was no time for rapprochement. He died a couple of days later.

    ReplyDelete

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