Jim O’Neill

By AM Saturday, September 27, 2025

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Liam O Ruairc  🏴pays tribute to a late friend.

 Jim O'Neill (1980-2023)
Photo @ Belfast Media Group

On 6 September 2025 the front page of the Andersonstown News was dominated by the following headline: ‘James: 13 Months Left in A Morgue. West Belfast family demand answers from Gardaí after loved one’s body was discovered in Phoenix Park’. (1)

The ‘James’ referred to was the 43 years old person better known as Jim O’Neill (1980-2023) that I had well known since we were first introduced to each on 13 August 2004. I had previously learned the shocking news of his death from a contact of mine on 4 July. Jim’s former partner Solenn showed me his grave in Milltown Cemetery on 9 July. This article is not going to be about Jim’s tragic death but about some aspects of his life that I have been familiar with. Jim was an avid reader of Fourthwrite, The Blanket and later The Pensive Quill, and often referred to the comments and discussions the articles on these created. It is for this reason that I think this article should be published on The Pensive Quill.

In 2005 or 2006 Jim began to study sociology at Queen’s University Belfast. But he quit his studies to set up with a number of other people a workers cooperative called Black Mountain Biofuels Ltd based at the Conway Mill in Belfast which functioned in the years 2006-2008. Jim was far more of a social entrepreneur than an academic. He invested a tremendous amount of his energy, time and money into the Biofuels project. Jim had a political and ideological motivation for getting involved in the workers cooperative project. He argued that while republican organisations had developed armed wings and political parties, none had built up any economic infrastructure to back up the republican struggle. For Jim, republicans could only be successful if they developed a social and economic wing based on workers cooperatives. His ideas in many ways were very close to a form of Syndicalism. He actually had a lot of time for groups coming from the Anarchist tradition in Belfast.

Jim and I had different views about the above. I argued that republicans actually did attempt during the conflict that started in 1969 try to develop an economic infrastructure. In the autumn of 1972 Seamus Loughran and Gerry Maguire, at that time interned in Cage 4 of Long Kesh, actually tried to develop this strategy. Out of this the Andersonstown Co-Operative Industrial and Provident Society arose as well as a number of Eire Nua Cooperatives. But the Eire Nua Cooperatives developed in 1974-1975 were deemed “unprofitable” by the 1978 British Army intelligence document Northern Ireland: Future Terrorist Trends in its section 19a. This is confirmed by the fact that the Andersonstown Co-Operative Industrial and Provident Society for example was eventually wound up in 1982 with £60,000 in debt.

However Jim would point to the example of Mondragon in the Basque Country as a commercially successful workers cooperative. If Black Mountain Biofuels Ltd no longer existed in 2009, Jim kept involving himself in cooperative projects. For many years he volunteered for Tools For Solidarity. He did electrical work for Caife Na Croisbhealai, 44 King Street, Beal Feirste and/or its later incarnation as The Collective Cafe, which were workers cooperative projects. Jim was very enthusiastic about the Independent Workers Union in which he saw a tremendous amount of potential. For Jim ideas would only be abstract if they were not related to practical activity, and he always made sure theory and practice for him were always connected.

I often passed to Jim books I thought were very good. I handed to him in 2010 Frank Burton’s 1978 book The Politics of Legitimacy: Struggles in A Belfast Community, telling him I considered this to be the single best book ever written about the conflict here. After reading it he told me he agreed with me and definitely saw workers cooperatives as an essential part of what Burton called the “radical Gemeinshaft” in Ardoyne. This expression with the German word was well appreciated by Jim.

“Man does not live by politics alone” said Trotsky in 1923 and this was true of the books Jim and I discussed. I introduced him to my favourite fiction writers. I convinced him to read Don Quixote by Cervantes which I consider the best book ever written. Jim was so impressed by it that he named his bicycle that was regularly with him Rocinante. Of course I told him he had to read everything (besides the dreadful Timbuktu and Mr Vertigo) written by Paul Auster. He liked The Book of Illusions so much he convinced his father to read it who according to Jim found it impressive. He read with attention Michel Houellebecq’s Les particules élémentaires (in its translation in English as Atomised) when on holiday with his partner Solenn in Britanny. Jim and Solenn had moved into a house in Crocus Street off the Springfield Road in Belfast that had previously been occupied by our mutual friends from the Basque Country Xabi and Maria. Jim was the father of Maiwenn and Eoghan, and with the obligations this entailed limited the amount of time he could invest in other activities.

As an example of this at some stage Jim decided it was necessary that he and I (and possibly others) study G.W.F Hegel’s 1807 Phenomenology of Spirit which is no mean feat. As his time and energy were limited by other commitments we decided just to read and study its Preface which is a real philosophical treatise in itself. What I will always recall is how much Jim laughed when reading Hegel writing: 'The true is thus the bacchanalian whirl in which no member is not drunken.” “Bacchanalian whirl” in other translations comes up as “bacchanalian revel”. (2) Jim liked that expression so much that instead of texting me something like “do you want to go out for a drink?”, he would text me “Fancy a bacchanalian revel?” I have very fond memories of some of the bacchanalian revels I had with Jim and some of his friends like Kevin Rainey from Beechmount, the late Eamonn Breen from Larne or Jim’s friend Kevin from Newry.

The last time I ever saw Jim was on 13 October 2021 in the parking lot of the Kennedy Centre in Belfast as I was heading to James Daly’s funeral. He told me he wouldn’t be able to make it to James Daly’s funeral as he was working.

I was not able to attend Jim’s funeral as on 19 May 2025 I was not even aware he had died. But I recall discussing death with Jim when we were reading the Preface to The Phenomenology of Spirit. Hegel writes:

The life of the spirit is not the life that shrinks from death and keeps itself untouched by devastation, but rather the life that endures the presence of death within itself and preserves itself alive within death. (3)

I told him I was particularly impressed with that quote and the day I pass away I would like this to be quoted. “That’s dialectics!” replied Jim about this quote.

Although Jim O’Neill has unfortunately passed away I sincerely believe the positive things he committed his life to mean he is able to endure the presence of death within himself and preserve himself alive within death.

Notes

(1) Conor McParland, West Belfast family seeking answers after son lay unidentified in morgue for 13 months, Andytown News, 6 September 2025

(2) In the German original: “Das Wahre ist ... der bacchantische Taumel, an dem kein Glied nicht trunken ist.” G.W.F. Hegel (1998) Werkausgabe Band 3: Phänomenologie des Geistes, Eva Moldenhauer & Karl Markus Michel (eds), Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp Verlag, 46. See also: Howard Kainz (1995) Hegel on the Bacchanalian Revel of Truth, Philosophy & Rhetoric, 28:2, 146-152

(3) In the German original: “Aber nicht das Leben, das sich vor dem Tode scheut und vor der Verwüstung rein bewahrt, sondern das ihn erträgt und in ihm sich erhält, ist das Leben des Geistes.” G.W.F. Hegel, Ibid, 36

⏩ Liam Ó Ruairc is the former co-editor of The Blanket.