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Showing posts with label George McBrearty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label George McBrearty. Show all posts
John Crawley ✍ We gather here to honour the memory of Volunteer George McBrearty, who, 45 years ago this month, was killed in action alongside his friend and comrade, Volunteer Charles ‘Pop’ Maguire.

1981 was a pivotal year in the struggle for full Irish freedom. It was the year of the hunger strikes. By Thursday, 28 May 1981, the day George and Pop were killed in action, Bobby Sands, Francis Hughes, Ray McCreesh and Patsy O’Hara had already died. George and Pop would never know that six more IRA and INLA volunteers would starve themselves to death in resisting the British criminalisation of our freedom struggle.

George McBrearty fought and died as a proud volunteer in the Irish Republican Army. He believed, and had every right to expect, that the term ‘Republican’ was not merely a suggestion but a resolute statement of intent.

There are former comrades of George McBrearty who would have us believe that, had he lived, he would probably, like them, have moved on. By ‘move on,’ they mean ‘move away.’ Away from Wolfe Tone’s call for the Irish people to abolish the memory of all past dissension and to substitute the common name of Irishman in place of the denominations of Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter. That George would have moved on to new ground carefully prepared by the British government over the course of a decades-long counter-insurgency campaign. That George would now be extolling a United Ireland rooted in British/Irish identity politics. That he would no longer refer to Ireland as our country, but think only in terms of ‘This Island’. ‘Our country’, after all, is one nation. ‘This island’ is a geographic fragment containing two nations. That George would have internalised the conditions, parameters, and political architecture of the United Ireland demanded by Britain, should it ever come to pass, and would hope one day to proclaim victory by maintaining that’s what we were fighting for all along. Perhaps George would have entered Stormont and transitioned from a 23-year-old Irish revolutionary in May 1981 to a 69-year-old British government pensioner in May 2026, while boasting to anyone who would listen about his ‘journey’.

George’s family, who loved him most and knew him best, know that George would never have been swayed by the pacification propaganda of misguided men and women who call themselves Republicans yet work daily to undermine the authentic aims and objectives of Irish republicanism. That is, to break the connection with England and to forge a joint civic identity as Irish citizens, oblivious of ethnic or sectarian distinctions. Differences that would become incidental in a genuine Republic remain fundamental in their ‘New’ Ireland, which is predicated on the old divisions.

No one can say with certainty what IRA volunteer George McBrearty would have believed today had he lived. But we know what he believed when he was killed on active service.

George believed in the aims and objectives of the IRA as it existed at the time. Long before it had transitioned from the cutting edge of the Irish Republic into a decommissioned party militia. The army in which he was a brave, dynamic, and dedicated combatant. The army that pledged never to desist until the announcement of a British declaration of intent to withdraw from Ireland. George’s IRA acknowledged that Unionists are pro-British for deep historical reasons that cannot be glibly dismissed, but are not the British presence and must not be made so. It recognised the British presence as Britain's jurisdictional claim to Ireland and the civil and military apparatus that gives it effect. That’s the British presence George fought and died to resist.

George was shot dead by armed employees of the British government, determined to maintain British rule in this part of Ireland. Did George fight and die to reform British rule? Of course not. He fought to end it. Those closest to him are in no doubt that George would never have rescinded his allegiance to the Republic by acknowledging the constitutional legitimacy of British rule in Westminster’s regional assembly at Stormont, nor would he have accepted that the Crown Constabulary, which protects and preserves it, rightfully retains a sole monopoly on the lawful use of force in this part of Ireland. George would never have encouraged Irish nationalists to become His Majesty’s constables and informers.

Republicans who criticise Pax Britannica are often asked, ‘What’s the alternative? The alternative to the two-nation Shared Island is the one-nation Republic. The alternative to embracing differences in national allegiances for the sake of peace is to end those differences for the sake of peace. Abraham Lincoln put this best while struggling to overcome divisions within his own Republic when he said ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand’. Crucial to beginning a genuine process of national reconciliation is ending British jurisdiction in Ireland; this includes Britain’s entitlement to act on behalf of Ulster unionists in a future united Ireland.

Britain was awarded no right to represent Ulster unionists in the three Ulster counties incorporated into the Free State in 1922. Many of these unionists in Cavan, Monaghan, and Donegal had signed the Ulster Covenant and were as loyal to the Crown in their day as their brethren a mile up the road in Fermanagh or Tyrone are today. Many still attend Orange Lodges and Orange marches. Yet, they are now equal and valued citizens of the Irish State and, since the Ireland Act 1949, have no claim to British citizenship or a British passport.

Until we end the British government's interference in our country, we cannot begin to repair the damage done to our national cohesion. In the meantime, Britain will continue to encourage, manipulate, and co-opt as many Irish citizens as possible into becoming willing accomplices in Ireland’s constitutional divisions along broadly sectarian lines.

We are continually cautioned to protect the Peace Process. Peace is not a process; it is an established fact. Pacification, on the other hand, is a process that occurs when an armed campaign is defeated or contained, but the root cause of violence remains intact. For the Brits, pacification is a systematic programme of military and political efforts to defeat an insurgency and achieve a desired result. In this case, to achieve normalisation, Ulsterisation (particularly police primacy), an end to armed resistance to British rule, and, crucially, an end to Irish Republicanism as a credible philosophy and a viable alternative.

The alternative to pacification is not war; it is peace. The real peace that can only occur when the root cause of conflict is addressed and not continually kicked down the road to be resuscitated in future constitutional arrangements that bake in the differences carefully fostered by an alien government which had divided a minority from the majority in the past.

The 1918 General Election was the last time the British government would permit the national will to be tested in an Ireland comprising one political unit. They will never encourage an Irish unity that transcends the sectarian divide. How we achieve a national democracy within an All-Ireland republic remains an aspiration that challenges republicans today.

Despite the difficulties Republicans face and the resources arrayed against us by both jurisdictions in Ireland, the roots of the national flower run too deep to die. They may lie dormant for a generation or two, but they invariably spring to life again. We must work politically to achieve that reawakening.

We remember Volunteer George McBrearty and his comrade Volunteer Pop Maguire with pride. We remember the heroic hunger strikers who died and were dying for Ireland, as George and Pop lay riddled with British Army bullets at the bottom of Southway.

We remember all the men and women commemorated by this magnificent memorial who contributed so much to the struggle for Irish freedom. To the Volunteers killed in action, to those who died from other causes, to the brave Derry citizens who contributed to the struggle in any way, however big or small, and to all those who remain unconquered and unconquerable, we salute you and pledge our everlasting admiration and gratitude for your courage and patriotism.

Up the Republic!
 
John Crawley is a former IRA volunteer and author of The Yank.

Volunteer George McBrearty, 24 May 2026

A Commemorative event ⚱ to remember IRA volunteer George McBrearty, his comrades and the republican hungers strikers is to take place this weekend in Derry.


45th Anniversary George McBrearty Commemoration

Richard O'Rawe 📢 spoke at a recent commemoration in Derry. 

A chairde agus a chomradaithe,

Ba mhaith liom mo bhuíochas a thabhairt do’n clan McBrearty, ach go h-airithe, Danny, do’n deis seo a labhairt libh inniu. Is onÏŒra mÏŒr é.

The last time I was in the rebel city of Derry was on the first of February this year, when Eddie Harkin unveiled a cross at Free Derry corner to commemorate the burning of Long Kesh on the 15th and 16th of October 1974. The cross also honoured the Blanketmen and women, and all who lost their lives in the fight for Irish freedom. It was an august occasion, one that will stay in my memory forever.

It was at this commemoration when the thought struck me that Vols George McBrearty and Charles ‘Pop’ Maguire were mown down exactly a week after another great Derry rebel, Vol Patsy O’Hara died on hunger strike. Patsy, as you know, was the 4th hunger striker to die, behind Vols Bobby Sands, Frank Hughes, and Raymond McCreesh. Between Bobby’s death and George’s and Pop’s, eighteen other people were killed in the conflict … one UDR man, three RUC, five British soldiers, five Catholic civilians (including children killed by plastic bullets, Carol Ann Kelly and Julie Livingstone), two Protestant civilians (schoolboy Des Guiney and his father, Eric), and two INLA volunteers. So, it is right that we acknowledge that these were the most harrowing of times for all sides and that the copious amount of tears shed by the bereaved were neither orange, green or red, white and blue. 

That said, questions abound and one of them goes to the heart of the conflict: is it right to assume that this substantial loss of life was a potential catalyst for the re-think that was taking place within the upper echelons of the RM. I am, of course referring to Gerry Adams’ Kitchen Cabinet, the leading republicans that ran the hunger strike. And consequentially, does the evidence tell us that the Kitchen Cabinet was re-evaluating the efficacy of armed struggle?

There are two positions concerning this matter, one of which Danny Morrison advocated just this week in his 11 May Irish News piece:

1. During his interview with John Manley, DM advocated that the Kitchen Cabinet wanted to develop Sinn Féin as a viable political party, in order to ‘give back’ political leadership to the people. This is a very commendable view to take — if it is true. In his interview, Morrison goes to some lengths to say that ending the armed struggle was not on the KC’s agenda, that they still believed in the supremacy of the armed resistance approach to British rule in Ireland. This is a very understandable position to take because, if he were to say something else, something along the lines that the KC had abandoned all hope that the armed struggle would succeed in forcing the British government to cede Ireland to the Irish, then it would be morally unconscionable for them to hide their view from volunteers like George and Pop, brave individuals who were going out on dangerous operations against the British forces, specifically because they believed their leadership believed in armed struggle. It would be equally unconscionable to hide this position from prisoners who were on a horrendous death fast, where ten of their number would die horrible deaths.

Morrison, in his article, refers to his ‘ballot box and Armalite’ remark at the October 1981 Ard Fheis and uses it as a foil against the suspicion that Adams and he, and the rest of the KC, no longer had faith in the tactic of armed struggle. There are two ways of looking at the ballot box and Armalite remark:

A/ That Morrison was being genuine, that he, and presumably the leadership around Adams, still held that armed struggle was the primary method of attaining a Republic but that the political development of Sinn Féin was an important prop in their strategy. The second way is:

B/ That Morrison was being disingenuous, that he and his fellow kitchen cabinet comrades, believed armed struggle had had its day and that constitutional politics alone was the way forward for the Republican Movement.

The alternative position to what Morrison advocated in his Irish News piece is evidenced by none other than members of the British cabinet in confidential communications . . . 

2. In papers marked ‘secret’, which were released by the Thatcher Foundation in 2013, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in 1981, Humphrey Atkins, conveyed to Margaret Thatcher, on the afternoon of the 6th of July 1981 (two days before Joe McDonnell died), that:

The Provisionals need to settle the prisoners’ problem on terms they can represent as acceptable to them if they are to go on — as we know some of them wish to do — to consider an end to the current terrorist campaign. A leadership which has “lost” on the prisons is not in a position to do this.

 No matter what way we look at it, this is a hugely important statement. Question: who exactly are the ‘some of them’ to whom Atkins refers, if not Morrison and the members of the KC? The use of the term ‘some’ is also significant because it denotes that ‘others’ may not be on-board (we now know that the KC had members of the IRA Army Council in its midst, and they did not inform the full Army Council that they were communicating with the British). The typed phrase, ‘…an end to the current terrorist campaign’ in Atkins’ minute is underlined and in longhand. We have to wonder: how did the British reach this conclusion; who informed them that the KC wanted, “to consider an end the current terrorist campaign”? 

What emerges from this minute to Thatcher is the belief that the KC, at least during, and possibly before, the hunger strike period, was looking to end the IRA’s campaign and embrace constitutional politics. However, while the Brits might have been aware that a fundamental change was taking place within a section of the Republican Movement, we prisoners — and certainly not the hunger strikers, or volunteers like George or Pop — had any idea that the Great Peacemaker had lost faith in the tactic of armed struggle and was actively looking for a means to abandon the armed struggle.

Later, after the deaths of the ten hunger strikers had put Sinn Féin on the political map, Gerry Adams was able to pursue his peace-keeping mission along with Fr. Reid, John Hume, and figures attached to the British and Irish governments. Along the way, he and his KC buddies kept hidden from the IRA volunteers the fact that, in their opinion, the armed struggle had run its course. And, all the while, volunteers were losing their lives in the killing fields of East Tyrone and beyond, in pre-arranged SAS ambushes. Nobody, in the KC, thought it prudent, or honourable, to let those brave men know that they had thrown in the towel on armed struggle.

I cannot speak for Bobby, or Big Frank, or George, or Pop, but what I can say is that they did not die for an internal settlement whereby the border, and the division of the Irish people still persists, whereby the unionist veto still prevails. 

Would the boys have laid down their lives for this? I very much doubt it.

⏩Richard O'Rawe is a former blanketman and the author of several books.                

Volunteer George McBrearty Address May 2025

John Crawley ✍ delivered the address at the recent commemoration in Derry in honour of IRA volunteer George McBrearty and his comrades who lost their lives in the course of the armed struggle to end British rule and create an Irish Republic.


I’d like to thank everyone for coming today to honour the memory of IRA Volunteer George McBrearty, who was killed in action by the British forces of occupation on this day forty-two years ago. We also remember his comrade Volunteer Charles ‘Pop’ Maguire, who died at his side, and all the men and women who sacrificed their lives for the complete freedom of Ireland. I’d also like to thank Danny McBrearty and the McBrearty family for the honour of inviting me to speak today.

What does it mean to be an Irish republican? When George McBrearty was killed in action in May 1981, we all knew what it meant. We may have articulated it differently, but IRA volunteers understood what was meant by ‘the Republic.’ It is Ireland unfettered by foreign control or domestic divisions cultivated by the foreigner. It does not defer to Britain for terms and conditions regarding its unity and independence. The Republic is a thirty-two-county sovereign and secular democracy to which Irish citizens of all traditions give allegiance. It stands for freedom, social justice, and national unity across the sectarian divide.

We knew what it didn’t mean:

🔴 It didn’t mean pretending that the British government supports the principle of consent, a principle they never granted Ireland as a whole.
🔴 It didn’t mean there was a democratic alternative to an artificial statelet gerrymandered specifically to deny Ireland the right to national self-determination.
🔴It didn’t mean recognising that British Crown forces retained a sole monopoly on the right to bear arms and the lawful use of force.
🔴 And it certainly didn’t mean attending the coronation of the Colonel-in-Chief of the Parachute Regiment as he was crowned king of Derry, West Belfast, East Tyrone, South Armagh, and other parts of British-occupied Ireland.

The holy grail of the British conquest of Ireland has always been about achieving democratic title to its authority. As early as 1799, Undersecretary Edward Cooke wrote to British Prime Minister William Pitt regarding concerns about Irish MPs swamping the House of Commons should the Acts of Union be approved:

By giving the Irish a hundred members in an Assembly of six hundred and fifty they will be impotent to operate upon that Assembly, but it will be invested with Irish assent to its authority.

Achieving Irish assent to British authority remains at the core of Britain’s strategy in Ireland. It has dominated their thinking since British Prime Minister William Gladstone first jettisoned his Liberal Party’s hostility toward Irish Home Rule and embraced it as a buffer between Irish independence and British sovereignty. Irish nationalists who will work through British law to implement British strategy can always be found. As James Connolly pointed out in 1915:

When a foreign invader plants himself in a country which he holds by military force his only hope of retaining his grasp is either that he wins the loyalty of the natives, or if he fails to do so that he corrupts enough of them to enable him to disorganise and dishearten the remainder . . . The chief method of corruption is by an appeal to self-interest.

The degree to which Britain succeeded in nurturing a loyal nationalist leadership can be seen in the Irish Parliamentary Party’s policy of harnessing Ireland to England’s war chariot in 1914 and John Redmond’s description of the 1916 rising as treason against the Irish people.

New Sinn Féin has joined the SDLP as an inheritor of this legacy. Both parties fuel the Redmondite renaissance in the Six Counties, which internalises British constitutional constraints and conditions on Irish democracy. More than that, they have rewritten and redefined the very concept of Irish unity to converge with Britain’s analysis of the nature of the conflict and Britain’s strategy to resolve it.

Wolfe Tone, the founding father of Irish republicanism, formed the United Irishmen not to unite Ireland - Ireland wasn’t partitioned at the time - but to unite Irishmen. Tone’s plea to embrace national unity across the sectarian divide was echoed over a century later by the signatories of the 1916 Proclamation calling for us to be . . . ‘oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien government, which have divided a minority from the majority in the past.’ The signatories were not claiming these differences did not exist, nor were they saying they could be dismissed as irrelevant. They were saying that these differences should not be used to shape the political architecture of Ireland.

In contrast, those who support the Good Friday Agreement are determined that these differences will be permanently embedded in our national fabric. Wolfe Tone sought to unite the many to defeat the few. British policy is to divide the many so they can shape the strategic environment to defend the few who protect their interests.

It is ironic that so many nationalists claim to be republican, yet republicanism has few advocates among nationalist politicians and thought leaders. When reading accounts of the negotiations around the Good Friday Agreement, I am struck by the degree to which Irish government officials recognised the absolute and legitimate right of the British government to rule this part of our country. They endorsed the view that Dublin’s constitutional claim to the Six Counties was archaic and aggressive. It is instructive that transforming this claim from a legal imperative to a notional aspiration was the only binding constitutional change required by the Good Friday Agreement.

The ‘Little Irelanders’ of Dublin’s political establishment who believe Ireland is Ireland without the Six Counties are forced by events beyond their control, such as Brexit and the prospect that the unionist population in the North may one day dwindle to an unsustainable level, to consider the prospect of a political alliance with Ulster unionists whom they perceive as ‘British Irelanders’. In their view, ‘Little Ireland’ plus ‘British Ireland’ equals a ‘Shared Island.’ Of course, we must bear in mind that their state had been legislated into existence and armed by the British to fight the IRA. Its officials are a product of that counter-republican culture and partitionist mindset. The model of a national democracy within an all-Ireland republic is not on their radar.

Ulster Unionists don’t have an issue with a united Ireland per se. They lived in a united Ireland for three hundred years. England treated our country as a single political unit for eight centuries. The Orange Order is an all-Ireland institution. The Presbyterian and Methodist churches are all-Ireland ministries. And, of course, the Church of Ireland is not the Church of Northern Ireland. Their real objection is to the threat posed to their artificial majority by a 32-County electorate. An Irish republic rooted in non-sectarianism and civic equality holds no allure for a mindset devoted to the sectarian dynamic England imposed on Ireland. Recognising that is one thing; pandering to it by forsaking our republican principles is another.

We must not be seduced by the false narrative that the British/Irish cleavage in national loyalties should be embraced for the sake of peace. It must be ended for the sake of peace, and the first step is ending British jurisdiction in Ireland. Until then, we cannot begin to repair the damage done to our national cohesion. In the meantime, Britain will continue to encourage, manipulate, and co-opt as many Irish citizens as possible into becoming willing accomplices in Ireland’s constitutional division along broadly sectarian lines.

Ulster unionists are pro-British for deep historical reasons that cannot be glibly dismissed, but they are not the British presence and must not be made so. The British presence is the presence of Britain’s jurisdictional claim to Ireland and the civil and military apparatus that gives that effect.

When we speak of reaching out to unionists, the republican thing to do is to reach out to them as fellow citizens and not as foreign citizens who happen to live here. Foreigners are born in another country. The vast majority of Ulster Unionists were born in Ireland. They must not be treated as the civil garrison of an alien state. That is not pluralism, that is submitting to the social and political modelling of colonial conquest.

Having had the opportunity to travel around Ireland in the past year, I have spoken to many supporters of New Sinn Féin and have been struck by the sheer scale of mission drift among them. How did a republic of citizens united in equality across the sectarian divide morph into a united Ireland where Ulster unionists are deemed to be the British presence? How did the one-nation Republic of 1798 become the two-nations Agreement of 1998? How has the British counter-insurgency machine so thoroughly changed the narrative and co-opted so many former republicans to its policy of validating and perpetuating the civic disunion of Irishmen and women in the deferred hope of achieving territorial unity in some vague and distant future determined exclusively by Britain?

For many Shinners in the South, the primary motivation behind their policy of any office at any price seems to be to stick it to the Staters and sicken the Blueshirts. I heard this quoted repeatedly. For many in the North, the focus is on putting it up to the DUP. Unfortunately, this has encouraged New Sinn Féin to become mesmerised by a compulsion to become formidable to everyone but the enemy. The principal opponent of northern nationalism may well be unionism, but the enemy of an Irish republican is the union.

Unionists did not partition Ireland - England did. It did so for deeper and far more strategic reasons than the refusal of a national minority in six Irish counties to become citizens of an independent republic. England’s conquest of Ireland began centuries before the Ulster plantations. It doesn’t care about unionists beyond their utility as a bulwark against the evolution of a united Irish identity. What England does care about is maintaining a significant influence in that substantial landmass on her western flank. The Brits will form alliances and build the political prestige of the leadership of any community who will help them pacify, normalise and stabilise the status quo. Relentlessly claiming to be an Irish republican while on the British government payroll and implementing a British strategy calculated to sustain the sectarian dynamic in any future constitutional arrangement is absurd. There is nothing new in the so-called ‘New’ Ireland. It is predicated on all the old divisions.

Thanks to the Good Friday Agreement, the future of the Northern state rests securely in a political and legal framework of terms and conditions comprehensively safeguarded within an intricate web of constitutional constraints that only Britain can interpret and adjudicate. No Irish citizen, elected or otherwise, can call an Irish unity poll in Ireland. That decision lies firmly in the hands of an English politician who doesn’t have a single vote in Ireland. In court cases taken over the Brexit issue, both the Belfast High Court in October 2016 and the UK Supreme Court in January 2017 confirmed that it is Westminster parliamentary supremacy and not the will of an Irish electorate that reigns supreme in the Six Counties.

Britain may not always be able to rule Ireland directly, but with the help of an enduring civic division, it can prevent us from harmoniously ruling ourselves. The British will retain enormous influence in the internal affairs of this country if given a mandate to represent citizens from the Ulster unionist tradition in the ludicrously named ‘New’ Ireland. London can live with a united Ireland within the British Commonwealth and NATO. It will not tolerate a sovereign Republic immune to its influence. A Republic that places the welfare of the Irish people above the strategic interests of Great Britain.

A devoted republican called Abraham Lincoln said, ‘a house divided against itself cannot stand.’ The Good Friday Agreement is an attempt to ensure our house remains permanently divided. That unionists remain forever in Ireland but not of it. It guarantees that the political malignancy through which Britain historically manipulated and controlled our country will remain intact in a two-nations Ireland that bears little resemblance to the one-nation republic we fought for.

Some believe that Irish Republicanism is defeated. Beaten from within and routed from without. Republicanism is not defeated. Republican leaderships may be defeated, co-opted, and corrupted, but not republicanism. The Irish Republic, proclaimed in 1916, and ratified by the First Dáil Eireann in 1919, continues to carry immense moral authority with many Irish people. That is why the government in Dublin has an army officer read the Proclamation from the GPO every Easter and not the Downing Street Declaration.

Imagine how disheartened the Proclamation signatory Thomas Clarke must have felt when after years of struggle and imprisonment in England, he and his comrades seemed little more than an insignificant group of irrelevant cranks calling from the margins for a sovereign republic against the wishes of the overwhelming majority of the people they fought for. An Irish electorate who wanted nothing more than a devolved Home Rule assembly within the British Empire and voting exclusively for candidates who pursued that agenda. How dismayed he must have felt at the visits to Ireland of England’s Queen Victoria in 1900 and King Edward VII in 1903 when they were met by rapturous union jack waving crowds in the streets of Dublin and Irish nationalist politicians falling over themselves to shake their hands and welcome them to Ireland.

One of our greatest sources of inspiration is that men and women like Tom Clarke and his comrades stood their ground, kept their principles, preserved their integrity, and maintained their republican values through dark times when hope shone its farthest light. Their courage never faltered. We must do the same. There is no night so dark it prevents the coming day. Long life and victory to the Irish Republic!
 
⏩John Crawley is a former IRA volunteer and author of The Yank.

Office At Any Price

A Commemorative event ⚱ to remember IRA volunteer George McBrearty, his comrades and the republican hungers strikers is to take place this weekend in Derry.

The event will be chaired by former republican prisoner Frankie Quinn.

The main speaker will be former republican prisoner John Crawley.

42nd Anniversary George McBrearty Commemoration

A new mural was unveiled in Derry at the weekend.

It was dedicated to IRA volunteer George McBrearty who died along with Volunteer Pop Maguire in May 1981 in a confrontation with the British Army.

The eulogy was delivered by former Blanketman Thomas Dixie Elliot.



Thomas Dixie Elliot is a Derry artist and a former H Block Blanketman.
Follow Dixie Elliot on Twitter @IsMise_Dixie

The Unveiling Of The New Vol George McBrearty Mural

Bridie McBrearty and Family ✒ announce an upcoming event this weekend to mark the 40th anniversary of their beloved son and brother, IRA Volunteer George McBrearty who was killed on active service in May 1981 at the height of the H-Block Hunger strike. 


40th Anniversary George McBrearty Commemoration
Sunday, 30th May 2021, 2PM



A chairde,

This is the 40th anniversary of my son, Volunteer George McBrearty, and my son, Pat McBrearty’s 30th anniversary. We also intend to commemorate our 10 martyred Hunger Strikers on their 40th anniversary. With this in mind, we will plant a tree entitled ‘CRANN NA POBLACHTA’, meaning “the tree of the Republic”. It will represent all those who have passed, those on Rolls of Honour, those many prisoners who have gone too soon, and the many people who have contributed to our struggle in any way throughout the years. We especially ask those relatives and friends of those mentioned to come along and put a little memento of their loved ones on or near the tree.

Guest speaker this year will be Ricky O’Rawe, Independent Republican and former PRO of the Hunger Strikers and Blanket Men.

We invite everyone from every Republican group, and independents, to come along and remember our fallen. We also encourage everyone to look after their personal health by taking proper precautions and adhering to social distancing and safety standards.


Please join us at 2PM precisely at George’s Mural on Sunday, 30th May 2021.

Yours sincerely,

Mrs Bridie McBrearty and family

40th Anniversary George McBrearty Commemoration

Anne McCloskey delivered an eulogy at the recent commemoration in Derry marking the 38th anniversary of the death of IRA Volunteer George McBrearty.

It’s a great honour and privilege to stand here with the McBrearty family and friends, to remember and to honour their son, husband, father, brother, and comrade George, who gave his young life with fellow volunteer Charles Maguire in the cause of Irish freedom and unity. In remembering these two, we also remember with pride the many young men and women, like these two in the prime of their young lives, who died in the struggle for Irish freedom, and we stand with their families and comrades in solidarity today.

I commend the McBrearty family for organising this annual event, an event which simply attests that to those who loved them, our volunteers will not be forgotten. I particularly commend George’s mother, Bridie, who refuses to let her son’s name be erased from the memory of the people of Creggan and this city, and who stands here today in proud recognition of his sacrifice. We remember also George’s brother Pat, who died to the day 10 years after his brother, and who in a way was also a victim of the SAS who killed his hero.

Padraic Pearse wrote a poem about his own mother, but which has resonance for so many of our women:

I do not grudge them: Lord, I do not grudge
My two strong sons that I have seen go out
To break their strength and die, they and a few,
In bloody protest for a glorious thing,
They shall be spoken of among their people,
The generations shall remember them,
And call them blessed;
But I will speak their names to my own heart
In the long nights;
The little names that were familiar once
Round my dead hearth.
Lord, thou art hard on mothers:
We suffer in their coming and their going;
And tho' I grudge them not, I weary, weary
Of the long sorrow - And yet I have my joy:
My sons were faithful, and they fought.


A mother’s experience of loss is both personal and universal – it speaks for all those whose suffering includes both grief and pride. Pearse speaks about opposites-failure and triumph, sorrow and joy. The poem is about the complex emotions aroused by death for an ideal, the shared experience that bind family and nation together. To stand in solidarity with families of those whom maybe we didn’t know personally, at funerals or protests, we shared in a small way their experience.

I work in the health service, and I have seen every day of my working life the legacy of and broken bodies and broken minds that the war in Ireland, waged on our streets by our own people, has left. When George McBrearty died, he left a widow and three small children, the youngest only a few weeks old. Charles Maguire likewise, was married with a child. These children grew up without one of the two most important people in any child’s life in their households.

These personal tragedies were replicated in almost every street in the working-class areas of this city, and in towns and parishes across the north. They were truly terrible times. I’d like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to those families of volunteers, and especially the mammies and partners. Many young women in this town were left without their husbands whether through death or imprisonment-don’t forget our people spent 100.000 years in jails in this country and across Europe-and had to struggle to cope with their personal grief and also to rear families with little or no support, without income and with constant abuse and vilification from the “security forces” and a hostile media.

When their men were in jail or on the run, they and their children slept in houses with security chains, alarms, Perspex windows and locked stairgates on what was likely the only fire escape route. I visited many houses, where the children slept in fear of raids, attack and even death in what should have been their safe place, their home.

Mothers made the long trek, to the Crum, or the Kesh or Port Laois, often leaving Derry in the middle of the night, with bags of nappies and sandwiches, weekly for years and in some cases decades, to try to keep their family together as best they could. These women were the backbone of the struggle for Irish freedom.

I remember the year of 1981 well. As the Ballad of Joe McDonald says - “oh sad and bitter was the year of 1981, when everything I’d lost and nothing won”. It was the year of the hunger strikes, when hundreds of republicans in Long Kesh and Armagh jail used the only weapon they had, their own bodies, to assert that they were political prisoners and not criminals. Ten men starved to death. They were terrible times.

I was at University in Dublin, doing my final exams in May 1981, and I remember clearly hearing about these two Derry volunteer’s deaths.

At that time, the level of ignorance among the intelligentsia in UCD and wider Dublin society about the situation only a few hour’s drive away in the six counties was truly staggering. Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act which operated from 1971 to 1994 censored any media analysis of the causes of conflict here, because it would “promote terrorism” There was no explanation as to why ordinary children became “terrorists” and gave their freedom, and their very lives for an ideal.

To explain the reality of life under military occupation was impossible, so I used to carry a photo from a local newspaper of one of my brothers’ primary four class. An ordinary group of children, in what could be any school, from loving families and with their whole lives before them with limitless possibilities. A short few years later, one was dead and four others in prison. It could have been a class in any primary school across the north.

And where are we now, 38 years on? Has the ultimate sacrifice paid by men like George Mc Brearty, and women like Mairead Farrell achieved freedom?

Sadly no. We’re actually not that much further on the “one road” of the song of the time, rather more like on the wrong road, we’re on the road to God knows where.

In Derry employment, housing stress, poverty, ill health, emigration and the gap between the haves and the have nots are similar to pre-civil rights times. We still have for example 60% child poverty in Shantallow where I work. We still have children who are being failed by a still selective education system, despite selection being abolished in 2002. At eleven years of age, they are coached and chosen, squeezed and stretched, and labelled as being passes or failures. Our young people are being failed by this government. Many are addicted to drugs, porn, gambling before they are finished their education. This country does not cherish all her children equally.

The Good Friday Agreement was never presented to the Republican base as something to be defended. Instead, it was considered a stopgap, a halting site on the road to national sovereignty. It was to be replaced by better within a short timeframe.

It was not supposed to spell the end of our hopes for unity and a lasting peace. We would fight on, we were assured, only this time the ballot box would be the only weapon.

And of course, it’s good that families in the years since the ceasefires haven’t had to endure what the Mc Breartys have suffered. Children don’t have to miss school to visit jails, mothers don’t have to bury their children. As my father said, you don’t have to fight Mahomed Ali with boxing gloves. But Imperialism and injustice must be fought somehow.

What has happened in the twenty years since the “agreement”, to promote the cause for which George McBrearty and Charles Maguire died?

The Good Friday Agreement essentially asserts the legitimacy of British rule in Ireland. As a person who opposed it at the time, and campaigned for the retention of Articles 2&3 of the constitution which asserted the claim of the republic to include the whole island, I am bewildered by what has become of the republican movement I knew. While it is a political reality, that we did not possess power to alter the GFA, we were never meant to defend it. It is entirely outside of what Republicanism should mean, something we must overcome, not celebrate. Too many erstwhile republicans are a bit too comfortable in the house on the hill, while people like the McBreartys and thousands of others wonder what happened the unfinished revolution.

This six-county state cannot be fixed. We live in an artificial entity where a gain for one side is a loss for the other. We need petitions of concern, weighted majorities, and other such nonsense to maintain a semblance of functionality, and then when the corruption becomes too big to hide, as with the RHI scandal, the whole heap collapses.

One hundred years after partition, sectarianism is worse than ever, but it’s different in type. There are no catholics or protestants anymore, even though these labels are still used because they describe national allegiance and perceived political ideology. Our new gods are the gods of consumerism, football, the latest TV talent show or sitcom. Karl Marx called religion the opiate of the people. The box in the corner or the app on your phone is the new fix.

The sectarian divide, based as it always was on the acceptance or rejection of British Imperialism in Ireland, has vanished in terms of religion, but remains identical in membership. Historical Prods are still unionists and Taigs are nationalists, it’s just that they no longer go to chapel, unless as an excuse for a party. The stalemate which passes for governance in Stormont was totally predictable, indeed inevitable.

Meantime our people, and especially our young people wait for real solutions to the failing education system, which caters only for the privileged, to a health care system which is crumbling, to lack of investment in social housing and infrastructure, to endemic discrimination which still puts Derry at the top of every index of deprivation. We still have no university, the only city of this size and with this historical and cultural legacy in Europe without one!

In Stormont the Big Two parties, with the collusion of the others divvy up the wealth of our land, shamelessly. The new sectarianism is the culture wars-language rights, bonfires, traditional routes, gay and trans rights, women’s health, which is of course a coy euphemism for abortion on demand. These are all issues worthy of discussion and healthy debate in a normal society, but instead they are used as weapons, cudgels to divide.

These issues by and large, have little or no resonance for the vast majority of ordinary people who just want to work for a fair wage and rear their families with dignity and in peace. But solutions for austerity and structural inequality must wait, apparently, until we are all “equal” whatever that means. Unless of course you dance outside the box, as defined by the media and big business.

The European project is eulogised as never before, by people who once condemned it. Despite a democratic deficit which renders national governments all but irrelevant, and despite the very real threat of our children being drafted into a European army, we’re all for further integration, it seems. I’m personally not anti- EU, just think we need a real and inclusive conversation about where it’s taking us.

And if there was a border poll tomorrow, and say people advocating for Irish Unity won by a small majority, would that be good for the future? We know what it’s like to be a large minority in a state to which we cannot give allegiance. Would the Unionist community be happy to live in the same way? The GFA has actually prevented us from doing the necessary groundwork for Irish Unity, to have the hard conversations with those whose British identity is important. It has wasted two decades for real work on “people of Ireland” unity. Unionists, people who identify as British, live here too, and belong here. This is their country, even though many don’t accept it yet! They must be included in our vision of a new Ireland.

The republican struggle goes on. Our beautiful island, and her people deserve real leadership, not the shower of gobshites who currently rule the roost, north and south. After the 1916 rising, the Brits knew what they were doing, by shooting the leaders, the visionaries, the poets, the idealists. Many of our true leaders died in this latest phase of Ireland’s struggle for national sovereignty. I often wonder what would have been the outcome if heroes such as George Mc Brearty and the many others like him who paid the ultimate price for an ideal, had lived on and were still around to lead the peace. We’ll never know.

To his children, his mother, his sisters and brothers and to the people gathered here today, I thank you for your strength and dignity, and hope his memory lives forever in your hearts.

Beirigi bua.

Anne McCloskey is an Aontú councillor in Derry

On The Wrong Road ... Not The One Road

Eamon Sweeney writes of an Independent Commemoration to be held for IRA man George McBrearty killed by the SAS in 1981



The 38th anniversary of the SAS killing of Derry IRA man George McBrearty will be marked with a independent commemoration in Creggan this coming weekend.

On May 28, 1981 during the republican hunger strike of that year, George McBrearty and Charles Maguire approached a car on the city’s Lone Moor Road. The car was driven by an undercover member of the British Army who killed both men.

In recent years Mr McBrearty’s family have organised a commemoration in Creggan to mark George’s memory. As on other occasions the commemoration will be chaired by Martin Galvin, the New York based lawyer and former publicity officer for NORAID.

Mr Galvin said: 

There is something very special about this commemoration. It is a privilege to stand with the McBrearty family honoring a patriot and soldier who fought and died in his native city so that Derry and the six counties could one day be free of British rule. This commemoration also remembers Charles 'Pop’ Maguire.

It remembers all of the patriotic men and women, who in terrible times against great odds and British terror, Volunteered, meaning they came forward of their own free will and gave their lives so that others might live in freedom.

The McBrearty family each year gives a personal written invitation to many political groups in the city, along with publicly inviting anyone who wants to remember Irish patriots with pride. Speakers who belong to political groups do not represent those groups in this commemoration.

It draws together respected veteran republicans of various shades, ex-POWs, civil rights campaigners, with young people and independents.

This year I have been asked to wear an "England get out of Ireland" badge. There is a photo of me being arrested at Free Derry Corner, alongside Martin McGuinness wearing one in 1989.

I have been asked about those words which are carried on banners by many contingents in American St. Patrick's Day parades became controversial last March.

‘England Get Out of Ireland’ is an expression of support for a sovereign 32 county united Ireland, but the meaning goes far deeper. The reference to England recognizes that British rule from Westminster really serves English interests rather than Irish interests.

The words are based on Wolfe Tone's aim "to break the connection with England" by "uniting Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter." Rather than attacking unionists it invites them to take equal citizenship in a united nation serving all Irish people, instead of giving allegiance to British hegemony based on sectarian privilege.

That is the real basis of reconciliation. That is what George McBrearty and all of those whose memory we honour today died to give us.

In 2017, a mural in honour of George McBrearty painted by well known Derry artist Kevin Hasson was unveiled at the junction of Rathkeele Way and Rathlin Drive and will be the assembly point for next Sunday's event.

George McBrearty's brother Danny, himself a former republican prisoner, said the event is organised solely by his mother, brothers and sisters.

Danny, a honorary member of the 1916 Societies said:

Regardless of recent happenings, this commemoration and the mural stands alone and separate from any republican organisation in this city and beyond. It is a testament only to George's memory and all of those who gave their lives to Irish freedom
The intention by the republican movement as represented by Sinn Fein has always been to wind down republican commemorations. But, the mural to George, painted on the gable wall of a private home on a neighbours house has received nothing but accolades and no one has ever complained.
We intend to hold our commemoration this year and every year for all of those who gave their lives. Everyone, no matter what political party they are involved with are welcome to attend.

All those wishing to attend the George McBrearty commemoration are asked to assemble at the mural at the junction of Rathkeele Way and Rathlin Drive at 2.30pm this Sunday, May 26.

⏩Keep up with Eamon Sweeney @ Derry Now. 

Independent Commemoration For George McBrearty

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