The She-Trinity of Irish-American Radicalism

 Back in 1969 when Bernadette Devlin outraged conservative Irish-America with her socialist views and support for African-American civil rights, did she inspire memories of three women with similar convictions?

 

I often think of them as the she-trinity of Irish-American radicalism: Mother Jones, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (The Rebel Girl), and Margaret Sanger.

 

Though allies and sometimes friends, each ploughed their own furrow. Two things did unite them – a bedrock belief in the dignity of humanity, and membership of the Wobblies (International Workers of the World).

 

Mary G. Harris (Jones) emigrated from Cork to Canada in her early teens. She became a schoolteacher and took up a position in Michigan, but chafed under religious authority and quit.

 

In Memphis she married George Jones, an ironworker and union official, and raised a family with him. 

 

We would probably have heard no more of her if yellow fever hadn’t struck Memphis, killing Mr. Jones and their four young children.

 

Never speaking about her loss, she moved to Chicago where she started a successful dressmaking firm. But in 1871 the Great Fire destroyed much of her business.

 

This galvanized her and she threw herself into union activities; because of her militancy and courage when facing down bosses, militias, and strikebreaking thugs, she became known as “the most dangerous woman in America.”

 

When Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was taken as a child to one of Mother Jones’ rallies she was overcome by the power and presence of this diminutive Cork woman. 

 

Flynn was born in Concord, NH to an Irish-speaking mother from Co. Galway and an Irish-American father with Mayo roots.

 

They moved to the South Bronx in 1900, and when she was fifteen the Rebel Girl gave her first public speech on “What Socialism Will Do For Women.”

 

She would become one of the greatest orators of her time and a tireless fighter for workers rights and freedom of expression.

 

A close friend of both James Connolly and Big Jim Larkin, she rallied thousands of immigrant workers and their sweatshop-employed children in Lawrence MA during the successful Bread and Roses campaign for better wages and conditions.

 

Margaret Louise Higgins (Sanger) was born in Corning NY in 1879 to Irish immigrant parents. Not unusual for those days, her mother, Anne Purcell-Higgins, conceived 18 times, with only 11 children surviving before she died at age 49.

 

Margaret became a nurse practitioner at White Plains Hospital. Though she suffered from recurring tuberculosis she worked as a visiting nurse in Lower East Side slums and became active in the Socialist Party and the Wobblies.

 

Along with Gurley Flynn during the Bread and Roses campaign, she organized the evacuation of immigrant children from Lawrence to homes in New York and Philadelphia where they would be fed and cared for by sympathetic families. 

 

On Feb. 24^th, 1912 at Lawrence railway station, mothers and children were bludgeoned by police and state militia. This led to a national outcry and the eventual settlement of the strike on favorable terms to the workers.

 

Inspired by her mother’s experience Margaret Sanger had great sympathy for women who underwent frequent childbirth that often led to miscarriage.

 

The Comstock Act of 1873 and other anti-obscenity laws forbade access to contraceptive information, and Sanger realized that fundamental social change could never occur until women were freed from the burden of unwanted pregnancies.

 

In 1914 she published The Woman Rebel, a newsletter that promoted contraception, and challenged the federal anti-obscenity laws that forbade the spreading of information about “birth control,” a term she and her associates coined.

 

She was indicted and, rather than risk jail, she fled the US for Britain.

 

She returned unrepentant in 1916 and, with her sister Ethel Byrne, opened the first birth control clinic in Brownsville, Brooklyn. They were arrested for breaking a law that forbade the distribution of contraceptives.

 

While imprisoned, Byrne went on hunger strike and was the first American woman to be force-fed. There would be many battles before contraception was finally legalized in the US through the 1965 Griswold v Connecticut Supreme Court Case. Her work finally completed, Margaret Louise Higgins Sanger died a year later.

 

The she-trinity is largely forgotten now, at a time when immigrant children are still being unlawfully employed, and reproductive rights are again under threat in the Home of the Brave and the Land of the Free.

CBGB and the first band to play there

For years I couldn’t bear to pass by the John Varvatos store on The Bowery. My psychic alarm bells would go off when I was within a couple of blocks of this high-end clothing emporium.

It wasn’t that I disliked his threads, but Mr. Varvatos had set up shop on sacred ground – CBGB.

I’m told he has done a decent job of preserving the original inner façade, but there’s something way too dichotomous about the pairing for me.

CBGB was a dark, cavernous hole-in-the-wall. It originally had a pool table down the back, around which lay a couple of hairy dogs from the greater greyhound family that the owner, Hilly Crystal, claimed to be Egyptian Temple Hounds.

On a number of occasions while humping in our gear, I trod on these sleeping sentinels who scared the bejaysus out of me with their aggrieved yelping.

You see Turner & Kirwan of Wexford was the first band to play CBGB – a little known fact in music history.

Don’t even bother disputing me, for we played opening night. This occurred because the original CBGB (Country, Bluegrass, and Blues) sat opposite The Bells of Hell in the West Village.

Though barely a year in the country, T&K were drawing big crowds to the back room of the Bells.

Hilly and his wife Karen often caught our jam-packed last sets, after long lonely nights bemoaning their own empty seats.

On one such occasion Hilly informed me that he was closing the original CBGB and transferring the moniker to his ramshackle Hells Angels hangout on The Bowery; and would we be kind enough to play for the grand opening and bring along our following?

This we did and it was a hell of a night for everyone, except the two Egyptian Temple Hounds. So, Hilly proposed a weeknight residency. I informed him that we were having great success in The Bronx with “Bartender Night;” hence, it was arranged we would try that tack on Mondays at CB’s.

Alas, after some trouble from the residents of the skid row hotel upstairs, bartenders - and our following - stayed away, until the only ones in attendance were our girlfriends, the Temple Hounds, and Hilly.

When our girlfriends finally declined to show, we “fibbed” to Hilly that we were returning to Ireland for an extended vacation, and thus ended our residency.

Lo and behold, soon thereafter, Patti Smith, Television, and other local bands began residencies, punk was born, and Turner & Kirwan of Wexford had made another bad career decision.

Hilly eventually forgave us and we played there sporadically, but we’d missed the punk express, and our only success in CB’s is that we seem to have been the only band banned, for an incident better forgotten.

But oh what memories! Hilly was a somewhat odd and taciturn man but a good friend. Being in his company was akin to meditating. We rarely spoke, just stood there, watching the great and awful without passing comment.

Hilly felt that every band deserved a shot, as long as they played original music. I don’t think he really liked punk music, but what talent he uncovered.

Television was by far the best band to grace that hallowed stage. Tom Verlaine, who recently passed away, was a brilliant guitarist, and most of us aspiring superstars were influenced by his unique vocal style.

The initially awkward Talking Heads got better each night. While standing at a urinal next to David Byrne in the most graffitied bathroom on this planet, I once inquired, “What kind of music are you guys playing?”

To which he replied, “We’re trying to sound like everyone else, we’re just not very good.”

I could write a book on The Ramones, while Debbie Harry of Blondie was our Marilyn.

On closing night Oct. 15, 2006, Hilly told me he was moving the joint lock, stock, barrel and toilets to Vegas.

He didn’t look well, but we settled into our usual meditative trance while watching Patti Smith weave her magic onstage.

“Why did I ban you, Larry?” He inquired out of nowhere.

“Long story, Hilly, I’ll tell you another time.”

He nodded that this might not be a bad idea.

He died the following year. I miss his unique taciturnity, and I do everything possible to avoid walking past his divine palace of punk.

Brendan Behan Revisited

 

Brendan Behan would have celebrated his 100^th birthday a couple of weeks back if he’d stayed alive. But that was hardly on the cards for a hell-raising, working class writer from Dublin with a drinking problem.

 

Rarely has legend so obscured an artist; you have to wonder why? Well, Behan was larger than life, and in the incestuous, competitive world of Dublin letters he was considered to have jumped the queue. 

 

The fact that he had left school at 14 to become a house painter didn’t help, for Ireland in the 1950s was more class conscious than Calcutta, and Brendan was most definitely from the wrong side of town.

 

From this distance it’s often hard to distinguish the man from the fumes of alcohol that seem to swirl around him.

 

Drinker he was, but one who dealt with undiagnosed diabetes for much of his life. It’s also conveniently unmentioned that he often went “on the dry” for long stretches. 

 

But make no mistake Brendan Behan was a first class writer who turned out two successful Broadway plays and one of the best coming of age memoirs in literature. Try achieving what he did in his 41 years either on or off the bottle – it’s close to impossible. 

 

Oddly enough, Mr. Behan is now far more appreciated in the world of music than theatre. He was an authentic rebel in word and deed, and that counts for a lot in the realm of Celtic Rock - not to mention he wrote The Auld Triangle.

 

While Shane MacGowan never aped Behan, the Dubliner’s influence informed the Pogues singer. And why not, North Side Brendan learned his Gaeilge in jail and delved deep into the “hidden Ireland” of seanchaí and bard long before Shane.

 

It’s hard to understand the man without an appreciation of his Republican roots and beliefs. Behan was an actual rebel who longed for a 32-County Gaelic Republic, hence his attempt to blow up the Liverpool docks during World War II. 

 

He spent 7 years of his short life in British jails and Irish internment camps for his troubles. Those lost years undoubtedly damaged the man and his psyche. 

 

I first heard of him while listening to the BBC news with my grandparents. Brendan had been arrested for outrageous behavior in Toronto. To which my granny muttered, “That fellah should be ashamed of himself, making a show of the country abroad.”

 

Though I wasn’t even a teenager I took note of his name. Anyone who could shake up a calcified Ireland ruled by the church and de Valera was fine by me.

 

His two successful plays, though enormously influential in their day, are rarely performed now. Though there can be a slap-dash quality to them, yet a mighty heart beats within. Set in Mountjoy Jail, The Quare Fellow played a major part in the banning of capital punishment in Ireland and the UK.

 

While The Hostage (adapted from his own An Giall) was way ahead of its time, as was Behan. In those puritan days of the 1950s Behan dealt openly with homosexuality - his flamboyant Princess Grace in The Hostage was undoubtedly the first black queer character to grace Irish theatre.

 

Although barely a footnote in Broadway history now, Brendan was a friend and rival of Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, and Norman Mailer. He is often credited with introducing the hip Alan Ginsberg to uptown audiences, and a young Bob Dylan was so enamored he trailed the Irishman around Greenwich Village hoping for a word.

 

Though drink and diabetes delivered the fatal blow, fame killed Brendan Behan. His need for it was deep-seated and originated in a deprived working class Dublin background. Anything to stand out from the crowd was acceptable to Behan; the fact that critics wrote about him was more important than what they said.

 

A proud man, and the voice of his class and political faction, he was never less than aware that in his later years his talent for writing was slipping away, yet he still longed to be the center of attention.

 

Now that we have passed the centenary of his birth, perhaps we’ll be able to re-evaluate this ever-popular poet of the people, and excavate the man and writer from the shambles of his myth and legend.

Eleanor Rigby and all the lonely people

 Eleanor Rigby changed it all for The Beatles. Up until then they had rarely strayed far from the conventions of pop music: boy meets girl, girl dumps boy, boy gets over her, and meets his true love.

“Ah, look at all the lonely people.” Paul crooned, changing the way The Beatles looked at lyrics and the way we looked at The Beatles.

Like everyone else, I assumed that Eleanor was a widow or a spinster of a certain age. It never occurred to me that Ms. Rigby might be a teenager. Loneliness lay far ahead in the dark and distant future.

How things have changed. A recent poll found that up to 60% of Americans suffer from loneliness. What happened?

I can tell how things changed in Ireland, for I grew up there before television became the beaming god in the corner that has entranced, and even enslaved, whole generations.

Wexford was a small but vibrant town of 12,000 back then. One was at least on nodding acquaintance with 3,000 of those bustling souls, and they knew everyone else.

Loneliness would have been almost impossible in such a setting. Unless you were in a fierce hurry, a walk the length of Main Street could take over an hour, between stopping to chat, sharing a laugh, or wondering aloud would our hurlers ever make it to the All Ireland again.

At home it was much the same, whatever gossip you had picked up on your stroll would be shared, parsed, and interpreted, while there was always an excellent chance that a friend or relation would drop by bringing more tidings.

There was no such thing as age demographics: you were expected to hold your own with aged grandfather and terrible two-year old without discrimination.

As for pubs – there were no young pubs or old pubs, age was not a factor; company –good or bad – was prized above everything.

Wexford, though still a friendly town, has changed. There are probably 50% fewer pubs than in my youth, and as I gazed out my hotel window on a recent visit, Main Street was deserted at 8pm. There were no people to be seen – lonely or otherwise.

Over here in the US, I can chart the growth of loneliness a lot easier. New York, contrary to popular opinion, has always been one of the friendliest of cities and I can say that with some certainty, having spent time with Black 47 in every major US city, and many a minor one too.

Now, it is true that you not only don’t speak to people on New York subways, you don’t even look at them unless you’re sure they’re unaware of the attention. But on the streets there is much interaction, often gruff, but rarely threatening.

And yet, it’s a very different city than the one I first came to in the 1970’s, and it’s hard to ignore the growing wave of loneliness that has seeped into our concrete canyons.

What’s different? Well, two New York institutions are fast disappearing.

Dive bars are going under because of rents. There used to be so many of these homey holes in the wall, with a jukebox to die for, low prices, much laughter, and little in the way of a television.

The neighborhood saloon is also in decline. Remember them, family owned joints where people came to talk over a few beers, replaced now by soulless sports bars with deafening music, and wall-to-wall mesmerizing screens beaming endless games that no one seems to care about.

The real catalyst for loneliness however is the smart phone. Why waste time conversing or making friends when a Kardashian or a flashing ad is just a touch away.

You don’t even have to go in person to the track or a casino anymore – you can gamble your life away without jostling with humans, or interacting with bookie or dealer.

Our circles continue to get smaller, friendship always took effort, we just weren’t aware of it when we were out on the town; there were so many opportunities to exchange a few words or just smile at a stranger.

Instead, we hunker down at home with our phones and don’t even notice that Paul may be crooning in our direction, “Ah, look at all the lonely people.”

Terry Hall - a special Special

 Terry Hall passed away recently.

“Terry who?” You might say.

Perhaps, it would ring a bell were I to say Terry Hall, singer with The Specials?

Terry was never a household name, but 40 years ago The Specials shook things up in the UK. Then again, put a dance floor and a crowd in front of them, and it was hard to top The Specials.

They were leaders of the 2-Tone movement: bands with black and white members who favored pork-pie hats, two-tone Tonik suits, and blasted out a danceable mix of Jamaican Ska and English Punk.

Many of these outfits hailed from Midlands’ cities like Birmingham, Coventry, and Wolverhampton.

This bleak area had once been part of the industrial backbone of the UK, and provided decent jobs for workers and considerable earnings for the investing classes.

Such blessings were far removed from the inhabitants of British Commonwealth islands such as Jamaica and Trinidad, where per capita income was low and unemployment high.

But there was a silver lining. Back in the days before their countries gained independence - natives of Jamaica and Trinidad could claim domicile in the UK on account of their British Commonwealth citizenship.

In the 1950’s many moved to the Midlands where there was promise of work in car assembly plants and other light engineering factories.

The empire, as it were, came home to roost. The Caribbean people brought with them their music, and eventually those Harry Belafonte type island songs morphed into Jamaican Ska and Trinidadian Soca.

By the time Terry Hall was a boy these harder edged rhythms had sunk deep roots in the immigrant streets of industrialized Britain.

Around the same time, a gentleman who would later make a name for himself in the annals of Ulster Unionism, made a speech in Birmingham in 1968 where he declared himself full of foreboding… “I seem to see the River Tiber foaming with much blood.”

In essence, Enoch Powell was warning of the consequences of mass Commonwealth immigration to the United Kingdom.

Though Powell was consequently sacked from the shadow cabinet of the Conservative Party, the cat was out of the bag. What before had been whispered in kitchens and pubs was now spoken freely. A certain section of the lily-white British population wanted no more part of black and brown immigration.

Rising rates of unemployment did not help the national mood, especially when accompanied by strikes and labor unrest.

And then came the Punk explosion of 1976 with The Sex Pistols declaring “anarchy in the UK” and bemoaning “no future” in England.

Bono would later declare that all one needed was” three chords and the truth,” but three chords were more than enough to stir things up on the grimy streets of the Midlands.

Despite Powell’s right wing rantings the black and white youth of the Midlands had grown up together and learned through neglect and lack of opportunity that color is only skin deep.

They loved the Ska and Calypso music favored by their parents. Why not rev it up to Punk tempos?

Before you knew it, 2-Tone music had arrived allied to a similarly named record company that was willing to put promotional muscle behind it.

The beat was still rock steady but there was now a frantic danceable edge to it, curried by a sense of racial community. Who was interested in confronting cops and Conservatives on the street when you could skank the night away in clubs with your black and white sisters and brothers?

Eventually even Enoch Powell got the message and slunk off to his spiritual homeland in reactionary Ulster; meanwhile The Specials had a solid run of top ten hits, including, Gangsters, Ghost Town, and the still affecting A Message To You, Rudy. They didn’t need to over-emphasize political songs, their colors were nailed to the mast by the mixed hues of the band’s members.

Terry Hall went on to have a long musical career, though he wasn’t interested in celebrity or fame. Rather than cavort with super models, he preferred a quiet night at home “looking at the telly.” 

 

But, at a time of potential upheaval and racial divide, he and his crew ran Enoch Powell out of town, and prevented rivers of blood flowing in 2-Tone Birmingham, Coventry and Wolverhampton.

Alexis Mac Allister and the route to Argentina

 

Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappe may have been the brightest stars of the 2022 World Cup Final, but BBC Sports readers rated Argentina’s Alexis Mac Allister man of the match.

 

Remember him – the red-bearded midfielder who seemed to be everywhere during arguably the best World Cup final ever?

 

How did a man with obvious Irish roots end up playing for Argentina? It’s no mystery around Westmeath and Wexford. Up to 50,000 had fled these and other Leinster counties for Buenos Aires between 1830 and 1890, and it was not uncommon for their Spanish speaking descendents to return home on Irish “grand tours.”

 

There’s even a ballad called The Kilrane Boys that celebrates 12 young men from South County Wexford who left for Argentina on April 13, 1844. One of them, John Murphy, did so well the town of Murphy was named in his honor in Santa Fe Province. 

 

“Foul British laws are the whole cause of our going far away;
From the fruits of our hard labour they defraud us here each day…” the ballad states.

 

One of the quirks of Irish emigration to Argentina is that most of those taking that long voyage south possessed some money, thus tending to do well once they reached their destination.

 

They were mostly from farming stock and well used to working with cattle and sheep. Long lonely hours out on the pampas posed no problems to these Irish gauchos, and as land was cheap and fertile, they soon bought ranches and prospered.

 

They had been encouraged to try Argentina by their parish priests who were not admirers of the No Nothing, Protestant ruling elite that Irish immigrants had to contend with in the US. 

 

The clergy also had a say in practically choking the flow of Irish to Argentina in 1889 on account of the “Dresden Affair.” Over 1700 less well-to-do Irish had been recruited to a fraudulent immigration scheme and were transported on the City of Dresden SS to Buenos Aires. 

 

Many died on the voyage and those who survived were often sent to undeveloped areas where they were expected to find work and shelter for themselves.

 

Thomas Croke, the fiery Archbishop of Cashel, warned those thinking of emigrating, “if they value their happiness to never set foot in the Republic of Argentina.”

 

And so the flow ended, but a trickle of Wexford men still traveled there, mostly as merchant marines, for Argentina in the early to mid-20^th Century was a major meat exporter.

 

That’s how my father came to know this vast country and the Irish people who raised cattle and sheep out on the pampas. He loved those mighty plains and enjoyed the hospitality of the descendents of the Wexford emigrants.

 

At a time when Ireland’s major export was people, he wanted to move our family to Buenos Aires. My mother, however, felt that she needed to stay in Wexford and help her recently widowed father run his business. 

 

But my father never lost his love for Argentina. He often supplied fine Wexford ash hurleys to the Buenos Aires Hurling Club. This was to lead to an incident during the Troubles when British customs officers sought to confiscate his stash of camáns fearing they were arms.

 

Did Margaret Thatcher suspect they might be used to repel the British invasion of Las Malvinas (Falkland Islands)?

 

I got my own opportunity to visit Argentina on a Black 47 tour in 2000. To our amazement we were booked into the Buenos Aires Opera House and got to stride the same boards as Pavarotti and Caruso.

 

Our gig in the city of Rosario (birthplace of Che Guevara Lynch) coincided with a national Irish convention - replete with a thatched cottage bar, and there I got to meet and mingle with the progeny of the 19^th Century immigrants.

 

Many did not speak English, but there was no mistaking their genes as we drank Guinness, danced and sweated, our faces red from the blazing sun, and talked about “home.”

 

Some of them fondly remembered my father – the hombre with the hurleys; and in an odd way I felt a kinship with Alexis Mac Allister as I watched him triumph at the World Cup Final. Viva Argentina!

The Hidden Christmas Ireland

 

Whenever I go back home I always keep a weather eye open for the hidden Ireland. 

 

Alas, I rarely catch a glimpse of this roiling presence in the modern European Ireland. In my boyhood, however, I often stumbled upon it.

 

I was blessed by being close to two sets of grandparents. In fact I grew up in a draughty old house in Wexford town owned by my maternal grandfather.

 

Thomas Hughes, born in 1880, believed in ghosts, banshees, and all manner of púca, as did many of his friends who lived in the nearby countryside. These rural folk considered the veil that shielded the living from the dead to be very flimsy.

 

When we visited their remote farmhouses on Sunday afternoons, the talk was so spiked with references to hauntings and fairy abductions I rarely strayed far from the open-hearth fire. The shadows in those old kitchens seemed to throb with life, and you could almost touch the hidden Ireland lurking behind them.

 

My paternal grandfather, Lar Kirwan, was a prosperous cattle dealer with a substantial farm just outside Wexford town. A man of “scant imagination,” as my Granny put it, he had no truck with any kind of superstition. Maggie Kirwan, on the other hand, recognized that all living things had a soul, and was wary of upsetting the least of them.

 

Only fitting then that in the small yard outside her kitchen window the hidden Ireland sprang into view one overcast St. Stephen’s Day afternoon.

 

Coincidentally, the legendary Irish horse, Arkle, was contesting the King George VI Steeplechase at Kempton Park that same afternoon.

 

My grandfather was a racehorse enthusiast and this man of “scant imagination” liked nothing better than to wager “a few bob,” especially when his favorite jockey, Pat Taffe, was aboard the great Arkle.

 

And so we were all gathered in the kitchen after savoring the remains of the Christmas turkey. Even my normally saturnine grandfather was smiling at the prospect of watching this three-mile contest on his new television.

 

When, lo and behold, the sound of drums and cymbals erupted outside in the yard. 

 

“Are they mad,” Lar Kirwan hissed in fury, “at twenty minutes to bloody three on race day?”

 

He had no idea what this commotion signaled, but it would have to be dealt with forthwith, for the King George VI Stakes would be off and running at 3pm sharp.

 

At that moment a hatchet-faced man, bearing a marked resemblance to Eamon de Valera despite wearing a ladies bonnet and tartan shawl, peered speculatively in the window at us.

 

“’Tis the Wren Boys!”  My Granny announced in trepidation.

 

“Get them out of here now!” Her spouse ferociously muttered.

 

“How can we? Sure they’d put a curse on us and say we were the meanest family in County Wexford.”

“Where’s the gun?”

 

“Gun, how are you! Didn’t you order it out of the house in case they thought we were in the IRA?”

 

But neither armored cars, nor tanks, nor guns would have stopped these unruly mummers, one of whom was cavorting around with an oversized pair of ladies bloomers pulled tight over his cavalry twill trousers. 

 

Meanwhile, a third more soberly dressed gentleman rattled a cage containing a forlorn and frightened wren.

 

The Wren Boys hollered to the overcast skies that they were the descendents of Saint George and were about to slay the dragon that was threatening the many bullocks my grandfather was fattening on his farm.

 

It was like the earth had opened and the past poured forth before our eyes. I could make little sense of what else they were roaring about, but I could tell they expected to be rewarded for their efforts.

 

My grandfather squinted at his watch as Arkle cantered down to the starting line and the bloomered offspring of Saint George danced a jig in the kitchen yard. My grandmother burrowed desperately inside her purse. 

 

Suddenly the Wren Boys froze outside our window - their hands outstretched in demand. 

 

My Grandfather sank back in his armchair in relief as the flag went up and Arkle galloped into an early lead.

 

My grandmother handed over some pound notes in grateful supplication, and the Wren Boys melted back into the world they came from – the hidden Ireland.