Republican News · Thursday 16 May 2002

Gonne Carmichael

I can't write a few measured words, the symbolic line, a summary of achievements and events, the inevitable full stop. I knew Gonne Carmichael. During the last three years of her life we worked together in the same cramped office, shivering and complaining through the cold winter months, standing outside the backdoor to catch the sun on summer days.

Gonne was a brave woman but she wouldn't like me saying that. She was a straight talking, no nonsense, hands-on kind of person who liked getting a job done. Those of us with a more indolent nature she cajoled and harassed into action. "An organisation is only as good as its workers," she would say and Gonne Carmichael was a worker.

d she was strong, not in a heroic, grand gesture kind of way but in the resolute way she in which encountered life's hardships, and then got on with it. She was courageous in the dignity with which she lived her life and in the last few months with which she faced illness and pain and untimely death.

In 1992, Gonne was one of the very first people on the scene when an RUC officer posing as a journalist entered Sinn Féin's Sevastopol Street offices, shot dead three people and seriously injured a fourth. But despite the carnage and trauma she had just witnessed and the fear of further attack, Gonne insisted upon keeping the bookshop open.

Republican prisoners' families needed their welfare and Gonne would not have them turned away. Tenacious, steadfast, determined, foolhardy, stubborn? Call it by whatever name you choose, Gonne was simply doing her job. And like many republicans, the only trauma counselling Gonne ever knew was hard work followed by more hard work underpinned by a sense of duty to others.

For most people, Gonne will be remembered for her work with Green Cross. The welfare of republican prisoners and their families was central to Gonne's life and work. And it wasn't glamorous. It was endless door-to-door collections, ballots in pubs and clubs and a lifetime of fundraising.

It began in the 1950s when as a young woman Gonne collected for prisoners' welfare with Rebecca McGlade and Mary McGuigan in Ardoyne. Throughout the '58 campaign Gonne worked in support of republican prisoners.

When the North erupted in 1969, Gonne and her comrades were faced with the enormous task of addressing the needs of hundreds of prisoners. As a mother rearing children, often alone and facing the usual struggle to make ends meet, Gonne listened to the troubles of others and offered a helping hand. She empathised rather than sympathised but for Gonne to be aware of a problem was to be involved in its resolution.

Based first in the Ardscoil in Divis, then over a bakery along the Springfield Road and finally in premises on Sevastopol Street, Green Cross was officially founded in 1973. Within the last 30 years there has been tens of thousands of republicans through the jail system in the north and further afield.

d in the eyes of the British state, supporting republican prisoners was an act of sedition in itself. In 1978, the RUC arrested Gonne and two fellow Green Cross workers, Roseena Ferris and Greta Rice. The three women were interrogated for four days in Castlereagh.

But Gonne also dreamed of opening a political bookshop and with encouragement and a little help from Fr Faul she realised that ambition in October 1980. The present Art Shop, now a modern and thriving book and souvenir shop, owes its beginning to a couple of damp rooms in the old Sevastopol Street building and the determination of women like Gonne Carmichael, who recognised that education and inspiration were as important as financial and emotional support.

By 1989, Gonne's work with republican prisoners reached far beyond the shores of Ireland when a number of republicans were imprisoned in continental Europe. With prisoners scattered in jails in Holland, Germany, Belgium and Paris and often kept in appalling isolation, Gonne worked with Orla O'Kane, Ann Murray and Marie Drumm to ensure regular family visits and proper legal support.

In 1992, Gonne moved to Paris and married Arthur MacCaig. Art, an independent film maker, was already well known in Irish republican circles for his film, The Patriot Game, which includes some of the most famous footage of IRA Volunteers in the early '70s.

Returning to Belfast in 1998, Gonne's organisational abilities were soon to be utilised by An Phoblacht. In the newspaper's Belfast office, Gonne undertook the enormous task of collating and filing information and research material. Ask for anything and within minutes Gonne would be at your elbow with the relevant document or cutting.

Gonne loved her family. Public displays of affection weren't her style but Gonne spoke of her children and her own sisters and brother with great pride and much joy. And after many personal troubles she found a happy centre to her life with her husband Art.

Gonne was proud of her parents' legacy. She grafted her own political commitment to that of her mother and father, Elsie (née Rogan) and Robert Carmichael. In the turbulent years of the early 20th century, the couple had married in secret while Robert was on the run.

Gonne was born and reared within the hostile territory of a sectarian state but repression and poverty never broke her family's spirit. As Gonne put it, every Easter Commemoration "the women sent their menfolk out dressed like film stars".

Gonne's father had fought in the War of Independence, and both Robert and his brother were incarcerated on the prison ship Agenta. The history of the Carmichael family is littered with such republican milestones.

But despite facing many difficulties, the Carmichaels were sufficiently confident and resolved to name a daughter after Maud Gonne MacBride. Like many republicans, they remained unbowed as well as unbroken.

What made Gonne Carmichael a republican? Such a question is like asking why a newborn calf struggles to its feet. Life and circumstances demanded it. And Gonne was never reticent in meeting a challenge.

"If you are going to write my obituary, mention these people," Gonne had said, rhyming off a list of names during one of my last hospital visits; "and don't make me out something I'm not," and as an afterthought, she added, "and don't make it too long". I hope I've met some measure of this request.

Goodbye Gonne and God Bless.

BY LAURA FRIEL