My Two Favorite Things

My Two Favorite Things
A Review by Tom Shelley of “Where Are You Really From?” memoirs by Tim Brannigan

As you might guess from reading this blog, my two favorite things are fighting racism in America, and the politics of Northern Ireland. When they (or anti-racism in the North and Irish republicanism) intersect I get pretty excited. For example, after reading a book in 1998 about connections between blacks in America on one hand and Irish nationalists and republicans and  civil rights activists on the other I proposed to the student group I was organizing on the issue of the North that we get funding to bring the author, Brian Dooley, to speak on campus. Or, when Gerry Adams tweeted the n-word in the Spring, I wrote what might be one of the best posts I’ve written on this blog.

It was when I read about that tweet that I first learned about Tim Brannigan- he was described as being a republican ex-prisoner and of mixed race. Not long after that I learned a little more about him and then I bought his memoirs. I have read the book twice now and it’s great. It’s called “Where Are You Really From?: Kola Kubes and Gelignite, Secrets and Lies- the true story of an extraordinary family.” It includes a fair amount of biographical material about his mom, but is mostly about him. Two-thirds of it is political and about one-third is personal (which is almost as interesting to me- his life is a great story). He writes about experiencing racism in the nationalist community, his family’s involvement with the IRA, school, supporting the Hunger-Strikers as a teenager, his first job, going to college, being interrogated at the notorious Castlereagh interrogation centre, the many interesting details of being a republican prisoner (first on remand and then in Long Kesh prison (informally but partly run by the IRA prisoners)), his career as a journalist, his mother’s death, and meeting his dad for the first time.

His mom became pregnant with him as a result of an affair with a junior doctor from Ghana in 1966. She convinced the relevant staff of the hospital she gave birth at to say that the baby was stillborn and to take him to a baby home (with instructions he wasn’t to be adopted by anyone but her). A year later she adopted him (she had long ago made it clear to friends and family that she was anti-racist). Part of the fascinating story is that she didn’t tell him that she was really his mom until he was 19.

His description of how bad racism was in Belfast is a bit mixed. He says that unlike what was happening in some British cities there wasn’t much racism in Belfast because there weren’t many people of color there. His description of the racism he experienced from people in the nationalist community as a child in the 1970s made me think I had seriously under-estimated how racist the nationalist community was back then. On the other hand, he says that, although he doesn’t want to overstate this, in the nationalist community, “to be a racist was to have crossed a line.” In the middle of the book he describes some of the racism he experienced as a teen-ager- it sounded like it was not as bad as it was when he was a child, but still kind of surprises me. He also writes about how British soldiers on patrol in west Belfast would abuse him racially, but that’s not a surprise at all.

His mom was a republican and she often let the IRA use her home for meetings and for hiding weapons or explosives. In 1981 initially he wasn’t interested in the Hunger-Strike by republican POWs, but his mother made him go on the first march in support of the strike. After that he went on more marches and attended at least two funerals and started selling Sinn Fein’s newspaper. On May Day 1984 he joined SF.

Like most republicans, his opposition to injustice went and goes way beyond the usual issues for N. Ireland (the division of the country, the police, etc.). One story that’s brief but worth a mention is that he tried unionizing his work-place. It didn’t work out, but it’s still pretty cool. When his mom asked him if he was interested in finding his father, he said no and, writing his book, he says that he didn’t identify with Ghana but identified strongly as Irish and was very interested in African-AMERICAN politics (he was reading books about Black Power like “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”) (when he meets his father later in the book, it’s in Ghana and he learns some about the country of his father). There's some stuff in his book indicating he's probably a socialist, and according to his Twitter page he IS.

When he was probably around 19 years old and raising money for SF by going around to bars with a tin for collecting loose change from people he had a pretty serious incident with a racist. At one bar one day, this guy asked what was he doing collecting for SF and used the N-word. A very brief and minor physical altercation develops. One or two days later two men (probably with the IRA) spoke with him about it and offered to have the racist shot. He said no. In the book, he writes: “if I decided to have everyone shot who ever made a racist remark to me, there would be a bloodbath. They were satisfied once they had made it clear to me that my back was covered. I knew this but it was good to have it reiterated.”

In 1990 he got a degree in Politics from Liverpool Polytechnic. Earlier he had also studied sociology and English literature. Although he had planned on enjoying a more diverse city than Belfast, he was housed with the other Irish students and became quite patriotic.

Shortly after he came home to Belfast he allowed the IRA to hide some weapons in a car in the driveway of his mom’s house. The security forces learned of this and he and his mom were taken to the notorious Castlereagh Interrogation Centre where you could be held for seven days without charge. He describes the interrogation efforts of the police. Also, as if there was some doubt, we get evidence of racism among the police- a police officer refers to him by using the n-word. He ends up admitting to hiding weapons and explosives in order to get his mom released.

The next two parts are very interesting. First he describes life in the Crumlin Road Jail, where he was on remand. It’s largely about the non-political aspects of life there, but also about tension between the republican prisoners (with whom he lived) and the loyalist prisoners. After about a year there, he was convicted and was moved to the Long Kesh H-Blocks, the large prison containing hundreds of sentenced republican POWs. Although he wasn't an IRA member, that didn’t stop the IRA from making him the leader of one of the H-Blocks. He describes the daily routine in Long Kesh, and touches on politics here and there. There were some racist comments during his 4-5 years in the prison. For example, one prisoner insisted that the republican struggle wasn’t Brannigan's fight, despite him explaining his background in the mid- Falls Road area and the sectarian and racial abuse he took from the British Army. On the other hand, he says that the prison was the least racist place he had ever been. Once when watching a football game on TV a fellow prisoner called a black player a mugger. After he said that and he noticed Branngan was there the racist then spent the entire game praising anything done by a black player. Brannigan writes: “that was as rough as it ever got.”

When he got out in 1995 he soon started a career as a journalist. That’s a good part of the story, but one I’m going to largely skip. He spent some time working at the Irish News and more recently he has been a free-lance journalist.

The second to last part is about the tragic decline of his mom’s health and then her death. It’s very moving in at least one way- he got to spend a lot of time with her before she died- he taking care of her and them just enjoying each other’s company.

The last part is about Brannigan connecting with some of his black half-siblings and eventually, with his father. He had promised his mom, not long before she died, that he would search for his father. During the search he also became more interested in where he came from on his father’s side. He does meet his father, but unfortunately, his father was kind of a jerk and at the end of the book, Brannigan is apparently no longer welcome in the lives of his father or his black half-siblings.

Although I’ve only touched on it a little, there is a lot of material about how other members of the nationalist community and the republican movement saw him, and how he identified strongly as Irish and as a republican- “a black Irish republican.”

There is a fair amount of humor in his book. One example is found while reading his description of his time at Castlereagh.  The police showed him the first two lines in his security file: “this man is a republican,” and “this man is black.” He writes in his book, “clearly they’d had their top men on the job.”

Unfortunately I think I have good reason to criticize one small bit of his story. He gives (as an example of the racial harassment he experienced) a description of an incident when he proudly wore a child’s toy American Indian headdress and held a rubber tomahawk while standing outside his home’s front door hoping to impress other children (I think he was around 8 years old). Older boys walking by called him “Geronimo” and “Sambo,” and made “war-cry” sounds they had heard in John Wayne movies and made him feel, as he frequently did while growing up, isolated, picked on, and angry. I like to think it’s apparent that I’m sensitive to what he has experienced at the hands of ignorant and racist people in the Nationalist community, and how that made him feel. But I have to say that his mom buying that headdress and tomahawk for him offends me as an ally of Native American people. It’s called cultural appropriation, taking something from a community of nations in this hemisphere that has already had so much taken from them. I think I have to kind of criticize him for wearing the headdress and holding the tomahawk, but I realize he was a young child and had no idea how offensive what he was doing was. As much as I love the book that I am reviewing, I am disappointed that he, while writing it as an adult, failed to say anything about how offensive this (his mom buying the headdress and tomahawk and him wearing it and holding the tomahawk in order to impress other children) was. If  he DID write something critical of it and his editor took it out I’ll edit this review to acknowledge that. To his credit, he DOES suggest that the Indians in John Wayne movies are not like real Indians.

I have referred a couple of times to me thinking that the nationalist community of the 1970s and 1980s as described in the book was more racist than I had earlier estimated it was. I have some solid information for the recent period. The Northern Ireland Life and Times survey seems well respected. The following question was asked annually 2005-2014 with the exception of 2011: “How much do you agree or disagree with the statement, ‘In relation to colour and ethnicity, I prefer to stick with people of my own kind’”. The average answers for the Catholic population are: Strongly Agree 4%; Agree 18%; neither agree nor disagree 24%; disagree 35%; and strongly disagree 19%. For the Protestant community the numbers are: 9; 24; 28; 28; 10. In August of 2015 a crowd of young people in west Belfast spent three hours throwing bricks etc. at Brannigan’s house, an attack based on race considering the verbal abuse they also hurled at him. It did surprise me when I read about it. Because of his story I have made minor adjustments to about 5 paragraphs on this blog that are about racism in the nationalist community.

I recommend this book for anyone interested in studying race/racism/nationality/nationalism or The Troubles.