Des O'Hagan, Workers' Party veteran

(A slightly edited version of this obituary was published in the Irish Times May 16th 2015)

Des O’Hagan – born March 29^th 2015, died May 5^th 2015

Des O’Hagan, who has died, was a link to the Northern upheavals in the early 1970s. He was Director of Education of Official Sinn Féin, then the Workers Party. His education gave a political formation to a significant generation in politics, the trade unions and the media. His intellectual analysis was central to the Workers Party’s  move away from nationalism.

In 1971-2 he was interned. The 21 ‘Letters from Long Kesh’ he smuggled out for publication in the Irish Times played an important role in highlighting the injustice of internment.

O’Hagan was also a link to the Republicanism of the 1950s. He had been imprisoned as a member of Saor Uladh, a Northern split from the IRA.

Desmond Patrick O’Hagan was born in Belfast’s Lower Falls in March 1934, youngest of three children and second son to Peter O’Hagan, a watchmaker, and his wife Susan (née McKeown). Her father, Michael McKeown, had been a leader of the dockers’ union in Belfast and contemporary of Larkin and Connolly. O’Hagan received his primary education at St Comgall’s Primary School, then at St Malachy’s College, Belfast. While at St Malachy’s he joined the IRA.

After school he joined the North’s Civil Service, working in a planning office. At the time, Northern civil servants had to swear allegiance to the monarch. For this, O’Hagan was expelled from the IRA. He joined Saor Uladh, finding its heterodox atmosphere more comfortable.

The civil service was not to his taste. He joined an Irish-speaking unit of the Irish Army, then emigrated to work in England.

Back in Belfast he was imprisoned for four years after an unsuccessful attempt to rescue a Saor Uladh prisoner from hospital. In Crumlin Road prison he worked with another prisoner at pioneering academic education among Republican prisoners. The orthodox IRA initially disapproved, but joined in.

On release he moved to study in the London School of Economics. There he was influenced by Marxist lecturers, including Ralph Miliband, father of Ed Miliband. His reading list as Education Officer would include material from their courses.

Returning to Belfast he became a lecturer in Stranmillis teacher training college. There he gave students his philosophical opinions, but allowed them to develop their own. He re-engaged politically, becoming a founder of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association.

Internment ended his academic career. Stranmillis was an overwhelmingly Protestant institution. Some colleagues and students backed him. He resigned because he didn’t want to split the college, and also felt the lure of full-time political activism.

O’Hagan was always a fierce polemicist, strongly opposed to the (Provisional) IRA, with his Marxism being broadly pro-Soviet. For some he was inspirational, for others a bête noire. He survived at least two attempts on his life during Republican feuds. He was also interested in culture: in the 1980s he developed the ‘Poets and Pints’ initiative, where poets read their work in clubs and pubs in working class areas of Belfast.

In later life he moved to Downpatrick. He stood for the Workers Party in various elections, keeping faith in its vision despite low votes.

Des O’Hagan is survived by his sons Donal and Aedan, his sister Angela, brother Raymond, and former wife Liz (McShane). He was predeceased by his wife Marie and son Ciaran.