Terri Gavin
3 September 1931 – 25 June 2020
The Revolutionary Communist Group pays tribute to the Irish solidarity work and internationalist campaigning of Terri Gavin and we reprint here a tribute to her from the Anti-Internment Group (AIG) London.
The Anti Internment Group London would like to pay tribute to our dear friend, patron and comrade Terri Gavin Mcweeney who passed away at the Butterworth Nursing Home in St John’s Wood London in June 2020.
Theresa (Terri) Gavin was born in Carrick-on-Shannon, County Leitrim in Ireland. The Gavins were a Republican family and Terri’s father and her brother Jimmy were both active in the IRA struggle against British rule. The 1930s and 1940s were a turbulent period in Ireland. Terri grew up in the early years of the Irish Free State during the economic depression, the economic war with Britain and the conflict with Churchill over Irish neutrality during World War Two. Those years were tough for most people in Ireland, but the Gavin family also faced state persecution because of their Republican beliefs. By 1937 Éamon De Valera had long since abandoned the Republican struggle and he formed the first Fianna Fáil government in that year. Fianna Fáil instigated a ferocious repression of Republicans in the 26 counties.
Terri left Ireland aged 19 and came to London to work as a nurse. She became a central figure in Kilburn and other Irish areas. She often sent money to prisoners, and comrades in Ireland for books and for Republican projects for the homeless, and was a generous supporter of the National Graves Association, who maintain Republican graves in Ireland.
Terri loved music and poetry, especially in her beloved Irish language, which she had learned while living on Tory Island off the coast of Donegal. She loved to listen to rebel songs from all of the 32 counties of Ireland, and knew all the words and would always sing along. She was also a great supporter of the Grup Yorum political band from Turkey.
Terri was a lifelong Republican activist, who campaigned tirelessly for the freedom of Irish political prisoners, and dedicated her life to fighting for the workers’ republic and the campaign for Irish self-determination. During the IRA border campaign of 1956 to 1962 Terri was active in solidarity work. Her partner, John McWeeney, wrote songs and poems in support of the IRA campaign under the pen-name Crom Abú. At this time Terri also supported the EOKA political prisoners from Cyprus who fought for their rights alongside IRA prisoners in Wormwood Scrubs and other gaols. Although in her later years Terri’s eyesight deteriorated, she would instruct the late Michael Holden to write letters to prisoners on her behalf.
Terri shared fond memories of her late brother Jimmy, who lived in the North Strand, Dublin. She accompanied Sister Sarah Clarke when she went to visit Republican POWs in English prisons. She visited Judith Ward, and the IRA hunger strikers Michael Gaughan and Frank Stagg amongst others. Terri recounted that Sister Sarah Clarke would on occasion spray holy water on the prison guards as an act of defiance.
Following the Bloody Sunday massacre in 1972, when the Parachute Regiment murdered 14 unarmed demonstrators on the streets of Derry, Terri challenged Brian Faulkner, the then Prime Minister of Northern Ireland on his way into Downing Street. Terri was subsequently arrested and detained in Paddington Green police station.
Terri campaigned for the IRA volunteers Marian and Dolours Price when they were arrested in the 1970s and force-fed. During the 1981 hunger strike she protested outside Downing Street for the five demands, which were: the right not to wear a prison uniform; the right not to do prison work; the right of free association with other prisoners, and to organise educational and recreational pursuits; the right to one visit, one letter and one parcel per week;full restoration of remission lost through the protest. Much later, in 2011, Terri supported Marian Price when she was incarcerated for holding a document while a statement was read at an Easter Commemoration. Terri campaigned tirelessly for prominent Republicans such as Mickey McKevitt, and campaigned for the release of Stephen Kaczynski, imprisoned in Turkey.
Terri was one of the founding members of the Irish Political Status Committee formed in 2000 to support Irish Republican prisoners, and she attended activities such as public meetings and pickets of the Irish Embassy, the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice. Terri often stood with Republicans and FRFI supporters at demonstrations outside Downing Street, calling for freedom for imprisoned Republican Tony Taylor and the Craigavon Two. She attended these protests into her eighties, even though she had major problems with her health. Terri was a member of the London-based Irish Republican Support Group, and then joined the AIG when it was formed in 2017.
Terri did not restrict her activism to the Irish struggle; she was an Internationalist who supported the anti-apartheid struggle and attended the non-stop picket of the South African Embassy. In April 2016, after the Anatolian People’s Cultural Centre was closed down by the Metropolitan Police, Terri supported the ‘Resistance Tent’ in Tottenham. She was known as Terri Mother by her comrades from Turkey.
Terri’s last picket was outside 10 Downing Street in summer 2018. After that, she had to leave her flat in Paddington due to ill health. Later on Terri moved to the Butterworth care home in St John’s Wood. Terri received great care there and spoke highly of her carers.
Terri is sadly missed and her loss of Terri will be felt by the Irish solidarity movement for a long time.
