Red Star Over Belfast

The article by Lynda Walker first appeared in the 02 August 2025 Print Edition of Unity, the weekly publication of the Irish Communist Party.

Cover Photo: Sean Morrissey and Eugene McGlone in Transport House, Belfast, 1980s.

Féile an Phobail – The Peoples Festival: “The landmark August festival in Belfast is Ireland’s biggest community arts celebration, attracting and introducing a diverse range of people to our city’s extensive culture and the arts offering.” (Féile programme, 2025)

It grew out of the politics of the anti-internment campaign in the North of Ireland when on the 9^th of August 1971 342 men were interned without trial.

The Morning Star covered this in detail at the time including the stories about communists Terry Bruton and Sean Morrissey who were ‘lifted’ in the winter of 1971.

Between 9^th August 1971 and 6^th December 1975, 1981 people were interned; 1874 from republican backgrounds and 107 loyalists. More loyalists were interned after February 1973. 19-year-old republican Liz McKee was the first woman to be interned in 1973.

Statistics issued by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Office based on Royal Ulster Constabulary returns show that the number of deaths for the period during four months before internment were four British army and four civilians killed.  During the four months after internment the number rose to 30 Army, 11 RUC and UDR and 73 civilians.

Following internment on the 9^th of August each year people in republican/nationalist areas marked the date with riots, bus burning and other forms of action.

From this grew the idea to create a cultural arts and political festival that would address the issues in a more positive way.

The Féile was established in 1988 as a relatively small venture and it has grown to be an enormous festival with music, debates, sports, historical walks and so on. Take a look on their website to see.

The festival has taken on a cross-community feature with people from the protestant/loyalist community participating in debates and events, unionists, even the PSNI have been seen on the platform with Republicans!

The Shankill Road Library, in protestant west/north Belfast holds events and the International Brigade Commemoration Committee has organised Féile events there for the past 15 years.

There is also an international presence with Sudanese, Palestinians, South Africans, Chinese and others taking part. A day of solidarity with Palestine is held each year in the Féile.

In 2009 the Communist Party organised an event in Conway Mill, showing the DVD of veteran Peadar O’Donnell’s meeting in Conway Mill in 1984.

In the chair on both occasions was Sean Morrissey and this year we are celebrating the Life and Times of Sean Morrissey with Professor Sinéad Morrissey, Sean’s granddaughter, doing a presentation. In the chair this time will be Tommy Campbell, a long-time comrade of Sean’s, now living in Aberdeen.

Sean was imprisoned and interned in 1938 and 1940, Patrick Smylie wrote about this:

“In 1938, Morrissey was arrested for wearing an Easter Lily and received a six months’ sentence.
This, he recalled humorously, made him believe ‘I was a real Irish martyr’.
He was interned by the Unionist Government in 1940 and remained imprisoned for most of the Second World War.
This was firstly in Derry Gaol where the internees received ’brutal treatment’.
Morrissey and 200 other republicans were then moved to the prison ship HMS Al Rawdah, moored off Killyleagh in Strangford Lough.
Conditions were tough, and Morrissey remembered one older republican died after falling from a hammock. ~
After eight months on board, the internees were moved to a Belfast Jail, where Morrissey’s real politicisation began.”
(2020, Left Lives Irish Labour History Society.)

Following his release Sean joined the Communist Party of Northern Ireland as it was then. He became more involved in class politics as a leader in the Turf Lodge Tenants Association, as a civil rights activist and on other issues.

Sean came from Sultan Street, Belfast and later lived in Turf Lodge where he and his late wife Catherine raised their family. Sean’s working life included work in the building industry, in Inglis’s bakery and later as education officer of the Amalgamated Transport and General Workers Union.

It was at Inglis’s that he experienced discrimination within the unions because communists were banned from holding office in the ATGWU, he could not be a shop steward, but all the unions in the bakery participated in a works committee and they elected Sean convenor.    

When the ban was lifted Sean became a delegate to the Belfast and District Trade Union Council.

Sinéad Morrissey

Sinéad Morrissey has a following in her own right, she has published several collections of poems, won the TS Elliot and other prizes, she was a former poet laureate of Belfast, a Professor of Literature in Queens University and is now at Newcastle University.

Sinead has also taken part in a Féile event before in the Shankill Library with John Gray chairing the meeting she joined with the President of the International Brigade Memorial Trust, Marlene Sidaway and local activist Dawn Purvis to read prose and poems written by International Brigaders and associated people like La Pasionaria.

We are looking forward to this historic, political and cultural occasion and are pleased to be a part of the happening.