Seán Garland

Seán Garland (born 7 March 1934) is a senior figure and former President of the Workers Party of Ireland.

Born at Belvedere Place, off Mountjoy Square in Dublin, Garland joined the Irish Republican Army in 1953. In 1954, he briefly joined the British army as an IRA agent and collected intelligence on Gough Barracks in Armagh. This enabled the IRA to carry out a massive arms raid, which took place on 12 June 1954 with Garland's active involvement, on the base. Garland left the British army in October of the same year and became a full-time IRA training officer.

On 1 January 1957 at the beginning of the IRA Border Campaign, he led the unsuccessful attack on Brookeborough Royal Ulster Constabulary barracks in which his comrades Seán South and Fergal O'Hanlon, both the subjects of well-known republican ballads, were shot and fatally wounded. Under fire, Garland carried South on his shoulders in an unsuccessful attempt to save his friend's life. Seriously wounded, he was subsequently hospitalised for a number of weeks and was then jailed in Mountjoy Prison. In November 1957, while in Mountjoy, Garland was an unsuccessful candidate in the Dublin North Central by-election. Upon his release, he was interned in the Curragh from September 1959 to August 1962.

Garland returned to IRA service on his release and was sent to Belfast to liaise with the then largely inactive units in the city. He was arrested while trying to return to Dublin and sentenced to four years in Crumlin Road jail where he subsequently became O.C. of the IRA prisoners [http://www.workerspartyireland.net/history.html from interview with Sean Garland on Downtown Radio, Augst 2007] .

In the 1960s, Garland became a Marxist and was one of a generation of IRA leaders who attempted to lead the organisation away from violence and into left-wing political agitation. He worked closely in this with figures like Cathal Goulding and Tomás MacGiolla. During the 1969/70 IRA split, Garland supported the moves to abandon abstentionism and was a key figure in Official Sinn Féin (as national organiser) and Official Irish Republican Army (as Adjutant-General). The Official IRA was openly involved in shootings and bombings of military and civilian targets but declared a ceasefire in May 1972. Despite this, the Official IRA continued to carry out shootings and robberies during the 1970s and was engaged in a number of feuds with the Provisional IRA and the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA).

Garland was a close friend of the writer and songwriter Dominic Behan who was best man at Garland's wedding. In 1989 Garland gave the eulogy at Behan's funeral in Dublin.

On 1 March 1975 in Ballymun, Dublin, Garland survived an INLA assassination attempt while returning home with his wife Mary to his Ballymun home. He was badly wounded in the attack.

In 1977, Garland was elected general secretary of Official Sinn Féin. In the same year, he successfully proposed that the party be renamed Sinn Féin the Workers Party. In 1982, he proposed that the prefix Sinn Féin be dropped from the party name to become simply The Workers Party.

In 1986, as general secretary of the Workers Party, he addressed a letter to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union which requested one million US dollars in aid for his party.

In 2000, he was elected president of the Workers Party.

On 7 October 2005, Garland was arrested in Belfast on foot of an extradition application issued by the US authorities. He had been attending the Workers' Party Árd Fheis / Annual Conference at the time. The American authorities allege that Garland has been involved in a massive counterfeiting operation involving almost perfect copies of US dollars - so-called "superdollars". They also allege that this counterfeiting involved the government of North Korea. [US Department of Justice press release [http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/dc/Press_Releases/2005_Archives/Oct_2005/05370.html Leader of Irish Workers' Party and Official Irish Republican Army Arrested in United Kingdom on U.S. Indictment Charging Trafficking in Counterfeit United States Currency] 8 October 2005] [BBC [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4337610.stm US says N Korea forged dollars] 13 October 2005] Garland was released on bail. His supporters believe that the U.S. waited for Garland to travel north of the Irish border before seeking his extradition, believing the United Kingdom authorities would be more willing to acquiesce than those in the Republic of Ireland [http://www.seangarland.org/id5.html briefing No.1 point 5] . In June 2007 the Irish edition of the Mail on Sunday said that there was evidence that the affair was a US plot to provide a pretext for a military attack on North Korea (Irish Mail on Sunday, 24th June 2007). Similar claims were made in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in January 2007 which claimed the real source of the "superdollars" is a seccret printing facility in the US owned by the CIA" (see Phoenix Magazine, July 13, 2007)

On 9 October 2005, a "Sunday Times" article alleged that Garland became chief of staff of the largely inactive Official IRA in 1998. [Liam Clarke [http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2091-1817418,00.html Garland arrested in US forgery hunt] 9 October 2005]

On 1 December, the High Court in Belfast issued a warrant for Garland's arrest after he failed to appear for an extradition hearing.

On April 1st 2006, Sean Garland was unanimously re-elected as President of The Workers' Party and in a keynote address to the party membership gathered in Dublin he vowed to fight any attempt to extradite him to the United States. In 2008 he announced his intention to retire from the presidency and was replaced in the position on 17th May 2008 by Mick Finnegan. Garland remains a member of the party's Central Executive Committee and is its National Treasurer. [ [http://www.workerspartyireland.net/id163.html Workers' Party elect new Party President ] ]

Seán Garland is the Workers' Party representative at the National Forum on Europe.

References

External links

* [http://www.seangarland.org Stop the Extradition of Sean Garland] (includes a biography)
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/3819345.stm BBC article: what is a superdollar?]
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/3822005.stm BBC article: Leader of 'Official IRA' in forgery plot]
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/programmes/panorama/transcripts/superdollar.txt Transcript of BBC TV Show, Panorama]
* [http://www.rte.ie/news/2005/1008/garlands.html Workers' Party president in counterfeit probe] - RTÉ News article
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/4489844.stm Arrest warrant for party leader] - BBC News article
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=berlmWKjqyo Seán Garland's address to the Workers' Party conference in Waterford 21st April 2007 on YouTube (part 1 of 4 sections)]