Come Here To Me!

‘The Man with the Hat’ is not a name Seán Garland chose for himself. A code name bestowed upon him during a CIA investigation, it is an intriguing title for a documentary telling the story of one of the most important and controversial figures of Irish republicanism in the second half of the twentieth century. The Man with the Hat premieres May 15th in Dublin’s Sugar Club, with tickets on sale now from Eventbrite.

A veteran of the Operation Harvest campaign, which saw IRA units attacking British military interests on the north of the Irish border in a campaign directed from Dublin, Seán moved away from traditional republicanism and towards a Marxist perspective in subsequent decades. Republicanism is a broad church of course, and one of those who he had fought alongside in the so-called Border Campaign had been Seán South, an ultra-Catholic nationalist who secured his place in the nationalist pantheon thanks to’ Seán South from Garryowen’.

The funeral of Seán South.

Garland was prominently involved with both the Workers’ Party and the Official IRA,  which declared a ceasefire in May 1972, though the organisation became entangled in increasingly bitter feuds with rival republican organisations in subsequent years, resulting in the deaths of primarily young men on the streets of Belfast and Dublin on all sides, including Charlie Hughes, Seamus Costello and Liam McMillen. The various feuds tore the republican movement apart at moments when unity was badly required.

Garland’s story plays out in Dublin, Belfast, Moscow, Pyongyang and in other surprising places. It is both the story of a secretive parliamentary organisation (which remained active in various ways long after its supposed ceasefire) and a political party which sought Soviet guidance and political power in Ireland. By 1987, an explicitly Marxist party had eight parliamentarians sitting in Dáil Éireann. In 1992, as communism collapsed across Europe, seven of its parliamentarians had abandoned the party and established the social democratic party Democratic Left.

In 2005, a new chapter in Garland’s life began as the United States sought his extradition on the basis of alleged involvement in the distribution of counterfeited US dollars – widely known as “superdollars” – in 1998. American authorities alleged that the source of the banknotes was the government of North Korea.

This upcoming documentary promises to examine all of these issues and more. How a young man from Dublin’s north inner-city can later become entangled in a tale that involves Pyongyang and the U.S legal system is one of the most intriguing stories of twentieth century Ireland, and it is long overdue an airing.