Pat Devine    (1898-1973)

[Desmond Greaves’s obituary of Pat Devine, who for many years contributed the “World Comment” column to the “Irish Democrat”] 

PAT DEVINE  R.I.P.

Pat Devine, a regular contributor to the “Irish Democrat” for a quarter of a century, was a remarkable man by any standards. Like James Connolly, a “Scotto-Hibernian”, he was born in the intensely religious Catholic community of Motherwell, Co. Lanark, and christened Patrick Joseph Aloysius Devine and reared in a devout working-class home.

He died in London on July 22nd 1973 after a life crammed with activity and adventure.

During the First World War he served in the Royal Flying Corps, and indeed it was as a member of that force that he witnessed the scenes in Dublin on Armistice Day. 

He returned to Motherwell ready for the crisis, slump and unemployment, made more acute by the arrival of thousands of refugees from Belfast, who were given what could be given by the hard-pressed Catholic communities of the West of Scotland.

His social consciousness sharpened by his war experiences, and with the picture of capitalist mismanagement before him, he plunged into politics and became a Communist. This did not endear him to employers and, like thousands more, he emigrated to the United States in 1923 but, falling ill, returned within a year. He was in Scotland long enough to take part in the General Strike of 1926, and to call for the withdrawal of Privy Councillors from the trade union movement at the T.U.C. Then he returned to America.

During this second period in the United States he was active in the Sacco and Vanzetti defence movement, and played a prominent part in the Lawrence Strike, for which he was arrested and sentenced to 15 years in jail, of which he served one year in Atlanta, after which he was released and deported. This may have been accelerated by his part in the detention-house hunger strike before his sentence.

Scarcely was he back in Scotland when he was in jail again. This time he had offended the powers-that-be for leading an unemployed demonstration in Kirkcaldy. He remained prominent in the unemployed movement and took part in the organisation of the far-famed “hunger marches” which converged on London. 

He made his first visit to Moscow in 1933 and was present at the International’s congress in 1934.

Returning to Western Europe he agreed to settle in Dublin to serve the newly founded Communist Party of Ireland in the capacity of national organiser. These were wild days in Ireland. De Valera had recently come to power, and the Cosgrave Party had formed the notorious Blueshirts to try and get him out.

He remained in Ireland several years, but then moved to London where he was an organiser for the English Communist Party. During the war he was in Manchester and in 1945 stood as a candidate for Parliament where he had vast open-air meetings such as no other candidate could command. He found, as others had done before him, that the people would do anything for him except vote for him. It is not sufficient to have a “good candidate”; a well-developed organisation is also needed.

Again in London, he worked for many years for the “Daily Worker”, which became the “Morning Star”. He had retired from its board of management only weeks before he died.

Such then is his life-story, expanded from highly concentrated notes and possibly containing minor inaccuracies. He was working on his memoirs, and if the work was sufficiently advanced, we may all be able to read them.

But no bare record of what happened to him, and what he made happen to others, can give an impression of Pat Devine. He was a “character” in the very best sense of the word. He was disciplined, serious, cooperative and positive in his political work. But he was no “yes-man”. Not even an “I-agree-with-you” man. Not only did he form his own opinions for himself and not fear expressing them, but to the things which were matters of common consent, he brought his own tang and colouring, so that to hear him on a public platform was a pleasure such as one would get from a really good pot-whiskey –  a succession of tastes each pleasurable and surprising,  in the midst of a sound whole.

He used to speak on Connolly Association platforms at Hyde Park. He was popular with the countrymen because of a certain shrewd playfulness which he shared with them. He would tell an impossible story, watching their impassive faces which refused to yield a smile a quarter inch out of the eye, and then it seemed with scarcely more than a wink of his own, turn the whole thing on its head and win roars applause for the point he now proceeded to ram home.

Like all truly serious men he entered all his pursuits in a spirit of infectious gaiety, and the crack, the quip and pithy comment were always there. Indeed, he was something like Larkin in the imaginative effrontery of his attacks on the Tory side.

It would be impossible to list all the organisations he played a leading part in. He served on the executive committees of three Communist parties in three different countries. As well as an orator he was a writer and organiser, of Trade Unions and Co-operative societies, to say nothing of Irish bodies like the Irish Republican Labour lines in the USA, and the Connolly Association in England. In appearance, as in his mental traits, he showed the unmistakeable physiognomy of the Gael.

He will be badly missed. All will wish to join in conveying condolences to his widow Mrs Gloria Devine, and his son Patrick in Manchester. At the same time they will be consoled by reflecting that 75 years is not a bad stint, and he was able to keep going and enjoy it to within a few days of his sudden death. He will be long remembered.