22 Facts About George Gilmore

George Frederick Gilmore was a Protestant Irish republican and communist who became an Irish Republican Army leader during the 1920s and 1930s.

George Gilmore fought in the Irish Republican Army in the Irish War of Independence and in the Irish Civil War on the Anti-Treaty IRA side.

However, the next month, George Gilmore was involved in a riot that took place on Armistice Day and he was arrested and sentenced to eighteen months in prison.

George Gilmore resisted the entire duration; first resisting the arrest and then, once imprisoned, refused to wear a prison uniform and went on hunger strike.

Early in 1928 members of the IRA attacked Mountjoy Prison where George Gilmore was held and shot the warden after a story emerged that George Gilmore had previously been the victim of a vicious beating by the guards.

George Gilmore was released in 1929 but re-arrested and re-imprisoned almost immediately, resulting in a retaliatory beating by the guards that left George Gilmore unconscious.

Sometime between 1929 and 1930, George Gilmore was sent by the IRA to Russia to receive military training and to seek aid.

George Gilmore was arrested yet again upon his return to Ireland in April 1931, charged with having resisted arrest ten months previously.

George Gilmore refused to wear prison clothing because of his political status and remained naked in a windowless cell from October 1931 until February 1932.

George Gilmore's fortunes were dramatically altered when Fianna Fail emerged victorious in the February 1932 general election.

Finally out of long-term imprisonment, George Gilmore was eager to resume working towards a socialist Ireland.

George Gilmore had supported Peadar O'Donnell's shortlived socialist republican group Saor Eire from prison, but in the aftermath of its demise, he concluded that the group has spent too much time imagining what it might do if in government, and not enough time considering what the immediate aims of the IRA should be.

Nevertheless, George Gilmore encouraged the IRA to not become too closely associated with Fianna Fail, fearing the IRA would become a subservient body.

George Gilmore himself had ascended to the IRA's army council upon his release, and in March 1932 was amongst representatives of the Army Council that liaised with de Valera about a possible partnership between the IRA and Fianna Fail.

Left-wing members of the IRA such as George Gilmore, Ryan and O'Donnell insisted that the IRA needed to tie their activity to social agitation in addition to their military aims, but this was a minority viewpoint, with the majority believing the IRA should have a "strictly military" outlook.

George Gilmore had made a last-ditch effort to save the Congress by travelling to America to seek funds from Irish-American groups but was not successful.

In 1966, for the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising, George Gilmore released a pamphlet entitled "Labour and the republican movement" in which he espoused the principles of James Connolly.

Additionally, George Gilmore appealed to young republicans not to repeat the mistake older republicans had made in being too rigid in their views and too short on policy.

Cora's association with leftwing politics and George Gilmore caused a deep rift between herself and her deeply religious family.

Hughes and George Gilmore were eventually engaged to be married when it became apparent that Hughes was suffering from Tuberculous, which George Gilmore believed she developed visiting and working in the slums of Dublin.

George Gilmore believed that Hughes need to immediately depart for a sanatorium in Switzerland but Hughes' family believed she should go to Lourdes to seek a miracle.

In desperation, George Gilmore arranged a meeting with De Valera to ask him to convince the Hughes family to send her to Switzerland.