30.01.2025
Two colourful educators
Celebrating the lives of Kevin Bean and Terry Harrison. Billy Clarke reports from the memorial held at Liverpool’s Casa bar
Funerals and memorial services are always fascinating, revealing occasions. Whether you did not know the person at all, knew them a little, or thought you knew them inside-out, there is always more to learn about their life and idiosyncrasies.
This was especially true for the January 24 joint celebration of the lives of the recently deceased Terry Harrison and Kevin Bean - both activists in the Merseyside Pensioners’ Association, which organised the event. These two comrades had, as Kevin’s partner, Pauline Hadaway, put it, a “shared love of sharing knowledge”. Sadly, many friends from Ireland and elsewhere could not be in attendance at the famous Casa Bar in Hope Street due to Storm Éowyn, but there were still around 100 present, with a great variety of contributions.
Terry Harrison, who played a significant part in the Militant Tendency, was best remembered as an educator who, according to Felicity Dowling of ‘Liverpool 47’ fame, was able to teach working class kids to degree level and beyond. But his worldview was massively shaped by his first job, on the shipyards. Terry started there, enthusiastically and nervously, at the age of 15, and was gutted that he had to wait till he was 16 to apply to be a boilermaker’s apprentice. Audrey White read out Terry’s account of his first day on the job, and spoke of that excitement changing over time, as the reality of work gradually dawned on him.
Kevin Bean was a historian specialising in Irish political history, a member of the Labour Party from his teenage years until his expulsion in 2020, and a member of the CPGB and its Provisional Central Committee. Former university students of Kevin’s were in attendance, as well as many family members, friends and comrades who learnt from him through conversations, his books, his articles in the Weekly Worker, and his online education sessions for Why Marx? and Labour Left Alliance.
Hazuan Hashim and Phil Maxwell of The Art of Resistance filming team showed “the director’s cut” of previously unseen footage of Kevin helping Audrey White to accost Keir Starmer when he visited Liverpool in 2022 - the famous short clip has been shared thousands of times and viewed “over seven million times”.1 They also introduced clips from their film Anatomy of a witch-hunt, which chronicles the Labour right’s campaign against the ‘Wavertree Four’, who were expelled from Labour for writing a critical article about their MP, Paula Barker, taking her to task over her attack on leftwingers in the constituency as ‘anti-Semites’.
Kevin, who was secretary of his Constituency Labour Party at the time, in effect narrates the film. “He was a dream to work with,” recalled Phil Maxwell. “We just sat him down in the studio, he brought a bottle of beer and off he went. He was clear, sharp and spoke in a single take.” The brilliant film shows how dedicated Kevin was to the cause of Palestine and to freedom of speech.
The official reason given for Kevin’s expulsion from Labour was not ‘anti-Semitism’ (by which the Labour right means anti-Zionism), but that he was a card-carrying communist. Much to the amusement of many of us present, Kevin defended himself in the film, saying, “I am a Marxist and a socialist, but I have never been a member of the Communist Party.” As Tina Becker, compering part of the event, said later: “I’ve got a shocking announcement to make: yes, he fucking was.” Of course, communists have no problem lying about their membership of this or that organisation. It is our political principles that we are loyal to. (A humorous placard, designed by comrade Maxwell, showed Kevin’s mock-up membership card of the KGB!)
Mike Macnair reflected on working with Kevin on the Provisional Central Committee of the CPGB, and Yassamine Mather talked about his ambitious - perhaps impossibly ambitious - aim of transforming the Critique journal into something more accessible for the masses.
His long-time friend and comrade, Siobhán O’Dwyer, reminded us that Kevin was “realistic” about the dangers of nationalism, but always committed to a united Ireland, and had been involved in Irish politics since the 1980s. She praised his success in earning the trust of dissident republicans, done in order to improve his own understanding and to further his research.
Siobhán also took great pride in having introduced Kevin to his partner, Pauline Hadaway. Pauline spoke about the countless hours spent in conversation with Kevin, and what an honour it was that these conversations would go on to inform one of his books, The new politics of Sinn Féin (2007). She also said that Kevin would never shy away from disagreement, but seemed to be able to disagree without ever making an enemy.
Comrade Becker reminded the audience that, indeed, a certain Baroness Claire Fox was present at Kevin’s funeral: “I was tapped on the shoulder a few times that day, with comrades asking, ‘What the fuck is she doing here?’” The answer is: Kevin was friends with Fox, as he was with people from all walks of life. Always interested in people, their stories, their views and their backgrounds. Many comrades remembered how he spoke to them for hours about this or that, either on the phone, in Zoom meetings or on the picket line. “He did go on a bit sometimes”, comrade O’Dwyer said, to much laughter in the room, remembering how he spoke to her “for three hours straight, when I had just put my baby down and all I wanted to do was go to sleep”.
David Whyte knew Kevin primarily as a fellow trade unionist in the University and College Union. Kevin taught his comrades in the union about casualisation and how to respond to it: “If they treat us like dockers then we need to fight back like dockers.” He also stated that Kevin was “rubbish at selling the Weekly Worker”, was an incorrigible gossip, had strong opinions on English tailoring, but was someone who “wanted to win an argument the proper way”. Though David described Kevin as “imposing revolutionary discipline” on the picket lines, he primarily remembered him for his gentleness. On one occasion, Kevin reprimanded him with “What are you? Some kind of Presbyterian?”, for his rude manner with university staff who were ignoring the picket. “And I have to admit, Kevin’s way of calmly talking to people was nine out of 10 times more successful than my shouting.”
I was very privileged to be able to briefly talk about mine and Kevin’s common interest in the Irish language and went on to play a traditional Irish tune called the ‘Liverpool hornpipe’ on the tenor banjo, followed by ‘Kevin Bean’s jig’, which I had written after his death. A friend of Kevin’s, Jenny Payne, treated us to a moving, unaccompanied performance of ‘The ballad of James Larkin’ - a song about the Dublin lockout of 1913 and its legacy.
I will remember the memorial as a hopeful and invigorating evening to celebrate two colourful and interesting fellow socialists. Their full lives were reflected by the beautiful political banners and flags adorning the walls and the many different relationships that those present had with Terry and Kevin.
We can continue to celebrate and learn from Kevin by visiting the Kevin Bean Library at www.kevinbeanlibrary.com.