Born: 6 January 1937, United Kingdom
Died: 15 April 2017
Country most active: Ireland
Also known as: Brigid Sheils
This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Patrick Maume. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Makowski, Brigid Sheils (1937–2017), republican and community activist, was born Brigid Sheils on 6 January 1937 at 6 Union Street in the Bogside, Derry city, the third surviving child of seven (her siblings were Eamon, Margaret, Teresa, Eileen, Mary and Sean) of Patrick Sheils (1877–1957), officer commanding of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Derry city during the war of independence, and his wife Brigid (née Doherty, 1903–90), a shirt-factory worker from a small-farming background in Co. Donegal. (Four other children died in infancy, and Brigid had several miscarriages.) Patrick Sheils’s life was shaped by political commitments. The son of a shopkeeper and property owner, he joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) in his late teens, cofounded the Derry Gaelic League, and in later life was active in the Gaelic Athletic Association, the Gaelic League and the Green Cross (a republican prisoners’ aid organisation). Sheils opposed both post-partition Irish states, would not take unemployment assistance from the Northern Ireland government and refused an IRA service pension (though he assisted others’ applications). He received uneasy respect in the Bogside as a self-sacrificing old republican. Sheils was only occasionally employed as a bookmaker; his wife was the principal earner, working in a shirt factory and sewing piecework in the evenings, assisted by extended family networks in the Bogside and by Donegal relatives.
Makowski received her primary education at St Eugene’s school (1941–9), then won a scholarship under the education act of 1947 to Thornhill College, Derry (waitressing in the evenings). Despite hopes of a university scholarship, she became a shirt-factory worker at the age of sixteen. The snobbery, authoritarianism and emotional coldness of her teachers (both nuns and lay) and the comfortable lifestyle of the clergy gave Makowski anticlerical tendencies. In March 1954 she met Leo Makowski, a visiting American sailor; they corresponded and after his navy discharge and employment as an apprentice tool-maker by the American conglomerate General Electric (GE), they married in St Boniface’s church, Philadelphia, on 16 April 1955. They had three daughters (Stella, Margaret and Briege) and two sons (Leo Patrick and Brian); the eldest child, Stella, became a republican activist. Makowski became an American citizen c. 1967.
Political awakening and republican activism
In 1961 Makowski visited Derry and experienced a political awakening as a result of the obtrusive security reaction to the IRA’s border campaign (1956–62). In Philadelphia she joined the Roisín Dubh women’s auxiliary of the Major John MacBride Camp of Clan na Gael, engaging in leafleting, fundraising and related activities. She associated with ‘young Turks’ who campaigned for women’s acceptance as full Clan members and criticised the Sons of Derry county society name as misogynistic – her memoir is titled Daughter of Derry. Makowski began as a ‘green’ republican, but after meeting Cathal Goulding began a shift to the left. She was further radicalised through contact with Black kitchen staff while waitressing to finance further visits to Derry in 1965 and 1968. (She perceived similarities between unionist/protestant stereotypes of catholics/nationalists and American racist attitudes towards its Black population.) Makowski became depressed after injury in a 1968 car crash and the defeat of Senator Eugene McCarthy’s presidential campaign and returned to Derry to recuperate (she experienced periodic alcoholic episodes thereafter until the mid-1980s).
On 5 October 1968, the day after her return, Makowski joined a proscribed civil rights march in Derry that was violently repressed; growing political instability and Sinn Féin-sponsored political education made her a committed socialist and she decided to return permanently. Though her husband Leo hoped to establish his own machinist business in Derry and undertook contract work while Makowski returned to Derry with the children, he reconsidered after seeing her on television defending a barricade while six months pregnant during the battle of the Bogside (12–14 August 1969). At his insistence they returned temporarily to Philadelphia, with a commitment to move to Limerick at the end of 1970.
Back in Philadelphia, Makowski joined the newly formed American Friends of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, which was soon disrupted by the split between Official and Provisional Sinn Féin/IRA; Makowski supported the Officials (OIRA). On 19 May 1970 she was elected Democratic committeewoman for the 45th ward of Philadelphia. She staged a widely publicised 105-hour sit-in with her children at the British consulate in Philadelphia (beginning 13 July), followed by a six-hour sit-in at the British embassy in Washington, DC (21 July).
By the end of 1970 the family had moved to Limerick, where Leo secured a tool-making job at GE’s Shannon plant. Makowski joined Official Sinn Féin (OSF) and was elected to the national ard comhairle. (Her daughter Stella joined OSF in 1972; the younger daughters were active in its youth wing.) Makowski distributed party literature and participated in anti-internment demonstrations, becoming known (not least to gardaí) as a forceful speaker. In January 1972 she served a two-week jail sentence after refusing to pay a fine for collecting without a licence. She was released on 29 January, missing the civil rights demonstration in Derry on 30 January which became the Bloody Sunday massacre of fourteen civilians by British troops. On 5 May 1972 Makowski was tried for IRA membership and incitement to violence; she complained that there were no women on the jury. Her acquittal contributed to the establishment of the non-jury special criminal court. Shortly afterwards she received a three-month sentence for sedition, serving a month.
Makowski believed that OSF had adopted a rigid Soviet-style Marxism-Leninism; she advocated ‘Connolly socialism’, adapted to Irish conditions to include armed struggle and communal defence. The OIRA called a ceasefire on 29 May 1972 after local outrage at their killing of William Best, a member of the British army home on leave in Derry. Makowski thought any British soldier a legitimate target, as well as people regarded as collaborators, such as the gardener and five catering staff killed when the OIRA bombed the Parachute Regiment base in Aldershot, Hampshire, on 22 February 1972. Makowski supported the faction around Séamus Costello who opposed the ceasefire and advocated renewed armed struggle; purged from OSF/OIRA, they established a new organisation seeking to combine social and military activism. Makowski resigned from OSF in July 1974 and attended the 8 December 1974 meeting at which the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP) and its military wing, the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), were founded.
Local politics in Shannon
While her daughter Stella joined the IRSP ard comhairle, Makowski preferred local activism in Shannon town, Co. Clare – the family had acquired a house at the Tradaree Court development in summer 1971. Having previously represented OSF on the Shannon Town Alliance – a multi-party group lobbying for an elected authority for the new town, which was dominated by Shannon Development (formerly the Shannon Free Airport Development Company) – Makowski represented the IRSP on the same body. In the early 1970s she opened a citizens’ advice bureau in the family home, helping with housing and social welfare applications; she later assisted victims of domestic violence. Makowski advocated socialism centred on nation-state control of industry, complaining that Brendan O’Regan had ‘plagued Shannon with the curse of the multinationals’ and that Clare members of the Provisional IRA ‘Balcombe Street gang’ imprisoned in Britain were more deserving of the title ‘Clareman of the Year’ (Clare Champion, 17 Feb. 1984). Her husband nonetheless worked for a multinational in the Shannon industrial estate and continued to believe in capitalism; her eldest son, Leo Junior, was a US navy sailor in the 1980s while Makowski protested against US foreign policy; she commented that her husband and son had their own policies and were capitalists while she was a socialist. She supplemented the family income by variously operating a chip van, organising a ‘country market’ where she ran a stall, and opening a discount store in the family home.
Makowski’s activities in Shannon reflected the IRSP’s aspirations. She attributed the party’s failure at national level to the killing by the OIRA and loyalists of key activists, including Costello, and state repression north and south of the border. She was an anti H-Block campaigner, personally acquainted with two dead hunger-strikers, Patsy O’Hara and Mickey Devine: ‘Each death was like that of one of my own children’ (Bernard, 155). In the February 1982 general election Makowski received just 232 first preference votes as the IRSP candidate for Clare but believed the publicity assisted her election on 10 March 1982 to the newly established nine-member Shannon town commission. In doing so she became the only elected IRSP representative in the Republic of Ireland, albeit representing a small electorate (129 first preferences, elected on the eighteenth count) on a body with few powers. Her election was assisted by the presence in Shannon of nationalists who moved south from Northern Ireland in the early years of the troubles, and of other refugee groups (including Chilean escapees from the Pinochet dictatorship). (Makowski once suggested the presence of Northern nationalists entitled Clare to be classified as a border county for aid purposes, and in 1991 she cited their experiences of intimidation and expulsion to support the view that intransigent unionists should be repatriated to Britain.) The first Shannon town commission had a Fianna Fáil majority and Makowski functioned as a protest politician against the town’s notoriously poor living conditions, combining publicity for constituents’ grievances on roads, flooding and drainage, housing conditions, and the absence of shopping and leisure facilities, with attention-grabbing protests on national and international issues. She regularly complained that the commission, lacking power and an income base, was dependent on Shannon Development.
Makowski caused particular outrage by opposing a resolution condemning the killing of eleven British soldiers and six civilians by an INLA bomb at Ballykelly, Co. Derry, in December 1982. Two years later she disrupted three monthly meetings after the chairman made a presentation to visiting US President Ronald Reagan without the approval of the commission (to avoid giving Makowski an opportunity to protest). In subsequent commission elections other independents and a Sinn Féin member were returned and Makowski engaged in limited coalition-building; the compromises involved led to tensions with the Clare branch of the National Tenants’ Organisation, which she cofounded. She served as chairperson of the Shannon town commission from June to December 1996. Makowski combined criticism of antisocial behaviour by members of the Travelling community with denunciations of their treatment within society, which she likened to an Irish form of apartheid. (In 2001 she compared the violent bigotry of loyalist protests in Ardoyne, north Belfast, to rabid hostility to the Travelling community in Clare.)
Socialist republican and the INLA feud
By 1983 the IRSP/INLA had been disrupted by large-scale arrests. Riven by factions, the INLA was held together by the militarist leadership of Dominic McGlinchey, while the residual IRSP was dominated by Marxist-Leninist doctrinaires. Stella resigned from the IRSP, while Makowski confined herself to local matters (including caring for McGlinchey’s two young sons, entrusted to her guardianship in January 1984; she was a friend of McGlinchey’s father). In March 1984 McGlinchey and two associates were arrested after a shoot-out with gardaí in Newmarket-on-Fergus, Co. Clare, in accommodation arranged by Makowski, who subsequently protested against his extradition to Northern Ireland on murder charges. Makowski later assisted the surrender of McGlinchey’s wife Mary. After trial and acquittal, Mary McGlinchey and her children returned to Dundalk at the end of 1984 as they could not find housing in Shannon; Makowski attributed this to political bias, claiming it led to Mary McGlinchey’s 1987 murder, which she ascribed to ‘British agents’ (Limerick Leader, 7 Feb. 1987). Makowski organised demonstrations when McGlinchey was returned to the Republic for trial after acquittal in Northern Ireland, proclaiming: ‘You’ll win, Dominic … To hell with the Free State collaborators and the Anglo-Irish talks’ (Cork Examiner, 12 Oct. 1985). She kept in touch with McGlinchey after his release, and when he was murdered told journalists his career derived from harassment by B-Specials.
In the developing INLA feud, Makowski aligned with a North Munster faction led by founding IRSP members; after a rival faction attacked a leader of the North Munster group in June 1985, Makowski was warned by the gardaí that she was under threat, and her family briefly left home. Makowski left the IRSP after its executive refused to endorse her 1985 Shannon town commission candidacy unless she satisfied them of her Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy; she was re-elected as an independent republican socialist, also standing unsuccessfully for Clare county council. North Munster and two other former INLA factions combined as the Irish People’s Liberation Organisation (IPLO) against another faction that retained the INLA name; the feud swiftly escalated, leading to ten murders in January–April 1987. After the feud ended, most of the IPLO joined the Provisional IRA/Sinn Féin. Makowski retained contacts with the rump IPLO; she published a memorial notice for IPLO member Martin O’Prey, killed by loyalists in 1991, and attended the funeral of IPLO political spokesman Jimmy Brown, who had canvassed for her in elections. (Stella gave the funeral oration.) These were personal expressions of sympathy rather than endorsement of the increasingly disreputable IPLO, which was forcibly disbanded by the Provisional IRA in 1992.
Makowski had previously attended the 1985 Sinn Féin ard fheis. Her 1989 memoir (based on taped conversations with American-born Derry-based community activist Margie Bernard, (1932–2019)) described Sinn Féin’s new ‘Armalite and ballot box’ strategy as heir to the republican struggle. When opposing a Shannon town commission motion condemning the bombing of the Royal Marine barracks in Deal (Kent) in September 1989 (which left eleven people dead and twenty-one wounded), she declared support for the IRA and she endorsed the Sinn Féin candidate for the Clare constituency at the 1992 general election. Makowski remained an independent, however, possibly because Sinn Féin membership would have excluded her from appearing on local radio under section 31 of the broadcasting act. She was re-elected as an independent to Shannon town commission in 1994 and 1996. She campaigned for maintenance of Irish neutrality during and after the cold war, denouncing the use of Shannon by US military craft and the installation of airport technology that she saw as having potential military uses; in her memoir she predicted the Irish government might join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in return for ending partition, leading to US forces in the North instead of British. After a 1994 visit to Moscow she lamented that the transition of Russia to capitalism had exacerbated poverty and class division.
In June 1991 Makowski was elected to Clare county council for the five-member Shannon electoral district (elected on the tenth count with 545 first preferences). She advocated for the unrestricted availability of contraception and during the 1995 divorce referendum chaired the (Labour-dominated) Clare Right to Remarry campaign, arguing that the inhabitants of Northern Ireland had not been corrupted by the availability of divorce. In April 1997 her house was searched by gardaí; though they publicly stated that as ‘an upstanding citizen’ she was not the target, she protested at the next Shannon town commission meeting (Clare Champion, 11 Apr. 1997). Commenting on the peace process in 1999, she described herself as glad that the guns were silent but sad that the claim to Northern Ireland had been deleted from the Irish constitution and expressed scepticism about British and unionist sincerity. She continued to run her citizens’ advice bureau and to campaign on local issues relating to housing and health. In 1996 Makowski was referred to as the ‘grandmother of the [Shannon town] commission … part of the character of Shannon’ (Clare Champion, 5 July 1996). Makowski twice stood unsuccessfully for election to Dáil Éireann in the Clare constituency: on behalf of the National Legal Justice Action Group (protesting inadequate investigation of several mysterious deaths) at the 1987 general election (receiving 644 first preferences) and as an independent in the 1997 general election (receiving 944 first preferences).
Later life, death and legacy
In 1999 Makowski retired from Clare county council and the Shannon town commission after moving to Lisfannon, Co. Donegal (near Buncrana), where she was still demonstrating against ‘austerity’ measures in government finances in 2012. Perhaps reflecting the traditional tendency to rehabilitate – even sanitise – in retrospect radicals who were controversial during their public careers, after her retirement Makowski was remembered in Co. Clare as a ‘watchdog’, standing up for the disadvantaged against bureaucracy (Clare Champion, 27 Oct. 2000).
In 2007 Makowski spoke at the formal presentation of her father’s war of independence medals to the city of Derry (for display in the Tower Museum). She died of lung cancer at Letterkenny hospital, Co. Donegal, on 15 April 2017.
Makowski’s 1989 memoir contains valuable insights into the frustrations, solidarities and internal and external oppressions of working-class women in mid-twentieth-century Derry. Her career valuably illustrates the changing forms of community politics in post-1970s Ireland. Possessed of a keen intelligence, she was deeply committed to the well-being of the community and operated with a certain genius for political theatre, but the other side of her drive for self-education through social analysis was her anger at oppression outside and within the catholic nationalist community of Northern Ireland, coupled with an intermittently doctrinaire mindset which led her to defend atrocities and at times tipped over into paranoia. Her volatility meant that while her demonstrations could be effective, they were sometimes regarded as a joke or a nuisance by those whom she wished to mobilise. Her ‘Connolly socialism’ combined aspirations to a nation-state socialism – increasingly unattainable in a globalising world – with an attempt to apply to the relative anomie of Shannon town the values embodied in the mutual help networks of the Bogside, and within her own family’s life. Her tenacity in standing up to bureaucracy to help neighbours and constituents was perhaps her most important contribution, but she would not have wished it to be seen in isolation from her republican socialist commitment.