Harry White (Irish republican)

White published his autobiography in 1985 - actually ghostwritten by Uinseann MacEoin. Entitled Harry, it attracted press attention for naming the IRA members who killed Kevin O'Higgins, names which Peadar O'Donnell separately confirmed. White's nephew, Danny Morrison, became a prominent Irish republican from the 1970s onwards.

Following his release, White remained active in the IRA, but in a less high-profile way, as he was married and settled in Dublin. He supported the Provisional IRA following its split in 1970, and was involved in smuggling weapons across the border.

White was finally captured and tried in October 1946, and was handed over to the Irish authorities; he was sentenced to death, but this was reduced to twelve years' imprisonment on appeal, a defence in which his former comrade Seán MacBride was involved. He was actually released early in 1948 following a change in government which left Mac Bride in a ministerial post.

On arrival in the north, White was made Officer Commanding the IRA Northern Command. Kerins was arrested in Dublin in June 1944, and later tried for murder and hanged. White became the only member of the IRA leadership still free. A wanted man, he travelled around until work was arranged for him by supporters in Altaghoney. There, he worked as a handyman and barber and set up a dance band, also managing to acquire some explosives from a local Royal Ulster Constabulary officer who wanted rocks clearing from his field. For at least part of his time in Altaghoney, White served as the IRA Chief of Staff.

In October 1942, White and a comrade were cornered in a house. Here the details are unclear; Tim Pat Coogan claimed that he was in a house in Donnycarney in County Dublin with Maurice O'Neill (executed in Mountjoy Prison on 12 November 1942), while Danny Morrison claims that he was at a wedding reception in Cavan with Paddy Dermody. Both agree that there was a shoot-out followed in which one officer was killed, enabling White to escape, but he fell down a railway embankment and hid for two days before emerging, hoping that the police hunt was over. In Coogan's version, he caught a bus to Dublin, covered in blood and mud; while, according to Morrison, he was assisted by a sympathetic soldier who helped him recover and cycled to Dublin with him. They agree that he reached a safe house once in the capital. Morrison claims that the Donnycarney shootout occurred four months later and that White travelled north, rather than returning to Dublin a second time.

Born in Belfast, White worked as a plumber, and joined the Irish Republican Army (IRA) at an early age, being imprisoned several times during the 1930s. He travelled to England to take part in the IRA's "S-Plan" bombing campaign of 1939 to 1940, then returned to Dublin to pass his bomb-making skills onto new recruits, including Brendan Behan. He then returned to become the IRA's Manchester Operations Officer but, after a bomb he was working on went off in the flat he was renting, he fled to Glasgow, then back to Ireland.

Harry White (1916 – April 1989) was an Irish republican paramilitary.