Rita O'Hare

O'Hare in 2014

Rita O'Hare (née McCulloch; c. 1943 – 3 March 2023) was the general secretary of Sinn Féin, and from 1998 to 2023 the party's representative to the United States.

Early life

Born Rita McCulloch on January 13, 1943, in Belfast to her Protestant father, Billy from East Belfast and mother, Maureen, a Catholic. Her father Billy worked in the linen mills and was also a member of the Communist Party.

She married Gerry O’Hare in 1960 aged 17 after finished her education at St Dominic’s Grammar School on Falls Road. They had three children and divorced in the early 1990s. Her second husband was Brendan Brownlee, a republican from Belfast republican with whom she had a fourth child.

Provisional IRA activity

Around 1970, Rita O’Hare would become a member of the Provisional IRA.

In 1971, she served six months in Armagh Gaol for wearing a combat jacket and carrying a hurling stick at a protest. After being released in July, her husband Gerry was interned in August.

In October of the same year, during an armed fight between republicans and the security forces in Andersonstown; she was shot three times by a British army machine gun and another weapon. She sustained a wound to her head and a British soldier was also wounded. O'Hare was arrested in Northern Ireland in 1972 for the attempted murder of British Army Warrant Officer Frazer Paton in Belfast in October 1971. She also faced malicious wounding and possession of firearms charges. Upon her release on bail she fled to Dublin in the Republic of Ireland where she lived with her family. She was unable to return to the UK due to an outstanding arrest warrant. She stated that she fled South because she and her family received a death threat from another British soldier. Sinn Féin had presented her case to the British Government as one of the IRA 'on the runs' (OTRs) under consideration to be allowed to return to Northern Ireland.

Her husband Gerry was released from Long Kesh internment camp, joined her in the south, where he was imprisoned on paramilitary charges. In February 1975, Rita O’Hare was arrested at her home in Dublin, and was tried and sentenced to three years for handing explosives to a prisoner in Portlaoise Gaol. She was tried and sentenced to three years in Limerick Prison. Upon her release in 1979, she was immediately arrested again on an extradition warrant.

Her extradition from the Republic of Ireland was blocked as the Irish High Court ruled in March 1978 that O'Hare should not be extradited to Northern Ireland, on the grounds that the offences that she was alleged to have committed fell within the political offence exception.

Sinn Fein activity and later life

She was the editor of the Irish republican newspaper An Phoblacht ("Republican News") from 1985 to 1990 and became director of publicity for Sinn Féin in 1990.

Based in Dublin, she was temporarily banned from entering the United States after she traveled to Florida for a meeting (the terms of her special visa require that she first notify authorities before such travel). She was ineligible for a regular visa due to the outstanding warrant.

Rita O'Hare became close friends with Jean Kennedy Smith who served as the US ambassador to Ireland from 1993 to 1998 and played a significant role in the peace process. After having to turn down an opportunity to speak at an event in New York in 1998 due to being “on the run”; Jean Kennedy Smith helped secure her a visa.

She was later asked by Gerry Adams to become the Sinn Féin representative in the USA for two years. The position lasted 21 years and Rita O'Hare travelled between Ireland, USA and Canada during this period. She built up a variety of contacts on Capitol Hill and the White House and she has been photographed with USA presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden as well as Nelson Mandela during a 1995 visit to South Africa.

O’Hare died on 3 March 2023, aged 80. She died at her home in Dublin following a long illness.