We often write that we are saddened to hear of the death of someone, though hearing the news of the death of Brendan ‘Bik’ McFarlane, who passed away on Friday 21 February after a short illness, felt like a gut punch. I know I’m not the only one who feels this way: as I write through teary eyes, with his voice playing through my stereo, my phone is buzzing, notifying me of messages from friends who also loved him, and are also grieving profoundly.
I first met Bik in summer 2013, not long after I took the step to become actively involved in the Republican movement. Like other newcomers to the movement, I knew who he was: his lifelong involvement in the struggle for Irish freedom, the heroic role he played during the 1981 hunger strikes, and his famous 1983 escape from Long Kesh – previously considered the most secure prison in Europe – the story of which he was recalling the night we met. Yet despite this historic track record, Bik was as humble as they come – an absolute gentleman.
Like many of his generation, Bik was an ordinary man in extraordinary times. Born in Belfast’s Ardoyne to ardently religious working-class family, it was initially the priesthood which attracted him. But the weight of being brought up in an apartheid state, and the desire to rise up and resist it, swept 18-year-old Bik into the Irish Republican Army in 1969.
Finding himself imprisoned in Long Kesh in 1976, Bik refused to be broken by the British authorities, joining the no wash protests in 1978 and taking an active part in prison life. When Bobby Sands stepped down from his role as Officer Commanding (OC) of Republican prisoners in the Kesh, it was to be Bik who replaced him. ‘I didn’t want the job,’ he once recalled, that the pressure of having to ‘make the call’ if a potential deal from British authorities came through. But he knew that this feeling ‘paled into insignificance’ compared to his comrades on hunger strike and their suffering families: ‘I steeled myself to do the necessary.’
Bik also rose to the occasion in September 1983, when, alongside Bobby Storey and Gerry Kelly, he helped mastermind the escape of 38 republican prisoners through the front gates of Long Kesh, an event that Margaret Thatcher stated was ‘the gravest breakout in our present history’. Resuming his place in the struggle outside, he was recaptured in 1986, and by 1993 was Long Kesh’s longest-serving prisoner.
Had he not been brought up in a racist state that defended deprivation and inequality with violence, Bik may well have started off as a musician. But having learnt to play guitar after Bobby Sands was no longer there to perform and maintain morale, Bik carried his musical talents out from incarceration, quickly becoming one of the Irish rebel music circuit’s most recognisable faces until his illness.
Irish republicans are not very well known for writing or recording our own history, often conceding that ground to political opponents or a hostile media. In this light, it is all the more commendable that Bik not only penned a number of songs but played constantly across Ireland – performances made all the more powerful because of his republican credentials.
When Bik would play ‘Song for Marcella’, a beautiful tribute to his friend Bobby Sands (Marcella being not only Bobby’s pen name in jail, but the name of his little sister), the world seemed to stand still. Entire rooms fell quiet – it felt like Sands was in the room, and Bik speaking to him.
Bik also penned ‘Terrorist or a Dreamer’, which fiercely criticises the indifference of successive Dublin governments to the national question, promoting the aspirations of Irish republicans, and recognising the plight of working class English people who often found themselves in the British Army as a way of sustenance and no more.
In September 2015, I headed to Paris with a group of Sinn Féin members to attend the Fête de l’Humanite, the legendary music festival organised by the newspaper of the French Communist Party. We had a tent in the festival complete with bar, merchandise stall and stage for live music, and Bik was flying in to provide the tunes.
I was a bartender at the time, so my job was to look after that side of things. I did, however, have a more important task at hand – on the orders of Bik, I was to not let his pint drop beneath a certain level before I pulled him another.
I will never forget him playing ‘Wish You Were Here’ by Pink Floyd and thinking that the choice was somewhat random. Having finished, Bik must have felt the need to explain himself: ‘this isn’t a rebel song, but it fucking should be’. Looking from the bar at him, and noticing the poster of Bobby Sands behind him, I realised who he was thinking of as he sung it. A fucking rebel song indeed.
After the festival, we travelled into Paris proper. None of us had been before, and were a bit overwhelmed at first. Recognising this, Bik took us on the inaugural – perhaps only! – ‘on the run’ tour of Paris, walking us round the places he frequented after his escape, where sympathetic figures and veterans of the French Resistance were aiding and assisting various republicans evading the authorities.
A few weeks after getting back from Paris, I got a text – ‘Bik Thursdays?’ Bik was playing in the Felons Club in West Belfast that night, so we went down to see him. Enjoying the pints and the music, I heard Bik play the first notes of ‘Viva la Quinta Brigada’, Christy Moore’s classic tribute to those Irishmen who joined the ranks of the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. Introducing the song, Bik explained that a few weeks beforehand, he and I had sung it in a field in Paris with 500,000 communists, inviting me up to the stage to sing with him.
The internationalism was front and centre at his gigs, often hanging a Palestinian keffiyeh around his mic wherever he went. He especially loved meeting international comrades when they came to visit Belfast to give them the welcome he thought they deserved, and loved hearing of his music getting around. In 2022, a group of us (including Tribune’s Marcus Barnett) were in New York City celebrating St Patrick’s Day. We were in Jack Dempsey’s, at the foot of the Empire State Building, watching the Celtic match. Afterwards, the bartender fired the music on – lo and behold, on comes Bik and ‘Song for Marcella’. Obviously, I sent him a voice note, to which he shot back, ‘great to hear that I’m also infamous in that neck of the woods!’
Most importantly for my generation, Bik was always a friendly face for young republicans. The nights where he, Bobby Storey and Gerry Kelly recounted the stories of the Great Escape were always great craic, and he would always make time for a yarn or a photo with younger comrades in attendance. He would never refuse when asked to come in to speak to young republicans about his experiences of republican struggle and was always on hand to give advice and offer encouragement where needed.
In many ways, Bik McFarlane was the archetype of what a republican should be. Heroic yet humble, ordinary yet extraordinary, playing his part without fear and with fervour. I am fortunate to have known him, grateful to have called him a comrade, and to have spent time with him. Rest in power comrade, agus go raibh maith agat for the memories. I measc laochra na nGael go raibh a anam dílis.