Rest In Peace Philly Dee

Sad news has just reached me

“Google, show me an Irish Man”. Photo by Drew Cooke

I have been off social media for months now and have largely been out of contact with many activists at a national level for some time. Social media is one of the most harmful creations that man has ever produced and leaving it behind has improved my life to no end. Today, I was using a dummy account to catch up on things and events around Ireland, looking for updates on the Hate Speech bill in the Seanad etc, when I came across a post from dedicated photographer Drew Cooke. Drew Had kindly and heartfeltly posted some of his best pictures of a truly great human, Philip Dee, from the many protests and demonstrations they had attended together. It was from this post this evening that I have learned that Philip has sadly passed away.

I was aware that Philip had been battling an illness as he told me as much the last time we met outside the Dail. We had a strong connection from way back at the Covid protests, namely the Grafton Street hurly incident. We had planned to all meet up in Dublin with hurls and to have a game of hurling either on Grafton Street itself or over in Phoenix park. When we arrived to Grafton Street we learned that the Gardai had arrested a number of people who brought hurls and seized them under the Firearms and Offensive Weapons Act. I grabbed the megaphone and gave the guards a lecture and told the crowd to follow me to Elvery’s. I told the gaurds I was going to buy a hurl and there was nothing they could do about it. The only problem was I didn’t realise that the bastardin’ things had a tourist tax on them in Dublin, leaving me in a pickle. There I was at the counter in Elverys, surrounded by gaurds and a large crowd of protestors outside the shop watching. Short the price of two hurls I was tempted to walk out with them anyway and land myself in even deeper water but there beside me was Philly Dee. He reached into his pocket and paid with his card. There is a video somewhere of Philly, me and a few others having a standoff with the gards, some of us with hurls in hand but I can’t find it. The point here being that Philip saved the day. I can only imagine how many other people have a similar story to this about him. I borrowed money later that day and repaid Philip as we had a pint in the Celt laughing our arses off at the whole ordeal.

Philip was a gentle soul whose moral compass was finely tuned. He was emotionally complex, expressing vulnerability, fear and sadness at the horrors of modern Ireland under the FFG regime. He took the fight directly to the doors of Leo Varadkar, Roderic O’Gorman and Tony Holohan, to name but a few. He was supportive, wise and compassionate, selflessly taking to the streets at a frequency that I could only dream of matching. He did it night and day, rain or shine. Philly did it when it was against the odds, at the height of the lockdowns when half of this new wave of resistance were likely on their first or second jab, calling him a conspiracy theorist and an anti-vaxxer. Without his comradeship and bravery during those dark days, none of what Irelands activists have achieved to this point would have been possible or as enjoyable. It is on these foundations, that he and others like him laid, that the new anti-establishment class of Ireland have been able to build their garrison. I will remember Philly for as long as my cloudy, useless brain allows me too and you should too.

Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam.