April 9, 1942 – October 11, 2008
“I am an anti-authoritarian, anti-racist, anti-sexist, anarchist revolutionary of proud Irish heritage. I am also a vegetarian and strongly support the animal liberation movement. I stand for civil/human rights and will not break, bend nor be intimidated. I stand in solidarity with all people struggling against oppression but most particularly with my brothers and sisters in the anarchist movement.”
Harold H. Thompson was an anarchist who died while serving life plus sentences in Tennessee, USA.
He was a first generation Irish-American, born April 9th, 1942 in Huntington, West Virginia, where his parents settled after fleeing ‘The Troubles’ in Ireland. He spent his childhood years in a home environment where politics was a regular topic of conversation, and became interested in anarchism at an early age from listening to the political debates of his father and visiting friends.
His affinity to anarchism was solidified by a stint of military service during the Vietnam War; he was discharged after being wounded. He then became active in the anti-war movement, associating with Viet Nam Veterans Against the War during the ’60s and ’70s era of mass civil disobedience and struggle in America.
From the late 1960s onwards Harold was repeatedly in conflict with the cops and the legal system. He raised money outside the law for survival as well as political activities. Some of these expropriations resulted in him doing time in Wisconsin, Ohio, Georgia and Tennessee prisons.
Harold has two sons (with different mothers). The mother of his eldest son was murdered in 1978. Her killer, Walter Douglas Crawley, was sentenced to life imprisonment but then released on an appeal bond after becoming a police informant. On the same day he was released, in October 1979, Crawley was overheard threatening to murder Harold’s son and another child who’d testified against him during his trial. Crawley boasted how he “had nothing to lose” since he’d already been sentenced to life imprisonment for murder.
Four days later in Chattanooga, Crawley was shot whilst drinking in a bar. His unmasked assailant escaped and sped off in a waiting car into the night. Ten days later, after a large-scale manhunt, Harold was arrested and charged with the murder of Crawley. Harold was also charged with expropriating money for political activities from a jewelery store. For these incidents he was given life plus 50 years after a series of farcical trials. Later, Harold was given an additional 21- 75 years for a second shooting incident which occurred in Cleveland, Ohio. Around this time Harold also had a stroke leaving him in a coma for 3 weeks. Following brain surgery he was diagnosed epileptic.
In November of 1986, Harold started a 5 year, 4 month stint in maximum security /solitary confinement after a failed armed escape attempt in an East Tennessee prison. He was charged with the attempted murder of three guards, kidnap of a hostage guard, possession of explosives, possession of a dangerous weapon and attempted escape. The judge sentenced Harold to an additional 31 years.
In July of 1993, about 15 months after being released from solitary confinement, he was framed for allegedly having possible escape plans– based on the information of an outside “confidential informant” –and put back in Maximum Security Tier I Solitary confinement, where he remained until March 1995, at West Tennessee High Security Facility in rural West Tennessee.
In June 1995 Harold was again reclassified to lower security but had to wait a further 8 months before being transferred back to a lower security prison.
Behind the walls, Harold was well known for his work as a “jailhouse lawyer.” He said he coped with prison by fighting for his fellow prisoners in the courts. His legal work mainly consisted of filing other prisoners’ appeals, drafting their legal briefs for submission to the courts and filing civil rights complaints on behalf of prisoners who had been abused & had their rights violated.
These activities brought Harold intense harassment from prison guards, especially since he frequently helped black prisoners with legal problems. This harassment included confiscation of his legal materials and law books in frequent cell searches, as well as the frame-up in 1993. He also clashed physically with the Aryan Nation while incarcerated.
The following is an obituary from Organise! magazine, no.72, Summer 2009:
Obituary
Harold H Thompson
U.S. anarchist Harold H. Thompson has died (11/11/2008) in a Tennessee prison where he was serving life without parole at the age of 66. Harold accepted that he would never be free, and won the help of well-wishers and supporters worldwide, including many members of the AF. Harold did his best to lead a pro-active, anarchist-driven existence from within the confinement of steel and concrete walls, never an easy task given the age-old class enemy of authority, petty vindictive bureaucracy and perhaps worst of all, hostile sectarian gangs who prey on anyone not subscribed to their sick mindset. Harold could not stand prejudice or bullying, calling the perpetrators ‘class clowns’ as he fought daily running battles with the racist thugs, often at the cost of putting his own life in jeopardy. Himself subjected to the precariousness of survival only a couple of years ago, he was beaten to within an inch of his life by a White Aryan Supremacist gang.
Hospitalisation followed, but the callousness of the U. S. judicial system meant that he never properly recovered from this and previous assaults. This last occasion there was incontrovertible evidence of collusion between the attackers and prison personnel, which Harold was pursuing through the courts at the time of his death.
None of the violence sustained, and there was much, deterred Harold from his work to guide the indigent, the illiterate, the downtrodden, any ethnicity or maligned minority. That was what the class traitors couldn’t figure out about Harold: his undiminished willingness to come to the aid of anyone who wasn’t a racist, rapist or child molester. It bugged them and Harold knew he must watch his back every single day. To his great credit, he bowed the knee to none of them. Harold witnessed first-hand the brutalities of the American state, not only in the gulags ( as he labelled U.S. incarceration facilities) but also serving in Vietnam where he was wounded under fire. It was a war that disillusioned many of the combatants including Harold who went on to adopt the ethics of anarchism from which he would never thereafter deviate.
How come he ended up sentenced to a prospect without parole? Harold made no secret that he had terminated the life of the man who had murdered his partner, the mother of his son. This action drew a life sentence, ostensibly with distant chance of release far into the future. He blew this all away in an attempted armed escape, earning himself an additional few score years.
Harold didn’t always receive the support he deserved. Disappointingly, a negative response came from two prickly U.S. Anarchist Black Cross groups who refused aid when approached. It was a bitter pill to swallow, but typically he just got on with business. Britain’s Anarchist Communist Federation (now the Anarchist Federation) were asked to carry out an independent investigation and duly came to the conclusion that the insinuations bore no substance. Preceding this the group Friends of Harold Thompson (FOHHT) had been reformed in the UK, where in particular, it must be said, with the ready help of many readers of this magazine a supporting network was put in place to enable Harold to mount his challenges to the U.S. legal system, one major issue being the outright denial to inmates of anarchist literature. It proved a successful outcome for prisoners across the USA.
Harold wrote a number of libertarian pamphlets, took up painting and engaged in protracted correspondence with comrades near and far, old and young, of which company this writer is one. A privilege held dear for almost 12 years. Harold will quite genuinely be missed by all whose lives he touched. He was a courageous, talented, inspirational and committed anarchist. To readers of Organise the FOHHT would like to say ‘Thank You’, each and everyone, for their unflagging encouragement down the years. Harold truly did appreciate it, just as he warmed to the knowledge that there were ‘so many out there’ determined to take the struggle to the enemy full on.
As Harold used to sign off his letters, “They’ll never get us all!”.
Rest easy, cherished comrade.
Frankie Dee
pp. FOHTT
Material sourced from http://www.haroldhthompson.uwclub.net/
Harold’s published work includes the invaluable “Anarchist Survival Guide For Understanding Gestapo Swine Interrogation Mind Games.”
You can read more of his writings, including “Why Are Prisoners Largely Ignored by Anti-Fascists?” at his still-existent support site: http://www.haroldhthompson.uwclub.net/writings.htm