Colm Bryce
Thursday 17th April
I've just received a message on my phone that Colm has started his last journey to the west, to Gweedore. Unfortunately I was not able to be there. I send these last words.
So it was a great pleasure to me that years later when I took over as manager of Bookmarks the socialist bookshop, that Colm became the Publisher.
He was an extremely hard working publisher, putting in long hours, going over manuscripts, liaising with authors and other experts on whatever the subject was, proofreading and deciding on cover artwork. That’s not as easy as it might sound, some authors like to take their time and need hurrying along or are very buried deep in their work and resistant to suggestions as to how it might be brought to the page, others of course are as pleased as punch that someone has understood what they were doing and was able to help them. Colm was able to bring his vast and nuanced knowledge of politics and history to the table to point people in the right direction. Sometimes we had to play hard cop, soft cop, he would encourage people along and I would have to tell them the financial realities of what was possible!
Sometimes I had to temper Colm's great enthusiasm for what we might publish with those financial realities too!
During his time we published many great books and pamphlets, we added to the Rebel’s Guides series with A Rebel’s Guide to Walter Rodney by Chinedu Chukwudinma and were able to keep others in print such as, A Rebel’s Guide to James Connolly by Sean Mitchell. Colm was especially proud of bringing to print, Breaking Up The British State: Scotland, Independence and Socialism whose authors argued the socialist case for an independent Scotland.
There were other projects along the way, making available in a new edition, Socialism and War By Vladimir I. Lenin, reprinting, The Ghetto Fights: Warsaw 1941-43 by Marek Edelman and publishing, Transgender Resistance: Socialism And The Fight For Trans Liberation by Laura Miles and many more.
His crowning achievement as publisher was to publish, Ricky Reel: Silence Is Not An Option by Sukhdev Reel. This book was a great addition to the movement against racism and state oppression. Sukhdev and Colm did many book launches up and down the country fighting for justice for Ricky Reel who was murdered in a racist incident in 1997.
Colm was himself an author, publishing Little Donegal - The Irish in the Gorbals and Govanhill, a study of the links between Ireland and Glasgow.
What marked Colm out was his deep humanity in fighting for justice and for socialism. For him publishing these books was not an abstract exercise but an act of love, a deep commitment to people as fighting individuals involved in the great struggle against the oppressor.
His revolutionary Marxism was the same, it came from deep in his heart and was to quote Lenin not a, “Formula learned by rote” but instead a study of the “deep living reality”. Colm will remain a guide for those of us who must now carry on without him.
Fágann tú do rian ar an ngaoth agus do scáil ar an bhféar – ní imíonn tú go hiomlán.
