Jim Harkin

Jim Harkin was born in Donegal in 1941. He grew up in Moville but moved to Dublin to study art at NCAD (The National College of Art and Design).

In an interview with Edmund Lynch in 2013 as part of the Irish LGBTI+ Oral History Project, Ian spoke about his experience of growing up.

“Many people went to school in Derry.  It was so close to the border, it was our big town like Bray would use Dublin, but that was before the Troubles.  I left Donegal very young.  I came down here [to Dublin] when I was about fifteen/sixteen and I’ve never really gone back.”

He explained coming to terms with his sexuality.

“I think I knew really from about twelve. But my generation, you didn’t do much about it, and certainly [not] in a small town. And did you know what it was anyway?  You knew that you like guys, and you liked like looking at pictures of [them], but you went through the dating game, you went to hops, you went to dances… 

Dublin changed that though. When I came down, it was already beginning to move where there was a gay scene, and you soon discovered it if you were at all friendly, and I was an arts student, but, still, I wasn’t really out until I was about – fully out – ’til about 21, although that would be relatively young with some people. But when I was out, I was out.

I didn’t settle down with my partner of now, Ian Fox, until I was 24 and he was 25. It was the early ’60s. It was ’66. I went through all of the late ’50s in Dublin on my own before that.”

He also spoke about his experience of moving to Dublin in the beginning.

“I had a very rough time when I [came] down. I was very poor when I came down here first.  I was a very poor student. I worked as a waiter, a barman, a porter. I did loads of jobs and shared flats; cold water flats all over Dublin: Rathmines, Waterloo Road was flatland, Ranelagh, that area, and it wasn’t easy; it really wasn’t easy.  And you certainly couldn’t come out to many of your friends. 

Eventually, though, I discovered the gay bar, and that was the revelation to me.  In fact, I met Ian in Bartley Dunne’s, the famous hostelry of the time, with Gerry and the brother ran it.  And then Rice’s – they were very nice to me, the Rice brothers.  When I was a poor student, they would let me go up to that top window and draw from there across Stephen’s Green and they would sometimes fund me to go to things, and they owned a gay bar.  They were lovely, lovely people.

…we ran in packs of straight kids… there wouldn’t be many gay guys I knew at that college of art in those days.  We all came out to each other later.  It’s the way it was. I finally went into advertising, from then on, my life was so much smoother because you’d a steady income, a fairly good job, and a nice flat, which you shared, with some people.

Ian and Jim currently live in Dublin. They celebrated their civil partnership in May 2012.

Permission to publish extracts from this interview for the Irish LGBTI+ Oral History Project has kindly been granted by Edmund Lynch and Jim Harkin.