Harold H. Thompson

Who was Harold H. Thompson?

Harold H. Thompson was an Irish-American anarchist activist and prisoner.

Thompson was of Irish extraction, his parents having emigrated to the United States in the early twentieth century and settled in Huntington, West Virginia. Raised in a politicized environment, Thompson acquired an interest in anarchism at an early age, having heard the political debates of his father and his father's friends. He served in the Vietnam War before being discharged for being wounded, and became an anti-war and anarchist activist associated with the Vietnam Veterans Against the War during the 1960s and 1970s. He began a campaign of expropriation, and had several encounters with law enforcement.

In 1978 Walter Douglas Crawley killed the mother of his eldest son. Crawley was arrested and jailed for the murder but was later released after becoming a jail house informant. In October 1979 Crawley was shot whilst drinking in a bar, Thompson was prosecuted and found guilty of murder and robbery in 1979.