A political hero and mentor who touched many lives was buried this week, writes Noel Whelan.
ONE OF my political heroes died this week. He was 73 and slipped away on Monday after a lengthy struggle with cancer.
It was through him that I became active in politics. My first political memory is asking for votes for him over a car-mounted loudspeaker at the age of nine when he was a candidate for Dáil Éireann in 1977. He was one of three Fianna Fáil candidates, polled 5,200 votes and came close to winning a third seat for the party in what was then a four-seat Wexford constituency. He failed to secure the party nomination for the 1981 Dáil election but did later serve two terms on Wexford County Council.
His own political activity began as a teenager erecting posters with his father for national collections or during election campaigns. In his twenties he became chairman of his local cumann and in the days before constituency offices was the contact point for Dr Jim Ryan, then the local Fianna Fáil TD. In his thirties he was asked to become chair of the party organisation in the New Ross area and, since there were then no term-limits for party offices, served in that position for over three decades. He was later chairman of the party's countywide organisation and director of elections for numerous contests.
In many ways, his politics was merely an extension of his community involvement. In the days before the phrase "active citizenship" was coined, he engaged in hyperactive citizenship. Long before governments commissioned reports on voluntarism, he had spent a lifetime immersed in and at times leading a spectrum of community activities in his local parish, Ballycullane, in south Wexford.
The fact that neighbouring townlands produced world champion tug of war teams and ploughmen was due in part to his role in organising and fundraising for these activities.
There were causes and organisations where his contribution was wider than the parish, sometimes countywide and even national. After politics, ploughing was his passion. As well as chairing the local and county ploughing organisation he had been a director of the National Ploughing Association and, for 35 years, spent five weeks each autumn planning the site for national ploughing championships.
As a community leader and then county councillor he was among the first to whom locals would turn when they wanted help with some bureaucratic process. Those who disparage the localism or clientelism of Irish politics could learn from watching this service close up and seeing the need which it fulfilled. This week at his wake hundreds of people told of how he had helped them at difficult times in their lives.
Time management was another of his skills. He found time for all this political and community activity while working as the local postman, helping to run a local post office and country shop and rearing a family of nine sons and three daughters.
He told me once of his personal memories of meeting de Valera and Jack Lynch a number of times. He was a big fan of Charlie Haughey and in fact was one of those party officers whose invitations to functions created the "chicken supper" circuit which sustained Haughey during his wilderness years. In the 1980s he defended Haughey resolutely against the gripes of opponents but in the late 1990s was one of those devastated by the McCracken tribunal revelations. I, on the other hand, had always been sceptical of the Haughey myth. We differed too in our views of Albert Reynolds, of whom I was, and remain, a big fan. We were ad idemin our assessment of Bertie Ahern. We both felt that Cowen was the right choice to be the next leader.
We had many long chats about politics. While we differed on some issues, that was mainly a generational thing. He was, it appears, a fan of this column but apparently, as a friend of his told me on Tuesday, usually felt it wasn't "Fianna Fáil enough". In my years working in politics and when I was a candidate, he was my closest political mentor from whom I learnt a few key political lessons.
Among the most important of these was the need for moderation in politics and respect for the views of others. He was committed to his politics but never aggressive about it. He was a gentleman of politics in its truest sense - too gentle for his own good at times. He had the reserve and patience to hold his tongue when others mouthed off - so when he had something to say, it was generally listened to and respected. There was no antagonism in him and there was certainly no antagonism in his politics. Indeed some of his strongest political and indeed personal friendships were from across the political divide.
As well as being a political hero and mentor, he was my dad, and of course also a hero and mentor in so many other ways. Last Wednesday thousands of people from five surrounding parishes and further afield turned out to bid farewell to Seamus Whelan, to comfort us, to recognise his legacy and to acknowledge his contribution.