The last of the Kennedy boys

AUTOBIOGRAPHY: True Compass: A Memoir, By Edward M Kennedy, Little Brown, 507pp. £20

TED KENNEDY’S DEATH, after a heroic battle with cancer, brought to an end an extraordinary political career. It also closed a chapter in the relationship between Irish-Americans and Ireland.

The Kennedy family epitomised the arrival and integration of Irish emigrants of the mid-1800s into the mainstream of American society. The family’s achievements – from a time in Boston where a “No Irish need apply” sign was daily encountered to John F Kennedy’s election to the White House, in 1960 – was a model for every immigrant group. Forty-eight years later, Barack Obama’s journey to the US presidency celebrates the integration of African-Americans.

This well-written and interesting book describes that integration with affection and courage, faith and determination. It is a personal tale of a man who lived 77 eventful years. The youngest of nine children, Ted describes how his successful father told him he could either lead “an interesting life or a non-serious life”. If he chose the latter, Joe Kennedy would always love his youngest son, but he would have less time for him than for his other siblings.

I met Senator Ted Kennedy a number of times. As minister for labour I worked with him to steer Irish-American trade-union leaders towards John Hume’s path of peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland and away from support of Noraid and the Provisional IRA. He was hugely influential in this area.

His interest in labour law and employment focused his attention on my Social Employment Schemes, now Community Employment. When I told him how some of Roosevelt’s New Deal work programmes were of creative influence, he expressed an interest in how the schemes actually worked. On later occasions when we met, he would ask about their progress.

Research, briefings, study visits and careful note-taking are an integral part of the life and work of a senator. This attention to detail was a characteristic of his working method, as one of the US Congress’s most successful legislators.

I BELONG TOthe Kennedy generation. I remember my brother Lochlann taking me to a neighbour's house to watch the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon TV debates, as we had no television. I stood with my father in Merrion Square when President Kennedy's cavalcade of enormous American cars swept into Leinster Lawn in June 1963. Five months later I was among many shocked sixth-year schoolboys when the news came through of the assassination of John F Kennedy in Dallas.

The Vietnam War was the international political background to my student days. I was studying architecture when Martin Luther King was murdered, on April 4th, 1968, just a month before presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy would be assassinated in Los Angeles.

This well-illustrated book tells Teddy’s tale of how he grew up. He describes his love of sailing and his deep attachment to the sea. He frequently refers to his deep Catholic faith and how much it meant to him during the many tragedies that beset the family. His eldest brother died during the second World War, and his sister Kathleen died in an air crash.

His devout parents presided over a large extended family that played together and lived alongside each other in a number of houses at Hyannis Port, a seaside resort outside Boston. Anyone from a large family will recognise the internal hierarchy of chronology that informs the relationships between siblings, irrespective of adult achievements. It is ever present in Ted’s account, and takes on a special role when he is the only brother left alive and the youngest in the family.

Kennedy’s long-standing political commitment to affordable health insurance for all US citizens was more than a political position. The cancer that resulted in the amputation above the knee of his son Teddy jnr’s leg, at the age of 12, brings him face to face with the reality of unaffordable healthcare and the anguish of anxious parents he met in the corridors of hospitals in Washington DC and Boston.

His political career, particularly after the death of his two brothers, is described from the point of view of the participant. This makes it all the more interesting, particularly for the many citizens who have not experienced the life of a politician.

His failed first marriage, the tragedy of Chappaquiddick, his own frailties and his successful second marriage are given equal treatment.

Kennedy was a senator for 47 years, and his love for Congress and his relish for its work are explored in detail. The procedures of US politics are so very different to here in Europe. Brian Cowen, Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy have more control over their respective parliaments than Barack Obama has over the US Congress. This book describes the real workings of the separation of powers that is one of the foundations of the US constitution.

The Kennedys’ role in bringing peace to Northern Ireland is briefly described. Ambassador Jean Kennedy-Smith, his sister, played a key role from the US embassy in the Phoenix Park, with her brother, in persuading President Clinton to grant a visa to Gerry Adams. London and the US State Department were furious. That courageous decision worked. The Belfast Agreement and the Northern Ireland power-sharing administration is the legacy of what Irish America has done for the land of its ancestors.

Ted Kennedy’s death is a signal for Ireland to move on. We now have to construct a new relationship with the United States.

The integration of Irish Americans into mainstream US society opens new opportunities, while the memories of the “ghetto Irish” fade. Cultural and educational links, such as the George Mitchell Scholarship programme, are part of the new transatlantic relationship. Ireland can help guide the US to understand the politics of the European Union. Obama’s embrace of multilateralism presents a unique opportunity.

The Irish do politics well, as the Kennedys showed in the US. Other Irish immigrants have done the same all over the world. Let’s put that skill to new purposes.

Ruairi Quinn TD is the Labour Party spokesman for education and science