Local hero

`We live in a culture of greed," says Independent TD for Dublin Central Tony Gregory. "The disadvantaged people are angry, but they should be a lot angrier." In the tradition-driven world of Irish politics, Gregory is a courageous exception. He represents a breed of Irish political figure more common at the beginning of this century than at its end. "I wouldn't exist in politics at all," he says "but for the fact the majority parties have always ignored disadvantaged areas like the inner city."

It is now 16 years since he took his seat in the Dail. No one could dispute that he is about the closest an elected politician could be to being a committed social worker. There is no rhetoric, no small talk, no bravado; he smiles only when he feels like smiling and certainly not just because a camera happens to be facing him. An independent is always that bit more vulnerable than other TDs, without a party machine to fall back on and no party lore to offer at election time.

Gregory the community activist, however, does not present himself as crusading zealot. He knows his issues - poverty, poor housing, the need for community facilities, education - are not glamorous, "social deprivation is a reality that successive governments have ignored and the recent Budget was the single greatest blow against all those who were attempting to confront deprivation and create a more equal society." At the heart of much of that social deprivation is Dublin's serious heroin problem, particularly affecting his constituency, which also has the Taoiseach as a TD. It is an issue he has been raising for about 15 years. "Almost everyone in the disadvantaged areas of my constituency would almost certainly know someone who has suffered, or even died, from heroin addiction." It was Gregory, while addressing the Dail on the drugs crisis, who first named Dublin's major drug dealers including Thomas Mullen ("The Boxer"), recently jailed in Britain for 18 years. He believes successive governments ignored the situation for far too long. "It was only when Ecstasy emerged and middle-class parents began seeing the threat to their children that action was taken." His support of last year's bail referendum was obviously influenced by his concern about heroin use. When asked for his opinions of drug dealers, he says: "You wouldn't be able to print them."

Tony Gregory went to jail in 1986 because of his stance on behalf of traditional Dublin women street traders. Although repeatedly given the option of signing a bond to keep the peace, he refused, aware that it would have effectively disassociated him from the women. "I wouldn't have been able to continue representing them." Gregory's refusal brought him to Mountjoy Prison 12 years ago, on January 28th, 1986. At that time some of the first prisoners suffering from AIDS had been diagnosed. "AIDS was still a mystery, most of the prisoners were encountering it for the first time and were uncertain about it. Many prisoners were asking questions such as would you get infected if you used the same cup. There was a lot of fear."

For a man who has consistently spoken out against the gross inequalities of Irish society and has always maintained a high political profile, nothing in his career to date has matched the outcry surrounding the campaign to ban hare coursing which culminated in Gregory's Private Members Bill. "It was the most divisive issue I've ever been involved in. People wrote to me from all over the country. I was struck by the widespread disgust of most people and the huge numbers of letters and cards." Yet if the public was disgusted by the realities of a pursuit which pits two dogs against one hare, and largely supported Gregory, TDs anxious to appease their constituents did not vote with him.

On June 30th 1993, his Wildlife Bill was defeated in the Dail by 104 votes to 16. "The most striking thing about the vote was the number of deputies from several parties, including leading members of Fine Gael who were prepared to break the party whip to support my Bill. While the party whips were imposed the Bill had forced the government to act on the issue." It introduced its own Bill which ordered muzzling at all coursing meets. This was seen as a major step. In February 1996, Gregory challenged the effectiveness of muzzling. "The only way to eliminate cruelty," he said, "is to have drag coursing where no live bait is used."

Replying to this, the then Minister of State for Agriculture, Jimmy Deenihan, conceding drag coursing had its followers, argued some people preferred hares, adding that the coursing fraternity were concerned about the hare population. No section of the community looked after hares better, claimed the Minister, who concluded: "Coming from a rural constituency I have seen hares coursed and then they sit and relax very quickly."

Gregory's response was characteristically terse. If the Minister believed that, he should be glad to be pursued by pit-bull terriers and then "sit and relax very quickly". Gregory, who is vice president of the Irish Council Against Blood Sports, continues to call for the banning of coursing.

Among the arguments voiced supporting coursing was a personalised one, suggesting that Gregory as a city TD had no right to interfere with a rural tradition.

"I think it was assumed I knew nothing about country life and had never been at a coursing meet - I have been to one and once was enough," he says. The countryside has always been important to him - "I get out of the city as much as I can" - and he enjoys boating in the Midlands on small lakes. As a boy he spent all his school holidays with his mother's family on a small farm at Rhode, near Croghan Hill in Co Offaly. Being on the farm made him very aware of animals - "when I was very young I remember being terrified of cows, I thought they'd stampede. And as for attacking coursing, I've always loved dogs." A realist rather than a romantic, he points out: "If activities like stag hunting, certain aspects of fox hunting and other so-called blood sports were challenged in the courts on the basis they cause unnecessary cruelty to animals - I'm convinced the evidence would find these `sports' to be illegal."

It is a busy working day at Dail Eireann, although the House has not reconvened. Gregory, minus tie as usual, leads the way from his office to a large room down the hall, because of the ringing phones. It is the Fine Gael party room, the walls are festooned with framed photographs of Fine Gael luminaries, men who probably never had to give much thought to the working classes. Ask anyone with a particular interest in politics about Gregory and they invariably reply he is a good guy, a hard worker. Ask the same question of a member of the public who may only possess a general interest, and the answer is the same. Wander through his constituency of 100,000 voters, and Gregory is apparently seen as some kind of saint, "oh, but a down-to-earth one".

Perceived elsewhere as the definitive Dub, a non-conformist and also a former example of an Angry Young Man, on meeting him he appears reserved and is more weary than angry. Does he ever feel disillusioned? "About every second day."

On this particular day, he admits to being happy enough thanks to the Government's welcome U-turn on the proposed Youth Services Fund for communities fighting the drugs scourge. Instead of ignoring the Rainbow Coalition pledge to provide £20 million, the present administration, having reduced it to £1.25 million has now bowed to community pressure and increased the original sum to £30 million. "It's a great tribute to the work being done by the anti-drug organisations, particularly ICON - Inner City Organisation Network and COCAD - Coalition Of Communities Against Drugs." He is also optimistic about the £75-million redevelopment programme planned for the Summerhill and Sean McDermott Street areas of the inner city.

Gregory neither mythologises Dublin nor the working class. He is practical, understated, businesslike though friendly and very busy. Aside from his undoubted commitment to his constituency and his various causes, the key to his success as a politician lies in the fact that Gregory does not see himself as a hero - working-class or otherwise. While many politicians on being asked the simplest question automatically reach for the nearest orange crate, eager to transform any answer into a speech, Gregory's replies are brief and efficient. Noticeably thinner and more casually dressed than most Irish politicians, Gregory is a slight, compact, worried looking character. He lives with his brother in Ballybough in the shadow of Croke Park, "a shadow that's getting bigger all the time". No longer with the college boy looks evident through so much of his political career, last December he turned 50, a fact which surprises him almost as much as everyone else. "December 1947 is famous for being the coldest one in living memory," he says. Another disaster of sorts that he has never forgotten from his early childhood, was the flooding of the North Strand area in December 1956. "The bridge over the Tolka collapsed. I have a memory of boats going down North Strand Road."

Some years ago when asked what motivated his entering politics, he referred to "the poverty of my parents". He now seems slightly taken aback on being reminded of this, yet then mentions the hardships they experienced. "My mother left the farm when she was 15 or 16 and came to Dublin to work." Ellen Judge was determined Tony and his elder brother would have the chance of a good education. He went to the local school, Loreto Convent on North Great George's Street, at the age of three.

"I refused to leave my mother's arms. The nuns looked like spacemen - they wore those big head-dresses" - he gestures towards the ceiling - "I remember the head nun's name was Mother Alberta, it didn't reassure me." The Gregory boys were not driven, but their mother encouraged them to do well. This didn't set them apart from their peers. "The thing that made me different from the kids I grew up with was that I spent so much time in the country, on the edge of the Bog of Allen."

From the convent he moved on to St Canice's National School on the North Circular Road. A scholarship enabled him to go to O'Connell's School on North Richmond Street and he says matter-of-factly: "but for the scholarship I wouldn't have got to secondary school." His father was a casual labourer on the docks. Politics was never discussed at home, and ideology has never meant that much to him, because he learnt about practical issues at an early age. He remembers his mother applying for a corporation house. "My mother was told `come back when you have three more children'. As they only had two, there was no hope."

At O'Connell's School, Gregory's fifth year class was told not to have any notion of university. "I had never really thought about it. I didn't know UCD was in Earlsfort Terrace. I suppose I knew where Trinity was, but university was not for us. It wasn't part of our life." As his mother wanted him to be a teacher, he applied for St Patrick's. She was always his central influence. She died in 1969 in her early 60s. "She had been ill with TB some years before. My father worked, obviously he wasn't there as much, and most Irish boys" he half smiles, "are far closer to their mothers."

A strong sense of history was something he learned indirectly from his father. "My father was born in 1903. The General Lockout, the Easter Rising, the Tan War, the Civil War - they were all part of his memories. And you know, half of Ireland admired Michael Collins and hated Dev and the other half was vice versa. My father admired Collins. When I was young he'd tell me stories."

Wary of describing the schoolboy Gregory as a sportsman, he says: "we did kick football in the street." Even now he looks capable of running faster than his current nine-minute miles might indicate. "That's usually run on only a day's training." On leaving school, he developed his interest in modern Irish history and went to University College Dublin, then at Earlsfort Terrace, to study history and Irish. While at college he became involved in starting a Republican Club as there was one in Trinity. "I think it was because of the 50th anniversary of 1916 and all." Initially the UCD academic council refused, but relented about a year later. Politics must have been in the air then. Even now, many students read Edmund Wilson's To The Finland Station or George Woodcock's Anarchism and promptly become radicals. Was it like that then? "I think a lot of middle-class students were radicalised at college and then as soon as they got their degree and got a job, they reverted." Was he conscious of social class at college? "At that time less than 1 per cent of the students were from working-class backgrounds - now it's something like 4 per cent of the north inner city going to university as opposed to 54 per cent from Dublin 4." Though never involved in party politics, he was a member of Sinn Fein from 1969 to '71. Of his college days he says: "I never got involved in the social life. I was there to get a degree and that was it."

On completing his arts degree, he did a H Dip and began teaching history through Irish at Colaiste Eoin in Stillorgan. Soon he was involved in community groups. Housing was an obvious area in need of change. "Conditions were terrible, people were still living in the old Georgian tenements." Housing remains one of his main concerns. Aware of the importance of a high profile, Gregory tends to maintain this through his work on the ground.

Recently he was asked to launch an academic book, Jacinta Prunty's meticulous study of urban geography Dublin Slums - 1800-1925 (Irish Academic Press). It is an important social history, in it may be traced the origins of the problems Gregory is dealing with daily. When launching the book, Gregory drew the parallel between the failure of the authorities to respond to the deprivations of tenement life in late 19th-century and early 20th-century Dublin. "It was only when the more affluent communities outside the centre of Dublin began to be affected by epidemics that they acted. They were not motivated by concern for the Dublin poor. They were concerned by the threat posed to the better off if the diseases spread. Equally, as long as the heroin/drugs crisis was contained in the inner city areas governments failed to act - until the Ecstasy issue emerged."

Being elected to Dublin City Council was the first step in his political career. Within two years he was contesting his first general election. Unsuccessful in 1981, he was elected in February 1982. There was to be a second election that year and Gregory had only won his seat when he found himself defending it.

"For me, the city council was a great training for the Dail. It provided me with a training ground. Locally contentious issues were fought out between councillors who were also representing the political parties." The recent Budget merely confirmed Gregory's belief that the Government is not interested in the disadvantaged. "It was a middle-class, upper-class, rich man's Budget." It reflects the divisions in Irish society. Dublin he sees as "divided between affluent areas and areas still excluded from community empowerment".

As a young TD, Gregory found himself holding the balance of power and was in the position to strike a deal with the then Taoiseach, Charles Haughey. "All of the political leaders approached me asking for my support to enable them to form a government. I responded by presenting them with the issues on which I had been elected." Haughey was the one who was most pragmatic in his response and so won the support of Gregory and his election campaigners. It was the only time to date he has committed his support to a government. Since then he has been a political loner. He was not one of the Independent TDs to strike a deal with the current government.

Why? "Having been approached by Ahern I met with him. But our discussion did not leave me feeling I would be in a sufficiently influential position to deliver on the social/ community issues in which I am involved. Consequently, I did not believe I could justify giving unqualified support to a Fianna Fail/PD government which I suspected would be a very right-wing administration." Coalitions do not bother him. "I think they can be good. The last government was going well. I think Fine Gael benefited greatly from being with Labour. It radicalised the party. Traditionally I'd be more in sympathy with FF than FG but I think Fine Gael has changed for the better."

Is there anyone currently involved in Irish politics he admires? Gregory is careful and doesn't answer. Given the choice, though, the political figure of his own lifetime he would most like to emulate is Noel Browne. "I can't even presume to say I would aspire to achieve anything like he did. But I think he was a great man and did great work for Ireland. There was also the fact he was so involved with TB" - which has a personal relevance to him because of his mother's illness.

How does Gregory feel about Ireland today? "We live in a divided society, the Government can do something about this. . . Change is the single most important task facing any government."