Always happy to be at home in Cork as a `real Taoiseach'

Many years ago when he was still Taoiseach, Jack Lynch invited myself and a colleague for a drink in a little pub near Shandon…

Many years ago when he was still Taoiseach, Jack Lynch invited myself and a colleague for a drink in a little pub near Shandon Steeple in the area where he was reared. We chatted about politics, sport and the Cork of his youth. Jack Lynch was at ease, at home.

A glass of Paddy whiskey in hand, he had a word of greeting for everyone who came into the pub. One thing Jack Lynch never lost was the common touch. It is fair to say he was revered in his native hurling-mad Cork.

His quiet demeanour, belied by his robust skill on the field of play, and his unlikely political prowess for such a "nice man", as Cork people always described him, was the stuff of which legends are made.

In an interview before his death in 1985, his brother Theo summed him up like this: "As a boy, he always showed courage, daring and toughness in character. But his temperament was always very even. He was never arrogant or aggressive but gave as good as he got.

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"Jack had a number of natural advantages in life. Study came easy to him and he had an exceptional physical stamina to match it. I remember when he was a civil servant and was studying law at the university. He would come in for his tea and study from seven until midnight and then get up early in the morning to study again before going to work. At the same time, he was playing hurling and football. I don't know how he did it."

"I hear Jack is in town," someone might say, and immediately the receiver of the news would know who Jack was. In his beloved north side, but also throughout the sprawling county of Cork, Jack could only mean Jack Lynch.

People from his own political persuasion, from others and from none, were friendly with Jack Lynch. The perception of him in Cork and most of all in Blackpool, was that "he is one of our own."

It was a mark of the man on that summer's day in a shady, cool Cork public house that he could trust two Cork journalists with his insights into the politics of the day and yet greet old neighbours as if he had never left.

"And right or wrong, you're by me, great women and great men. They are the heart of sweet Blackpool - and the spirit of The Glen," Examiner journalist Val Dorgan, now retired and a Glen Rovers' man like Jack Lynch, wrote in his ballad about Blackpool.

Blackpool was where the phrase "the real Taoiseach" was coined. That was no surprise. On becoming Taoiseach in 1966, the year the Cork hurling drought ended when the McCarthy Cup came back to Leeside after more than a decade, Lynch - in the words of T. P. O'Mahony, author of Jack Lynch - a Biography - made a triumphant return to Cork and headed straight for the Glen Rovers' club.

"Why did you do that?" one unknowing Dublin reporter asked. "Sure, in the name of God, where else would I go to?" came the reply. When he organised a loan of £10,000 to build a new Glen Rovers' clubhouse, O'Mahony's book records, he was asked by the bank what collateral he could offer. "The people of Blackpool are my collateral," he answered.

During the difficult years for Murphy's Brewery in Blackpool in the late 1960s and the 1970s Jack Lynch, no less than his political opponent and friend, Peter Barry, played an important role in trying to save the jobs that were so important to the locality. The brewery, now under the ownership of Heineken, is thriving.

In June 1977, after his extraordinary political victory, the Cork Examiner, carried a headline, "It's a toast to the King". The report said: "So last night in Blackpool they were gathering the makings of the bonfires, and they were out hunting for tar barrels. For nothing is more certain than the fact that when Jack Lynch comes home to his native city, he will receive a welcome that Parnell himself, the uncrowned King of Ireland, would have envied. The difference, they will tell you in Blackpool, is that Jack is already crowned."

The author also recalled that in 1990 Jack Lynch, again sipping a glass of Paddy, was at the hospitality room of the Beamish and Crawford brewery in Cork, indulging himself in his favourite pastime - talking about hurling. He was there to launch a book by Irish Independent journalist Raymond Smith, The Greatest Hurlers of Our Time.

Smith had listed the 21 greatest hurlers according to his opinion. Jack Lynch was not included - but that did not stop him launching the book.

Asked by O'Mahony how he felt about this, he replied: "These things are always subjective, aren't they? But there are some there who would not meet my definition of hurling greatness."