Dandy and fierce: The incalculable loss of LGBTQ+ trailblazer Edmund Lynch

Last week, the trailblazing Irish LGBTQ+ activist Edmund Lynch died. His impact on Irish queer life was huge. He was one of the founding members of Ireland’s Sexual Liberation Movement in 1973, and later in life spent years compiling the phenomenal resource — in sound recordings and on camera — the Irish LGBTI+ Oral History Project.

The first time I sat down to talk to Edmund properly was around a decade ago when I was researching an oral history book on the Irish marriage equality movement. I can’t remember who told me, “you have to talk to Edmund”, but they were right. I’ve since said those words to others many times. Edmund lived, made, compiled, and shared Irish queer history. The community owes him a tremendous amount.

Over the years, we would occasionally meet in the Irish Film Institute in Dublin when I needed to find out some detail of queer Irish history. He was outrageously generous with his knowledge. A chat with him was to download a wealth of information and granular detail.

And boy, could he talk. A conversation with Edmund that began with a simple question could last for hours, traversing everything from the history and workings of RTÉ, to the early history of LGBTQ+ activism, the instances of murder and assault that gay men experienced, and so much more. He held in his mind a mental map of Dublin’s queer scene; the bars, clubs, community centres, organisations, house parties, and all the people who populated them. He could tell you what specific drink any particular figure on the scene favoured 40 years ago, a detail of their clothes, what any minor politician or judge said at any given time, and rattle off the names of everyone who was at some small meeting in some small room somewhere in Dublin at the outset of the gay rights movement.

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“I said, ‘we’re committing an offence, Offence Against the Person’s Act 1861 and section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act . . . It was quite evident he wasn’t going to take me on because I was quoting the law.”

—  Edmund Lynch

He would hand me USB drives of material that might be of use to my research or writing, folders of documents and transcripts, press cuttings, with an instruction to read and listen to it all. He wore great jumpers and a brilliant, wry, smirk. He never retired from the scene or from queer culture. He knew everyone, talked to everyone, and was utterly dedicated — to the point of obsession — to documenting the history through which he lived and participated.

When it came to younger people in the community exploring their history, he supported everyone’s work, popping along to book launches, attending events, reading, listening and watching everything. There was always one more interview he wanted to do. His oral history audiovisual archive, for which he conducted god knows how many interviews, is a national treasure trove of queer social history and experience.

One of the things I loved about him was how devoid of bitterness he was. Despite the personal and professional challenges he faced for being an out gay man at a time when having sex as a gay man was illegal, when arrest and harassment by the gardaí was a real and present danger and threat, when social isolation was a reality and when professional obliteration, shunning, bullying was embedded in Irish society and used as a tool to oppress queer people, he would weave this context into some ironic anecdote that positioned Irish society as a strange and weird thing and LGBTQ+ people as the ones succeeding in winning the cruel games it demanded they play.

In an interview on the LGBTQ+ Life YouTube channel, Lynch detailed one particular incident in his typical style. “I happened to be up in the grounds of Dublin Gas Company, called Knockrabo, and I was with somebody from Trinity. We were in a state of undress from the waist down. There was a knock on the car window. I rolled it down. It was a policeman. The guy says, ‘what are you doing?’ I said, ‘we’re committing an offence, Offence Against the Person’s Act 1861 and section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act.’ He said, ‘when you’re finished, pull up your trousers and go home.’ It was quite evident he wasn’t going to take me on because I was quoting the law.”

Edmund grew up in Drimnagh in Dublin, the second-eldest of four children. He worked as a sheet metal worker for the Dublin Gas Company where he met gay men who told him about the pubs, Rice’s and Bartley Dunne’s. He developed an interest in amateur filmmaking and in 1968 applied, along with 1,728 people, for a job in RTE. Twenty-eight people were hired, of which he was one. He was assigned a role in the sound department in television. “I was openly gay from the word go,” he once said.

“So dandy, so fierce,” a friend said last week when we were remembering his spirit and character. Across social media, people have been remembering his life force: “an extraordinary legacy”, “an inspiration”, a man who did “much often unseen heavy lifting”, a “guardian of Irish queer history”. Edmund stood his ground at a time when society feared the fearless.

I’ll miss seeing him around town, his eyes sparkling, and his opening salvo, “well, let me tell you …”