An inspirational journalist, teacher and scholar – An Irishman’s Diary about Eddie Holt

Eddie Holt hauled himself from his sickbed for his erstwhile colleague's funeral, former Herald editor Paul Drury. Drury was a talented rewrite man and savvy journalist, a capable, tough operator who, while not universally liked, was admired and respected.

When I afterwards asked Holt why he had made the monumental effort to attend, back came the reply whispered through a fog of illness: “Because he stood up for journalists.” His response was a reminder of what mattered in journalism, as in life – loyalty and courage. Within a few short months he would be gone himself.

Holt was an uncommonly good writer, an exceptional journalist possessed of acute intellectual prowess, a supreme stylist who grouted his ideas into a unifying theme. A man who never lost sight of what our craft is for – to hold the centre of power to account. And this he did, on occasion at considerable personal cost.

He wrote a television column for the Irish Independent (1988-1994) and for The Irish Times until 2001, where former features editor Sheila Wayman noted his ability to "knit reviews into a cohesive, entertaining and elegantly written social commentary".

The Irish Times "Connect" column (2001-2007) revealed a fascinating political intellect fuelled by a social agenda. The fair society was the guiding light that informed his journalism and lent it a prophetic edge. That Ireland was in thrall to consumerism only served to mark Holt out as a contrarian, a man loath to accept the goulash of seductive humbug which garnished Celtic Tiger avarice.

“Consider the gross management guff of today . . . ‘potential stakeholders in the global economy participating in an outsourced investment opportunity for sustainable development, currently moving towards a best-practice code of conduct’ or some other equally absurd and meaningless blather . . . ‘mission statements’, ‘going forward’ . . . ‘involuntary separation’, ‘human resources’ and the rest. It may not help workers to talk about ‘involuntary separation’ (redundancy, the sack, layoffs) but probably makes managers feel better.”

While acknowledging its dynamic impetus he challenged the prevailing wisdom that market orthodoxy would be a panacea for our problems. Holt thought the rich and powerful should be restrained or they would devour all around them; it was, he believed, possible for equity and enterprise to co-exist. And to this end his sensibility railed against the “all for me and nothing for you” consequence of unbridled capitalism.

US publisher Niall O’Dowd ranks Holt as his “oldest and closest friend”. He recalls an impassioned man fearless in outlook even when it ill-fitted the contemporary zeitgeist. The “siren call of the Celtic Tiger left him unmoved and he predicted its empty promise and greed-driven core before anyone else . . . he was for the little guy fighting against the tide relentlessly hauling him out to sea while vulture funds profited”.

It was because he echoed the concerns of the little voice, says O’Dowd, that he earned the anger and enmity of some who if they “stood on top of each other would not be as tall as Eddie in his grave”.

Holt was a singular talent and he was blessed with exceptional range. At DCU he taught journalism and was working towards a PhD on “WB Yeats, Journalism and the Irish Revival”. Yeats was a prolific contributor to newspapers and periodicals at home and abroad; he produced over 400,000 words, noted Holt.

Yeats, he wrote, knew the value of keeping his audience’s attention if he was to plead Ireland’s case at the bar of international opinion. And it was this that separated the poet from “contemporary Continental modern artists who railed against journalism and made their art . . . complex to keep it secure from the democratising masses. ‘The rabble spit forth their bile and call the results a newspaper,’ said Friedrich Nietzsche. And while the Continentals mostly agreed, the Irish Revivalists, realising the power of post-Famine journalism, did not.”

Holt's PhD supervisor Declan Kiberd, professor of Irish Studies and English at Notre Dame University, recognised originality in the research. "Eddie understood that without journalism there would have been no Irish Revival. His work on Yeats alerted a whole generation of scholars to the way in which the Irish risorgimento was conducted as fully in newspapers and journals as in books of high culture."

Holt, who died on June 23rd, 2015, represented all that is worthwhile in journalism. He had within him an intellectual rigour, a veracity that compelled his critical eye to gaze upon an Ireland pallid in the face of inequality and tell it as it truly is. He is greatly missed.