An Irishman's Diary

Now that the general election campaign is into the home straight, spare a thought for the great unsung heroes of recent weeks - the families of candidates. They are slaves to someone else's dream.

It can be a nightmare.

Ah yes. I remember it well. My father - "the Haw" (Tom) McGarry - was first elected to Roscommon County Council in 1974. Up to then, as a civil (sometimes) servant he could not stand for election, but that changed under Liam Cosgrave's Fine Gael-Labour Coalition.

And a fat lot of thanks they got for it from dear Papa, who stood for Fianna Fáil.

He was called "the Haw", they say, because as a young man in Castlerea, where he worked during the 1940s, he was forever making anti-British speeches - not unlike William Joyce, or Lord Haw Haw as he was known, who broadcast similar anti-British propaganda from Germany during the war. After the war Joyce was executed for treason by the British.

My father survived.

He loved the cut and thrust of politics and was rarely behind the door when it came to dishing it out. He once described fellow Fianna Fáil county councillors, Seán Doherty and Terry Leyden, as "two half-wits who wouldn't make a decent wit between them". So Terry told me.

Of course, he was hardly elected to the council when he had our town, Ballaghaderreen, in uproar. Putting a strong case for a swimming-pool there, he went just that bit too far.

Carried forward by the force of his own argument, he said a reason we needed a pool was "because there are people in the town who haven't had a bath since the midwife rubbed them down with the sponge".

It did not go down well.

The following week an irate local responded, anonymously, through the Roscommon Herald's letters page that "Mr McGarry must have been rubbed down with sandpaper".

We didn't get the pool.

The family were always dragged in at election times for canvasses. He was good at it and loved the banter on the doorsteps; and if he got every vote promised he'd have walked in every time with hundreds to spare. But he had a few close shaves.

And there was his first defeat. He decided to stand for the Dáil in the June 1981 general election and had expected to get a Fianna Fáil nomination. But party headquarters in Dublin decided there would be just two candidates in Roscommon and those would be the "half-wits".

He was furious and, out of purest spite, stood as an Independent. He hadn't a hope.

We knew it. But we could never be sure that he knew it and so it was off on a daft wild goose chase canvassing all over the county. Throughout the entire campaign the family just went through the motions, knowing there was no way he would back down. He got about 600 votes.

Then he had the closest possible shave where his council seat was concerned in the 1985 local election. Standing as an Independent he survived a marathon count to retain the seat by one vote. He was elated and wrote a letter to the Roscommon Champion and the Roscommon Herald expressing his gratitude to all who voted for him.

He thanked Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil "who so generously and intentionally carried all my voters in their cars to the polling stations as I had no transport and no personating agents arranged at the booths". (Not quite the truth. We kids were his personating agents.)

One loyal henchman had been Ray Devine. He ended his letter "May the Devine assistance remain with us and may the soles of the defeated candidates rest in pieces."

It was his last term as a councillor. He lost his seat at the next local election, despite the inspiring slogan on his posters: "Vote McGarry No 1 - the man who put a roof over everyone who needed it in Co Roscommon."

He never did undersell himself and, as always, there was a grain of truth in what he said. Part of his job as a health inspector was to get old houses reconstructed or rebuilt, and it was something he did all over the county with great energy and commitment.

But he discovered there was life after politics and the banter continued. An old sparring partner was Sonny Kenny in Frenchpark. Once, as they were leaving the graveyard there after a funeral - he was always a great man for funerals - he turned to Sonny and said: "Kenny, what age are you now?" "Eighty-five," said Sonny.

My father's comment was: "Sure it isn't worth your while go home."

He died himself in 1999 and is buried in Ballaghaderreen in a new part of the cemetery which his cattle broke into once while it was still a field.

They wandered from there across the graves and, as he put them out, an outraged woman challenged him about the disgrace of it all.

He retorted: "The only one complaining is you."

He rests there himself now with the other uncomplaining ones and we too have had peace at every election since.