Slán Padraig, a chara
By Laurence McKeown
Paddy McManus died last week. To his friends, family
and loved ones I send my condolences. I didn't know
Paddy well and yet his death came as a shock. I felt a
sense of loss more so than I did when others much
closer to me had died.
I think possibly it was because Paddy was so much of a
gentleman. Strange word that, gentleman. I wonder does
it have a different meaning across the water. I know
that certainly when we say it we don't associate it
with lords and ladies.
The Irish have a saying, a ``gentleman and a scholar''.
It's a good saying. It conjures up the image of someone
who is both wise and humble. Someone who realises that
the more he knows the more he realises how ignorant he
really is. Paddy to me was a gentleman and a scholar.
He was ready to serve but never a servant.
Paddy had what I've called an impoverished look about
him. I've never used that term to describe anyone else
yet it seems to be the perfect adjective to sum up his
appearence. Impoverished. Yet not a demeanour which
prompted sympathy or, worse still, pity.
You got the impression from Paddy that he was really
very shy. The type of person, like so many of the
unsung heroes of this struggle, who work away in the
backround, tirelessly, patiently, each day, every day.
The problem is that it's only when they are no longer
with us that we realise the terrible loss that their
passing has inflicted. We wish for the opportunity to
say that extra word, make that additional gesture, show
our appreciation. But it's too late.
Apparently Paddy took ill on the day that a rally was
being held outside the City Hall. The rally was
organised by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions,
supposedly to protest at the most recent spate of
killings and to call for peace. It was the sort of
rally we are all too familiar with. The type that are
called when the right thinking people feel they must be
seen to be doing something. The type where people stand
around and beat their breasts the correct number of
times at a pre-determined moment in a practised manner,
then utter cries of despair at the actions of the
natives.
The natives that day thought they too could join in the
calls for an end to the slaughter being waged against
their community. Silly, naive, innocent natives. They
didn't understand that at such rallies only voices from
the platform will be heard. The words carefully
selected, phrased in the proper language and spoken in
reasonable and sensible tones so as not to alienate
``that other section of the community''.
The natives had got it wrong again. They thought that
just anyone could join in. They had to learn the hard
way that day, as always, with insult heaped on injury.
I have an image in my head of the type of person who
attends such rallies. Their accents, the type of
clothes they wear, the places they frequent, the
friends they keep. It's not an image of impoverishment.
Humanity is not a term you would ever apply to them. I
think of them outside the City Hall with their
arrogant, twisted faces, their sneers, their perfumed
hankerchiefs held in leather clad manicured fingers
close to their nostrils for fear the stench of too many
dead nationalists would invade their senses.
d I think of Paddy lying ill inside the hall. And it
hurts me. It hurts me that such a gentleman and a
scholar had to endure for so many years the insults,
abuse and downright bad manners of people like them who
believe that they were born to rule and we were born to
know our place. It's thanks to the work of Paddy and
the other unsung heroes of our time that the comfy
security in that belief has been well and truly shaken.
Roll on the day when it crumbles to dust. Slán, slán
Padraig, a chara.
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