Irishness at core of great man
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Thursday August 27 2009
Two years ago, I was walking down a narrow street in Boston's North End when my mobile rang.
It was Ted Kennedy. He was standing in Belfast, and, as chance would have it, I was standing about 100ft from the spot where his mother Rose was born. "Guess who I just sat next to?" he asked. It never occurred to me to answer, "Baroness Paisley", but that is who Ted Kennedy was sitting next to in the spectator's gallery at Stormont when the power-sharing government finally got back up and running.
"Reverend Paisley looked up to the gallery and waved," Kennedy said. "I wasn't sure if he was waving at me and his wife, or just his wife."
When I assured the senator that Paddy Power was taking odds that the wave was directed solely at Eileen Paisley, he unleashed a belly laugh that rolled across the Atlantic.
That Ian Paisley's wife would invite Ted Kennedy to sit next to her that fine May day captures the arc that was Ted Kennedy's contribution to Ireland, and specifically his role in ending the "Troubles".
In 1971, Kennedy gave a speech that marked him, indelibly for some, as an IRA apologist. He called for a British withdrawal from the North and suggested unionists who didn't like it could move. The speech was written by an ardent nationalist and signed off on by a relatively inexperienced senator who knew little about the North. A year later, Kennedy met John Hume and his position changed utterly.
Kennedy became an equally harsh critic of IRA violence and British policies that he believed only served to perpetuate the conflict. He also stood up for the Irish Government when British officials tried to ascribe subversive motives to some of Dublin's policy positions, such as opposing the extradition of IRA operatives from the south.
Kennedy's personal journey, from a starting place of naive ignorance to one of deep, nuanced understanding, mirrored the Irish-American experience, one that started in the early 1970s with hats being passed around the pubs of South Boston and Queens for the Provos and evolved to Kennedy taking a prominent role in persuading the IRA to disarm and disband. On a few occasions, I sat with Kennedy in The Hideaway, his private lounge in the Capitol where he would retire to between senate votes. His Irishness is written on the wall. Literally.
Snub
Among the family portraits are those of his grandfather, John "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald, the first Irish Catholic elected to the US House of Representatives from New England, and his brother, John, the first Irish Catholic elected president of the United States.
In a corner, there is a chess set, the pieces of which are figures from the North. Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley are knights. The pawns, more poignantly, are Provos and RUC men. Above the fireplace, there is a black-and-white road sign suggesting that Lough Gur is just one-and-a-half miles away, and in some ways it was.
The Kennedy consciousness was informed by its Irishness, by overcoming discrimination against Irish Catholics -- which at the end of the 19th century was as systemic in Boston as it was in Northern Ireland -- and by surviving politically motivated violence.
Four years ago, in a snub meant to encourage the IRA to disarm and disband, Kennedy refused to meet Gerry Adams in Washington on St Patrick's Day.
Instead, he hosted the sisters and fiancee of Robert McCartney, the Belfast man murdered by IRA men months before. Claire McCartney, Mr McCartney's youngest sister, said they met with much sympathy in Washington, but only Kennedy could offer them empathy. "He knows what it's like," she said. Kennedy later mended fences with Adams, calling to congratulate him after the IRA disarmed.
He was fascinated by de Valera and Collins, and loved talking to Bertie Ahern about the North. He sent me a note when David Ervine died, mourning Ervine because he thought he was one of the few politicians who could bridge the gap between poor nationalists and poor loyalists.
In the end, Ted Kennedy succeeded in politics because he took to heart the advice of poet Robert Frost to his brother at Jack's presidential inauguration. Frost urged Jack to be more Irish than Harvard. Teddy was.
Kevin Cullen is a columnist for the 'Boston Globe'
- Kevin Cullen
