Passing of a colourful Armagh-born journalist

THE death has taken place in his 96th year of life-long Armagh born journalist Paddy McGarvey who lived in Impington, Cambridge, writes Joe McManus.

He had been in failing health and passed away peacefully at Peterborough City Hospital on 6th August.

Born in Railway Street, Armagh, on Armistice Day, 1927, he was educated at the Christian Brothers School, Greenpark and had worked with a local law firm before taking up a career in journalism.

Paddy arrived in Fleet Street in 1952 and by the age of 26 was working on the Daily Mail, then one of the world’s largest-circulation newspapers. A debonair speech-flowing individual, his colourful personality allied to his exquisite writing flair attracted the attention of several Fleet Street editors which led to his association with numerous other leading titles.

His father ‘P.J” , a law clerk, who died in 1942, was a popular, frequent chairman of the Nationalist City Council in the opening decades of the 20th century. He was equally famed as a gifted tenor and storyteller at charity concerts, appearing along with his good friend and neighbour, the legendary Owen Webb. Like father, like son, Paddy was multi-talented.

Paddy came to England when journalism had the aura of show business. People back home used to say to him ‘what an exciting life you must lead’ and it was. But television, he claimed, put paid to all that. He once told me that performers with little or no talent were being mobbed in the street while good newspaper correspondents went quietly unnoticed.

While working for the Sunday Dispatch, Paddy had his own showbusiness column giving him access to the rich and famous.

He actually began his career in Cork with the Southern Star, a paper which he said, like a few others, was founded to get rid of Charles Stewart Parnell. It was gradually replaced by the Skibbereen Eagle, world famous for its warning to the Czar of Russia to behave himself in Siberia, because the Skibbereen Eagle had its eye on him.

It was then on to Dublin and a job with The Standard, where he shared a double-desk with the Monaghan poet Patrick Kavanagh, whom many now regard as being on a par with Yeats, Longley and Heaney.

Three times in his career in Ireland and Britain, Paddy returned to Armagh to work in peace campaigns, first in the UK general election, when he won an unexpected 5,015 votes for the Northern Ireland Labour Party. The year was 1964; he contested a seat in Mid-Ulster and despite losing believed the number of votes he received would have won a Dail seat.

Some years back he came up with a rather peculiar idea of governing Ireland in a unified way, an idea that dominated his life for two decades. He was the author of an online book ‘My Ireland My England’ which quite astonishingly detailed a solution to the Irish problem. Sub-titled ‘Two Irelands - One Capital, no not Dublin, and not Belfast, the plan was to remove the Northern Ireland Assembly from Stormont, take the Dail out of Leinster House and place them side by side in Ballyjamesduff, County Cavan. He made the case that whilst this location is in the Republic, it is also in Ulster - and in a part of the region the Irish Unionists originally wanted.

He claimed that both the 1920 Government of Ireland Act and the 1937 Irish Constitution both made provision for such an undertaking.

Paddy was also the founder of the Irish Parliament Trust (1985 - 2005), which he started in England, moved to Armagh and brought back to England. It was a campaign he put his heart and soul into and had on board many notables including Bertie Ahern and John Bruton.

His proposal was for the two parliaments merely to share a campus, or at least a town, where they could co-operate , exchange ideas, and argue: without prejudice to either jurisdiction.

The former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Jim Prior, also showed an interest and invited Paddy to his home in Suffolk to discuss it. Other supporters were the Earl of Longford and Duke of Devonshire, a brother-in-law of former British Prime Minister Harold McMacmillan.

Paddy seemed to be knocking on the right doors and when the North/South Ministerial Council was formed in 1991, he was an invited guest. This body is based in the former City Hall in Armagh, where Paddy’s father often chaired council meetings.

Another of his proposals -that the River Boyne, being part of Ireland’s problems, could be part of the solution - was adopted by the Rev Ian Paisley and Bertie Ahern when they jointly opened a heritage centre there.

Back in Armagh in the 1970s, Paddy found himself on a job-creation taskforce seeking to replace a clothes factory destroyed in the Troubles. Some locals thought cider might be the answer: this was the Orchard county after all.

But Paddy from his time in England and on Fleet Street knew enough about the subject to have doubts.

The would-be brewers were barking up the wrong tree, he thought: or to be more exact they had the wrong apple. Armagh cider couldn’t work, he told them. So noses slightly out of joint, Paddy, was asked what he would do instead, whereupon he suggested they should just bottle the water and sell it.

Despite his advancing years Paddy McGarvey remained full of incredible energy and enthusiasm. He would telephone me regularly to catch-up on all the latest happenings in the city of his birth. He was so enthused about the council opening a new theatre and arts centre and felt strongly that it should be named after local actor Patrick (Paudge) Magee.

There were times when all I tell him, that there is hardly a sinner on the streets, which always reminded me of one of his famous quotes : ‘Armagh -narrow streets and narrow minds.” Yet he never lost his love for the old town where his bother the late Jimmy McGarvey worked as insurance agent and was also a church correspondent for The Irish Press. Jimmy’s son Seamus, is the celebrated cinematographer, of World Trade Centre and Atonement fame.

For a man who on his own admission was a shocking hand-writer, the type writer and later, the computer certainly compensated in full. Up until a short time before his death he was still filing copy to various media outlets. As well as writing stories, Paddy loved telling them and had a repertoire second to none. He often joked about how his colleagues in the English press bantered him about being the only Irishman they knew that couldn’t hold his liquor - as it only took a few pints to interfere with his balance.

Paddy McGarvey was a charismatic figure and never shy at flaunting it. An exceptional wordsmith, a thoroughly hard nosed journalist straight from the old school, whom as they saying goes could have made a story out of nothing. He has gone to rest. What a story his amazing life has been!

Paddy’s Requiem Mass was celebrated on Thursday 31st August at Blackfriars, Buckingham Road, Cambridge, followed by committal at Cambridge City Crematorium.

Deepest condolences to his family, friends and loved ones.