Michael D Higgins TD

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Justin Keating – A Memory

Issued : Tuesday 5 January, 2010

I very rarely saw Justin Keating get ruffled.  He communicated a kind of meditative strength.  There was thus a precision and deliberateness to the replies he offered to questions.  One had the impression of a great richness that resided in the person for which the question was inadequate. Those who experienced his friendship thus enjoyed a gift greater than words allow.

The precision to which I refer was not based on either bureaucratic zeal or any commitment to dead ritual. It was rather sourced in the creativity that was at the heart of Justin’s philosophy.  That creativity was sourced in what he inherited in art and politics from his father, and particularly his mother, but was, even more importantly, developed from the discipline of socialist reason and a recognition of the collective power of community to which he was committed.

His recognition of the necessity of art meant that the most rational use of one’s talents and gifts required that one travel from the world of private experience to the public world.  Justin made that journey and that sacrifice from the rewards of a recognised academic talent to the world of endless, patience-testing meetings.

During his period in the Dáil, and particularly during his time as Minister, he sought to lodge both the necessity of humane alternatives and the possibility of their practical achievement in public discourse.   He had an exceptional gift at communicating the complex alternative that was necessary if we were to achieve a real Republic, a Republic worthy of all of the people on our island and one that would be in solidarity with those who sought freedom all over the world.

The essential difference between a visionary politician and a careerist is not the collision between the pursuit of an ideal and the limitations of the real.  The difference is both moral and practical.   The visionary politician, such as Justin was, sees the real waste that is involved in not pushing on to realise what is possible, what is rational, what is humane, and thus vulnerable, but sometimes beautiful and rewarding. 

To settle for complicity in what is lesser as falsely inevitable, or as the only definition of the real, is to settle for an unfulfilled life. The kind of Socialist Justin was did not involve any reduction of his vision to what was simply materialist either. He subscribed to a freedom that included the aesthetic and the spiritual- a spiritual defined by a respect for that creativity which is lodged in every child and adult.

His work as a broadcaster revealed a view of nature, of land and animals, that was one of wonder, and above all showed a respect for the symmetry of nature.  He understood the warm intimacy of life that flowed from being close to animals. His view of nature was the very antithesis to the false rationalism of Francis Bacon who wrote ‘I lead to you Nature and all Her children in bondage for your use’

The beauty embedded in the ordinary, he felt, was revealed in the work of those who farmed and harvested and above all in the crafts where intuition and inherited indigenous wisdom combined with acquired learning to produce what was both functional and beautiful. As chair of the Crafts Council, he sought to link art, craft, learning, wisdom and education.

He was a fully involved reforming minister. For example, when it came to the alternatives that were available for the protection and development of Irish natural resources, he both used the best of advice while taking personal control and responsibility for the policies that evolved.  We live with the consequences of the reversal of his policies in these matters by his successors.

I have written about our journey together during a European election campaign in Connacht/Ulster.  When we had finished with nature, in the slowest drive in a Morris Oxford experienced by anybody, I did see his guard drop- just once- when we discussed the views of a mutual colleague on a contentious topic.  But after that exchange, details of which you will have to wait, we had a good laugh and got lost in a discussion near Castlerea about the enigma presented as one tried to suggest a wine that combined with chocolate. 

I am glad, and all of the people of Ireland should be glad, that Justin made that journey of sacrifice and commitment to the public world.  It was no doubt at a price that was paid particularly by his family, by those who loved him, but it was a life of immense value to the Irish public.

If he brought from his academic life an insistence on science and its rational base, he was not just a humanist by conviction, he practised it also.  Neither was Justin lacking in the moral courage necessary, right up to the end of his life, to confront with logic and humanity the impunity sought by institutions that placed themselves above and beyond both law and human reason. His was a life rich in the integration of science, nature and society, delivered within a socialist vision that he saw as both essential and adaptable to change.

It was a life of chosen difficulty but its results will endure as part of our shared consciousness, comradely friendship and commitment to continue- that is a promise for which Justin would wish.

Go mairidh a spirorad lámhach I measc lochra na nGael.