C.S. Andrews - Man of No Property

C.S. ANDREWS

Todd Andrews was, like many of his generation, a visionary. To me he was a giant in both a physical and a spiritual sense. He genuinely sought nothing for himself and believed passionately in the development of the public service and in the natural resources of a country with little else apart from its people. My fathers Ireland had no material wealth to offer its citizens. His generation was determined to prove we could govern ourselves, and he and his contemporaries built the foundations on which we now prosper.

He was anti-clerical, having been excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church during the Civil War and, as he often said, was never asked back. My mother was a committed Roman Catholic (Devotions, Rosary, First Fridays etc.). There was conflict when he sometimes pleaded tiredness when we all gathered to say the Rosary. If he needed to curry favour with Mother he would join in, but inevitably fell asleep halfway through. I remember being out walking with him and one of his friends when I blessed myself passing the priests house. I got a clout on the back of the head. You dont have to bless yourself passing that ould fellas house or salute him either.

One of his oldest friends was Ewart Wilson, who would arrive halfway through Sunday dinner to be confronted by four boys and a girl involved in a rowdy debate about the political issues of the day. Ewart was conservative and gentle and it would not be long before he took his leave of my mother and fled.

At election time, it was my mother who mobilized us to lick envelopes, put up posters and hand out leaflets, but my father was the ideologue. He was often critical of Fianna Fil ministers but I never recall any criticism of Eamon de Valera.

Like most public servants, my father was genuinely a man of no property. He never sought grand things. He was a prodigious reader and was proud of his personal collections of books. He also had quite a collection of paintings. He would buy a picture because he liked it (and the artist) never because of its value. He adored the theatre and he admired the talented actors of his day. He considered films a cultural low in the world of the arts.

My father would never allow anyone to travel in the Bord na Mona or CIE-supplied car unless he was in it. There was no question of my mother shopping with the car or of any of the family being driven to school. He insisted that the company car belonged to the state and was purely for his use.

In his retirement he had more time to focus on the conflict in the North. His views were those of a republican egalitarian of the school of Wolfe Tone and I suppose we were all affected by that. He referred to the Northern Secretary as the pro-consul. He had no time for the historical revisionists and could hardly bring himself to mention the name of Conor Cruise OBrien, who, he often said, would be happy to sit in the British House of Lords.

The late John Kelly once referred to him, much to his delight, as a savage old hill-billy. Maybe he was. To me he was an icon and a very good father. Savage or not, I admired and loved him.

NIALL ANDREWS, MEP