ATHY COUNCILLOR PADDY WRIGHT RIP | AN APPRECIATION

A true Sinn Féiner

BY FRANCIS CORR

Paddy Wright with Martin Kenny

IN THE early hours of Friday 7th January, Paddy Wright, urban councillor for 31 years, Kildare County Councillor for five, and Sinn Fein activist for over 50 years, died suddenly at the age of 72.
The town of Athy chilled with disbelief as word of Paddy Wright’s death seeped into its early morning consciousness.
‘Paddy Wright dead!’ Those words somehow felt counterintuitive. Had not everybody just seen him only yesterday or the day before in his usual vigorous fettle, bursting with bonhomie? They probably did.
Paddy was as much a part of the fabric of Athy as its Town Hall, squares or the Barrow River that flows through it. The rolling gait (the product of botched hip operations) the carefully-positioned newspaper, the wave and shout across the street at passers-by, or just sitting in his ‘constituency office’ by the window in Bradbury’s restaurant, Paddy was one of those reassuring constants that gave a sense of permanence to our town. Like many provincial towns, the Athy he was born into was a bustling centre of many trades. It was then making its first tentative steps to stretch beyond its core, but a large number of its inhabitants still lived over the shop or in the little homes that huddled up behind its main streets.
The horse and cart was still just about holding its own. Country people came in and ‘dealt’ in the many pub/groceries and there was an apparent permanence to the cast of familiars who acted out their daily routines in the theatre of its street and markets.
Reared in the heart of all this, in the Town Hall where his father was caretaker, the flame-haired youth quickly established himself as a town character.
Raucous, combative and notably strong, he developed into a superb athlete, pounding out the miles along the banks of the Barrow as a daily routine. He played Gaelic, first with Athy and then Castlemitchel, the club he would ever be associated with, gaining a place on the county team while still in his teens and playing in the 1957 senior league final.
Joining the Republican Movement at an early age added to his mystique. He was on the town most Saturday nights with his friend, and fellow Castlemitchel and Kildare county player, Mossy Reilly, selling The United Irishman. He attended many of the protest meetings of the 1950s and 1960s as well as engaging in other complementary functions.
A period of emigration followed when he worked in Birmingham, London (where he attended the famous Working Men’s College in Camden Town) and in Scotland erecting electrical pylons.
Back in Athy, Paddy worked on various building sites as a steel fixer, including the iconic Dominican Church, until eventually becoming the town’s last official gravedigger.
In the mid-1970s he led a successful campaign to get Mossy Riley elected as the first Sinn Féin member of the urban council since the 1920s. At the time, Mossy was an absentee from the town and the slogan used was “Put him in to get him back”. In the event, Mossy did not take his seat and Paddy ran successfully in the 1979 local elections. After the most recent local elections Paddy was very proud of the fact that he stormed in without the use of posters and that his total election expenses amounted to 67 cents per vote garnered. I had to remind him that during the ‘79 election he actually sold his election literature at 10p a leaflet, which must be unique in politics anywhere.
Everybody in Athy has a Paddy Wright story. My own favourite is about the short strike he led during the building of the Dominican Church when the lovely ladies who frequented the old Dublin Bar took time from out their profession to chant “communist!” at him for picketing consecrated ground. It has a delicious twist to it but not for this obituary. He loved the pubs and spread his custom wide but bemoaned the “decline of public bar repartee”, by which he meant slagging, an art at which, I know to my own cost, he was a master.
He was also capable of the most profound insights into the human condition. Once during the Hunger Strikes someone spoke to him about the great sacrifices the strikers were making dying for Ireland. I expected him to go into a rant, which he was fully capable of. But he just raised a silencing finger and simply said “No . . . No, they are not dying for Ireland. They have reached the highest state of comradeship possible; they are dying for each other.”
Apart from his family, Paddy had three passions in his life: Athy Town, football and Sinn Féin, and he remained constant to them all. He was a true Sinn Féiner. He believed in service to the people. He would be out in the early hours checking on paths and potholes or anti-social dumping. He was a constant warrior for the social needs of the poor and disadvantaged. Something that epitomised this commitment happened early last year. The council had reneged on its promise to remove grit from the footpaths and which was causing great difficulties for older people after last winter’s snows. But, while others slept, this 71-year-old man went out on a Sunday morning, with brush and shovel, to ensure that his promise to his elderly neighbours was kept.
He was a man who carried the full suite of social attributes. He was by turn combative, argumentative and aggressive, the characteristics that made him a great sportsman. He was also loyal, committed and honest, those that made him a formidable politician. He could also be hilariously funny, and equipped with a spellbinding smile, he could overwhelm you with charm. He was a man who loved words, the bigger the better. He was also an engaging storyteller and had no time at all for mindless chit-chat. ‘I have to go and meet a man’ was code for ‘this conversation is over’, and with a decisive abruptness he’d be gone. Somewhere in the depths of that Friday morning he went to ‘meet a man’ for the last time and left us with that customary abruptness. We might have expected no less. Athy is somehow incomplete without him. So let his epithet be his most repeated mantra; “I love this ould town.”
Paddy is survived by his sister Annie, brothers Noel, John and Brendan.
May God be good to his valiant soul.