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Personal Account #3984

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Joe #3984

I knocked on the door of the leading WP activist in Kilbarrack on a weekday night some time in possibly late 1985. I was welcomed in to the kitchen table where a meeting of the Kilbarrack East branch was about to start. I was welcomed to the meeting briefly and then the leading activist proceeded to tell me, in front of the other four or five members present, that this branch did not support Pat McCartan being the Dáil candidate for the constituency. And further that the majority of the members and of the branches in the constituency did not support him being the candidate either. That piece of fundamental business being done, the meeting went on with reading of minutes of last meeting, discussion, talk about arrangements for paper sales.

In the following years I lived and learned how this issue, McCartan’s candidacy or not, took up at least as much time and energy as any other matter in the political life and activity of the Dublin Nth East constituency WP as anything else.