Veteran trade unionist Mick O'Reilly writes for Culture about his new memoir, From Lucifer to Lazarus, and 'writing the story of my times, as I saw them'.
'You’re never a union man, no matter how you try, if you always talk in terms of ‘I’.’
I gave an initial draft of what would become From Lucifer to Lazarus to my fellow activists Sam Nolan and Helena Sheen to read. I was nervous about how they’d respond to it, especially with Helena: she is one of those people you can count on to be frank. So when she remarked that the book was a ‘We’ book, not an ‘I’ book, I was delighted. We’ve suffered enough from egos in the Trade Union Movement and I didn’t want mine to be one of them!
In reality, From Lucifer to Lazarus has been a ‘We’ book from the beginning. Its journey began in 2008 with a phone call from Francy Devine of the Irish Labour History Society. It’s customary to do an interview for the Labour History Magazine when you retire from the Trade Union, so the request was nothing out of the ordinary. The twist came when Francy stopped the interview and told me to go and produce a pamphlet of my account of my involvement in the Trade Union Movement instead. I went on to get in touch with a man called Aindrias Ó Cathasaigh, a historian who has done a lot of research on James Connolly. For about two years we met once a week and he would pose me the odd question while I worked on gathering the materials I needed to bring my account to life. I am more of an orator than a writer, so I found it more natural to record my recollections on a Dictaphone, rather than write them in a solitary fashion.
One of my central aims in writing this memoir was to capture and give voice to the collective consciousness of the time that is often overlooked in the media, and this makes the book a ‘We’ project, too. When I listened to reports on the radio and online I was (and still am) convinced that it was the Irish middle class that enjoyed the most attention: rarely did you hear working-class voices. And so, without fully realising it, my goal became the representation of those voices through writing about my comrades in the Trade Union Movement, the Communist Movement and the Left. I wanted to give them a voice, give myself a voice, and to try to explain that time in my life -- the sixties and seventies and after -- to myself, to my grandchildren and to those who had worked with me. In other words, the memoir I was writing was one that told not just my own story, but the story of my times, as I saw them.
There is a catch to writing a ‘We’ book, though. When you’re recording an event – like, for example, my and Eugene McGlone’s dismissal from the Union – you have to remember that these things have been seen through so many pairs of eyes and that it’s impossible to give one ‘true’ version of events. All you can do is be honest about your own experiences and say what you have to say. This is where the reader comes in – the final group in this collective project. Once the book is in their hands, it’s up to them to draw their own conclusions – and they’ll make of it what they will.
From Lucifer to Lazarus
