Eddie Barrett, who has died aged 68, was a versatile journalist whose interest in industrial relations brought him to the fore in Britain as communications officer for the Transport and General Workers' Union. In Ireland he was best known as a reporter for the new national TV station Teilifís Éireann, having joined The Irish Times in 1965.
On the station’s opening night in 1961, president Éamon de Valera had spoken of his fears about television’s “immense powers”. Barely a decade later, relations between politicians and broadcasters were fraught. Northern Ireland was plunged into violence and chaos. Barrett and a camera crew were on the receiving end of water cannon in Derry in 1972 on what we now know as Bloody Sunday.
In Dublin, a government order meant that Sinn Féin members could not be interviewed. Station managers interpreted this as extending to reporting of court evidence given by Sinn Féin members. Barrett, a National Union of Journalists activist, challenged his managers’ interpretation of the law, and eventually won the argument insofar as court reporting was concerned. The broadcasting ban would remain in place until 1994, when the then Minister for Arts and Culture Michael D Higgins declined to renew it.
Elected
But before that, Barrett had played a major role in building up the broadcasting branch of the NUJ in Montrose and in recruiting for the wider union. People responded to his open warm personality, and joined in droves. Barrett was the very antithesis of the identikit trade union official, grey, dour be-suited, speaking the language of procedure, mandates and disputes. “You weren’t going to be bored if Eddie was around,” a colleague noted.
In 1980 he was elected to represent Irish journalists on the union’s national executive in London, the first broadcaster to do so, and became president of the union in 1982. Around then he parted from his wife Geraldine (nee Bolger), with whom he had two sons, David and Stephen, and he remained in London, working as a freelance broadcaster for Thames Television and LBC, a London radio station.
In 1987 he became communications officer at the Transport and General Workers’ Union, then a major force in British public life and politics. “He loved the work: he was doing something he believed in with all his heart, and he knew he was good at it,” said his fellow journalist and friend Francis Beckett. He got on well with general secretary Ron Todd. When Todd retired in 1992, Barrett decided to move on, working as a freelance union official and doing some journalism. He and Todd had another link, both had their homes in the London suburb of Walthamstow, where many on the radical left had gathered. Barrett and his partner, fellow journalist and union activist Kate Hodges, lived there until her early death in 2008, and he stayed on until his death last month.
Edmond William Barrett, always known as Eddie, was born in Waterford,* son of Ted Barrett, who worked for the Irish Deaf Society and Myra Young. The family, Eddie and his twin John, and their brother Brendan, lived in the Dublin suburb of Kilmacud. A neighbour Michael McInerney, veteran political correspondent of The Irish Times, influenced the boy to take up journalism.
Boyish charm
Barrett attended Marian College in Dublin and studied journalism, joining
The Irish Times
in 1965. A colleague, Mary Maher, remarked on his boyish charm and energy then, and these attributes remained with him throughout his life, though his later years were dogged by ill-health and hip problems. Unusually for a journalist he had a “full suite” of skills, broadcast, print and public relations.The National Union of Journalists recognised his contribution by making him a member of honour in 2014 at a ceremony in the GPO in Dublin.
He is survived by his brothers John and Brendan, his sons David and Stephen, and seven grandchildren.
* This article was edited on February 13th, 2017