ALL the old comrades recall the good old days at the launch of an audiobook, A Tribute to Jim Kemmy, in Waterstone's this week. "In those days you'd wake up in the morning and wonder which demonstration is it today?" says Hugh Geraghty, of ICTU. He met Kemmy first "probably on some picket line".
Seamus Scally, former general secretary of the Labour Party, knew the Limerick man for 20 years "before he left the party to form the Democratic Socialist Party" and when he returned to "his real home in the end".
Niamh Bhreathnach, former minister for education, and her husband, Tom Ferris, are present too, adding a dash of romance to the nostalgic gathering. They whisper, starry-eyed, that they celebrated 30 years of marriage in December. They went to India and travelled south by train. Dr John de Courcy Ireland says Kemmy "was a top-notcher . . . He was a great influence on me and my family." Ruairi Quinn TD, leader of the Labour Party, launching the tape, recalls one funny story - how the great man from Garryowen who battled with the flab all his life took artificial sweeteners as a gesture towards healthy eating. One of Kemmy's sisters, Maureen McAteer, a poet and "the least known member of the family", has travelled from Gweedore in Co Donegal to attend. "He was just an extraordinary man who put people first," she says.