I first encountered Derry Kelleher in the mid-60s when we were both involved in a small lobbying group which used to meet in Clyde Road at the Institution of Engineers of Ireland for the purpose of trying to develop some sort of consensus among voluntary organisations of scientists and engineers in response to the 1964 OECD Report "Science and Irish Economic Development". This report, by Patrick Lynch and Dusty Miller, had exposed the need for some recognition on the part of the State that science was important.
The State response to the report gave rise to the National Science Council, which was set up in 1970, and to the Regional Technical Colleges. In our lobby-group, which was called the Council for Science and Technology in Ireland, we had our meetings, and we made our submissions; it is possible they may have had some small impact. Derry was representing the Irish branch of the Institution of Chemical Engineers, and I was acting for the Irish branch of the Institute of Physics.
In the aftermath of these meetings Derry and I soon found out that we had been living in parallel universes but evolving into remarkably similar political orientations, which might be summed up as to salvage the basic enlightenment secular republican democratic tradition from the various overlays of Catholic nationalism, Fenian conspiracism and quasi-Stalinist centralism which have infested it. I have lifted the foregoing and the following quotes from the introduction to my reviews of his two legacy books, Irish Republicanism: the Authentic Perspective and Buried Alive In Ireland: A Story Of A Twentieth Century Inquisition, in the October issue of Books Ireland.
"Both of us have also swum against the tide of emigration, in our separate ways, each on two or more occasions. We both had a hand in the 1960s (post-Wolfe Tone 1963 Bicentenary) attempt to politicise the republican movement, helping it to focus on the need to achieve civil rights in Northern Ireland, within which context an open political movement for an all-Ireland Republic, conceived as a welcoming environment for the Protestant sector of the working people, might begin to become politically feasible."
The full story of this attempt has yet to be told; Derry has made his contribution and I am in process of making mine. In the current post September 11th context it is perhaps all the more important to expose the essentially inhuman and counterproductive nature of terrorist bombing campaigns, and counterpose the "peace with justice" aspiration which held sway up to August 1969, when the B-Specials re-introduced the gun (as indeed their predecessors had done at Larne in April 1914), and provoked many misguided people to respond by supporting Seβn Mac Stiofβin and his Provisional bombing campaign.
Subsequent to the Aldershot bombing, which was the equally misguided and totally counterproductive response of some leading erstwhile "republican politicisers" to Bloody Sunday, Derry continued to swim against the tide within the movement, heroically, for some years, longer than I did, but in the end he dropped out, devoting his time to local political issues in Greystones, and to publishing and selling his pamphlets and books.
During all this activity he just about managed to keep his head above water professionally as a chemical engineer, working for Gouldings, Asahi and various consulting engineering firms, though without the continuity of effort that would have enabled him to prosper. His experience in the oil and sugar industries abroad, for him, never paid off; he ran into political barriers. It is difficult to combine being an egregious political visionary with career progression in the conventional sense. His career, as outlined in Buried Alive, illustrates this, but at the same time shows courage and dedication, and he did gain the respect of his engineering colleagues.
The Irish branch of the Institute of Chemical Engineers, which he founded in the 60s, evolved into the Chemical and Process Engineering Division of the Institution of Engineers of Ireland, and Derry deserves to be remembered within the profession among its active pioneers in Ireland. An engineer he exuded technical competence. Some thought it strange that he as a republican sought to organise chemical engineers through the London-based institute, but he always countered this by stressing the all-Ireland nature of the Irish branch.
The present writer found himself in a similar position with regard to the Institute of Physics. We shared a sense of the importance of all-Ireland organisation within the global scientific network. All-Ireland Home Rule, had it been allowed to develop without partition, could, perhaps, have evolved into the inclusive secular republic as envisioned by Wolfe Tone, to which Derry and the present writer aspired.
R.H.W.J.