If it is a virtue to hold fast to one’s opinions and beliefs, come what may, it is not one that endeared itself to Justin Keating. “It is a point of honour,” he says, “not to remain ‘true to my beliefs’. On the contrary: the honour lies – if you show me better – in changing.”
That he remained willing to change is clear from this illuminating chronicle of a singular and fulfilling life. Barbara Hussey edited these extracts from her husband’s notebooks with the astute collaboration of Anna Kealy. Together they have succeeded, as John Boorman writes in his affectionate preface, in giving Justin a voice beyond the grave. He wrote the notes in the three years before he died, at the end of 2009, so they are retrospective rather than contemporaneous to any of the events recounted. They are reflections on the people, places, events and ideas in a long life – as a political activist and Labour politician, vet, academic, farmer, scientist, journalist and innovative broadcaster, feminist and loving family man.
Justin was the younger son of the renowned painter Seán Keating and the political activist May Keating. He spent his early childhood in Killakee, at the edge of the Featherbeds, in Co Wicklow, before the family moved down the mountain to Ballyboden, near Rathfarnham in Dublin.
The Keatings declined an offer of a free education at Clongowes Wood College for Justin and his brother, Michael. May in particular was suspicious of the Catholic Church to the point of hostility. It was an attitude Justin shared. “I am a relentless humanist,” he declares in one of his final entries, “though I do not think God important enough to define myself by denying his existence.”
The exuberant certainties of youth often fade, if not to cynicism then surely to nuance, and to a willingness to entertain doubt. For Keating, reading Marx, Engels and Lenin as a teenager generated excitement, but doubts soon emerged. He retained a respect for Marx’s insights, one that surely would have been confirmed had he lived to see the full impact of the global financial crisis.
On the potential for social and economic change, he believes in “small, attainable steps. Real gains are slow and difficult, not the least bit dramatic.”
His philosophy is social democratic, focusing on two principal questions: how to achieve greater equality, and how to manage the environmental crisis. He favours co-operation with green parties but believes that theirs is “half the broader ‘progressive’ issue”.
Oratorical brilliance
Keating founded the Rathfarnham branch of the Labour Party in 1946. He was an effective minister for industry and commerce in the 1970s, and a veteran of the fierce coalition debates of that period. At the 1973 conference his oratorical brilliance was decisive, even if he felt oddly regretful and “miserable” about it. It made him think he had made a mistake by going into politics.
There is much commentary on Irish and world affairs, plus an account (disappointingly short) of the oil and gas terms established as minister and of the Tara mines controversy. There are observations on bisexuality (it’s okay), renewable energy (the future depends on it), Seanad Éireann (it should be abolished), the Irish nation (no such thing), Europe (he is a federalist) and Zionism (a travesty).
And there are views on colleagues: Brendan Corish was “an utterly incorruptible and wonderful man”; Conor Cruise O’Brien was “the best talker and the worst listener I have ever met”. He is far from uncritical of Noël Browne but loves and respects his memory. “Of all the people I have ever been close to, he had the greatest sense of the injustice of the world, and of anger against that injustice and inequality.”
Many of Keating’s insights have a contemporary resonance: “You may do vastly subtle and complex things (politicians do, all the time) but never let it show.” His advice when communicating is to keep it simple.
Love of the land, a "basic feeling for the earth" that is traced to early years in Killakee, is the backdrop to at least three professional and vocational pursuits: veterinary science, agricultural journalism and livestock farming. With Joe Murray and others he was behind the success of Telefís Feirme, an early innovation of RTÉ television. A lambing demonstration using a foam lamb was surely a first on live TV. Justin was a brilliant communicator, and the camera loved him.
Love is an enduring theme: a youthful marriage to Loretta Wine, with whom he had three children, and later to Barbara, with whom he shared 17 years – “the most calm and serene happy time I have known”.
This is an engrossing volume of reflections and insights from a remarkable, complex and essentially optimistic man.
Alex White is a former Labour senator, TD and, from 2014 to 2016, minister for communications, energy and natural resources
