Micheál Ó Loingsigh, who has died aged 82, was a printer who loved words, a nationalist who believed that the Constitution counted for more than the hasty preoccupations of temporary office-holders and a joyful celebrant of the rich heritage of Irish culture. He also consistently opposed Irish membership of the European Union.
When his railwayman father died, Micheál was just 10, and as the eldest boy he had to grow up fast. Apprenticed at the Kerryman newspaper in his home town of Tralee, his passions were printing, sprinting – he won a Munster running championship title – and Irish culture.
He also won a print union-sponsored place on a short course at Ruskin College, Oxford. This whetted his appetite for further education, and he became a full-time student at the London College of Printing, taking time out intermittently to work to raise funds, then resuming studies.
Having qualified as a master printer, he went to England for a while, then returned to Ireland in 1960, looking for work. He met again Eibhlín Casey, whom he had known in Kerry, and they married in 1962.
Drogheda Web Offset
He helped establish Drogheda Web Offset printers, which he ran until his retirement in the mid-1990s. During that period the company printed the
Sunday Business Post
, the
Sunday Tribune
and
An Phoblac
ht
.
His love of the Irish language blossomed as a young adult, expressing itself through membership of Conradh na Gaeilge. During the 1960s he was a member of the Wolfe Tone Society, which played an influential role in the formation of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association. He took part in the first civil rights march, from Coalisland to Dungannon, in August 1968 .
When Ireland’s membership of the EEC became a live issue he became chairman of the Common Market Defence Campaign, which sought a No vote in the May 1972 referendum. In that campaign he took part in many radio and TV debates dealing with the likely consequences of Ireland’s participation in the EEC, now the EU.
Subsequently he helped establish the Irish Sovereignty Movement, of which he was also chairman, campaigning against European integration and in defence of Irish neutrality during the 1970s and 1980s.
In 1986 he was a central figure in the campaign set up to help meet the expenses of the legal challenge by economist Raymond Crotty to ratification of the Single European Act treaty, which established the “internal market”.
When Crotty won his case and the Supreme Court ruled that a treaty which surrendered sovereignty must be approved by the people in a referendum. Ó Loingsigh led the ultimately unsuccessful Constitutional Rights Campaign on the No side in the resulting referendum. He also supported Green MEP Patricia McKenna’s challenge to using taxpayers’ money to obtain a Yes result in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty referendum on the euro currency. The Supreme Court ruled later that one-sided expenditure in a referendum was undemocratic and unconstitutional.
Term in Mountjoy
Micheál Ó Loingsigh was a committed Irish language supporter. In the 1970s he served some days in Mountjoy prison for his part in the TV licence boycott campaign against the failure to establish an Irish-language TV channel. He was also active in the Gaelscoil movement and helped establish Scoil Naithí in Ballinteer, Dublin. He brought up his children as Irish speakers. He was also a lifelong supporter of the John Mitchels GAA club in Tralee.
As he aged, his beard turned white and he came to resemble an Old Testament prophet. Printer Freddy Snowe recalls him delivering without notes a rousing graduation speech on the importance of their craft to a rapt audience of young printers.
The final decade of his life was spent in Tralee. He is survived by his wife, Eibhlín, his daughters, Siobhán (Mooney), Saibh, Muireann and Áine, sons Pádraig and Niall, his sister, Helen (O’Connor), and brothers Pat, Jack and Fred.