ANDREW BOYD:BARBARA GRAHAM's abiding memory of her father Andrew Boyd, who has died aged 90, was his great sense of fun, his endless supply of stories and his absolute "mistrust of dogmas because they can stop you thinking for yourself".
Andrew Boyd was a free-thinking, individualistic Northern Ireland socialist, trade unionist, writer, broadcaster and historian who, just as the Troubles were beginning, outlined how the sectarian divisions fuelling the conflict went back to the 19th century and beyond.
The most influential of his many books and pamphlets was his book, Holy War in Belfast, which chronicled the rise of Paisleyism and the many eruptions of serious communal violence in the city.
Its importance was acknowledged by the late Prof John Whyte. Previous histories, he wrote, were characterised by blandness with the sectarian riots barely mentioned.
"It was left for Andrew Boyd's Holy War in Belfastto bring these riots back into the consciousness of historians."
From a Protestant background in east Belfast, he was born in 1921, the son of a Boer War veteran. He worked as an engineer in the shipyards. By the late 1940s he had become increasingly active in left-wing politics. Moving to London he met the veteran communist and social agitator Wal Hannington, who became his political mentor and close friend.
He married Kathleen Kelly – a Catholic from the Falls Road – and the couple returned to Belfast in the early 1950s. They had four daughters – Barbara, Joan, Kate and Geraldine, with Barbara and Joan and Kate, for varying periods, following him into journalism. Geraldine is an academic in Italy.
In the 1960s he graduated from Queen's University Belfast, with an honours degree in economics. He was a regular contributor to the BBC and UTV, and several newspapers, including the Irish News, The Irish Times, the Daily Workerand Tribunemagazine.
He rejected unionist politics and was a committed socialist. At various times he had connections with the Civil Rights Movement, the SDLP, the Communist Party and other groupings.
He also had influential contacts in the British and Irish Labour parties. He wrote a biography of Jim Connell, the political activist from Co Meath who in 1889 wrote the socialist anthem, The Red Flag.
He was a friend of such individualistic figures as Peadar O’Donnell, John de Courcy Ireland and Dominic Behan and throughout his life carefully guarded his own independence, as critical of political unionism as he was of violent republicanism.
He accused the unionist party of maintaining power “by exploiting the ignorance and fears of the Protestants, thriving on recurring violence, the inflaming of hatreds and the continuance of divisions”.
He abhorred partition but said the IRA had decided “to kill thousands of decent, inoffensive people and innocent children, destroy commercial and private property to the value of billions of pounds, and incite the bloodlust of the most brutal loyalists”.
He worked as an education officer for the National Council of Labour Colleges and his favourite of his numerous publications was Fermenting Elements, a history of the Irish aspect of that trade union project.
He also lectured in journalism for a period and journalists who came under his tutelage such as former Irish Timesjournalists David McKittrick and Walter Ellis and the Press Association Ireland editor Deric Henderson remember him with appreciation.
Andrew Boyd: born March 28th, 1921; died July 5th, 2011