Edward Lawlor, the proverbial Irishman who came to London with a few pounds in his pocket and made a fortune, died on January 26th, 1999, aged 60, peacefully at home after a long fight with cancer.
Lawlor was born in 1938 in Tullow, Co. Carlow, in the southeast corner of the Irish Republic, the second eldest of 12 children. After local primary school, he went to Blackrock College, Dublin, and spent five years as a Junior Scholastic under the tuition of the Holy Ghost Fathers with the intention of studying for the priesthood. He realised he did not have a vocation and left Blackrock College after matriculation, though his parents were unable to afford to send him to University. After two years in a mundane job in his home town he emigrated to the UK in the Spring of 1959.
As a typical Irish immigrant of the '50s he arrived with literally £15 in his pocket and with no contacts and nowhere to stay. His first six months in England working as a labourer and living in a disused Nissan hut at Lakenheath in Suffolk, were to have a major impact on the future course of his life. Many of his fellow labourers were Irish, and like himself many had achieved a good education to Leaving Certificate, etc., but were unable to go on to higher education through lack of money and opportunity.
But unlike many of his contemporaries, he left labouring work behind in the Autumn of 1959, having saved several hundred pounds, and moved to London. While looking for accommodation in the Bayswater area he was struck by the number of advertisements in shop windows advertising accommodation with the caveat "No blacks or Irish". Having found himself accommodation with a Polish/Jewish emigrant family, he secured a job with Regent Oil (now Texaco), working in the Statistical Analysis department which suited his maths skills. He also joined London Irish Rugby Football Club, and as an ex-Blackrock man was given his first game for the Club within seven days of joining.
Within 12 months of joining Regent, he applied to train as a representative and in 1961 he became responsible for an area covering the East of London, his principal objective being to find new business and particularly new filling station sites. In three years in East London, he acquired many flagship sites which are still there today under the Texaco banner.
By 1964 he had met up with his first business partner and also his future wife Ginnie, and within the space of six months he had married and formed Lawbak Properties. By 1967 Lawbak had acquired a chain of 18 filling stations and Graylaw Group was formed. Between 1967 and 1972 Graylaw built the largest independent chain of filling stations in the UK, in all over 100.
Lawlor sold his shareholding to his partner and at the age of 34 found himself with his first £1 million but out of work. After a short and unsuccessful venture into a public limited company, he started on his own again and between 1974 and 1986 he developed Landware House into a substantial petrol filling station and property group. He also held a controlling stake in Yellow Advertiser Newspaper Group and Kelly's Kitchens, which he sold respectively to County Bank and Bass.
During this period he found that London Irish were in financial difficulties and he donated half a million pounds towards their recovery and rebuilding. In his lonely first months in London, back in 1959, the Club had been his second home, and he had found a practical way of repaying his debt. As a token of their appreciation, in the beginning of 1998, their centenary year, the Club named their main stand The Eddie Lawlor Stand.
His son's death in September 1986 had a traumatic effect on Eddie and his family, and when, within six months, he received a substantial offer for his company, he decided to devote the rest of his life to good causes; initially those to do with adolescent problems and drug abuse, but soon his attention focused on Ireland and Anglo-Irish relations.
He paid his first visit to Northern Ireland in 1987 as a guest of Co-Operation Ireland, and although he had lived in the Irish Republic for 21 years, nothing had prepared him for the depth of hatred and division between the two communities in the North. He spent two days among the Protestant community in the Shankill and Ravenhill districts and the Catholic communities in the Falls Road and Ardoyne areas and the poverty he saw in the Divis and Artillery flats and parts of the Shankill Road area made him realise that it was these workingclass people who were bearing the brunt of `the troubles' in Northern Ireland.
On his return home to England he finalised the aims and objectives of The Lawlor Foundation, having endowed it with £2.25 million, and included peace and reconciliation among its principal objectives. He also joined the board of Co-Operation Ireland, the non-political and non-denominational organisation involved in peace and reconciliation. Lawlor became Chairman of its fund-raising committee in the U.K. and to set an example to his fellow successful Irish businessmen in the U.K., he gave it an endowment of £350,000 and in the three years he chaired the U.K. fund-raising side he brought in over half a million pounds.
Lawlor now turned his thoughts to the Irish political scene, which achieved focus in early 1988 when he met John Hume. He supported the SDLP generously and enabled them to move into a renovated new headquarters building in Belfast.
By the Spring of 1991 Eddie Lawlor was devoting most of his time to working for peace in Northern Ireland, but in April he was diagnosed as having cancer. He underwent major surgery and a course of radiation and it was felt that the cancer had been eliminated so he returned to work at the end of 1991. He played a decisive role in the April 1992 General Election, pouring his time and energy into the battle for West Belfast where Dr Joe Hendron, the SDLP candidate, scored a remarkable victory over Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein candidate, by just 600 votes.
Though the cancer returned in late 1993, and further surgery and chemotherapy was necessary, Lawlor continued his charitable work. Even though he was now an adopted Englishman with his home there, he never lost interest in the Irish question and up to the day he died he was constantly on the phone cajoling others to `do better' and `go the extra mile'. He is survived by his wife and his two daughters, Kelly and Erin, and his grandchildren Joseph and Mila.
There will be a memorial service of thanksgiving at Brentwood Cathdral on Monday, March 8 that 12 noon.