BOOKSHELF A Tuam-born radical who lived out his ideas

I WILL ARISE AND GO NOW By Patrick McGrath Published in Nelson, NZ A COUPLE of weekends ago, a conference in Tuam heard lectures on many aspects of the Irish emigrant experience. The title was The Irish-American Link, so it is hardly surprising that the content was devoted mainly to transatlantic emigration. It's a truism to say that the Irish have spread themselves to the four corners of the world â€â€ more thickly in some areas than others. England and the USA were the prime destinations, but Australia has a huge percentage of Irish descent among its population, not to mention the thousands of young people who are working there at present. Less often mentioned is New Zealand. Even further away than Australia, it must have seemed an ocean too far for many. But we do have our quota there, and prominent among them is a Tuam man, Patrick McGrath, who has just published an account of his life in Tuam, England and New Zealand. Patrick was born in Tuam in May, 1934, the fifth of a family of 11. His father, Willie, but known to my father and therefore to me as Bill, was very well known in the town: having started work in Cloran's of Shop Street, and later a hackney driver, he spent a lot of his working life in charge of the petrol pumps at the Abbey Service Garage, later Smiths, and now the Corrib Oil station beside the railway gates. I remember him well, and in particular walking home from school with the late John Kemple, who, like Bill, seemed to know everybody. I can still hear John's cheery greeting, 'Hello Mr McGrath, how's it going?' as I realise with slight disbelief that I am reviewing a book by Bill's son who is approaching his 80th year. Patrick McGrath has structured this book as a chronological account of his life, from childhood during the deprived years of the 1930s and 40s through life in England in the 1950s and finally emigration to the Land of the Long White Cloud in 1963. So far, so straightforward â€â€ but woven into those years is a career that spanned washing returned bottles in Egan's Mineral Water Company beside the Railway Station, a year as a novice Christian Brother, time working as an artist's model in Birmingham and London, and then another career of teaching, gardening and political activism in New Zealand. The first third or so of the book is devoted to his childhood and youth in Ireland, much of which would already be familiar to people of his generation. But younger Irish people will be astounded by the poverty he describes in the most matter of fact way, and the sometimes brutal treatment meted out by teachers, in particular the hated Brother Vaughan at Tuam CBS. He writes about going hunting rabbits in the fields around the town with his brother Michael (the only one of the 11 to live in Tuam now), and the tramps and eccentrics they encountered. One of his contemporaries was Tom Murphy, the playwright, and Patrick recounts how Tom used his fine voice and knowledge of all the pop songs of the day to further their acquaintance with girls. His year in the monastery was benign, compared to school, but at the end of it he and the superior mutually agreed that Patrick did not have a vocation. He emigrated to Birmingham in 1952 and worked for a while with the Corporation. When he was offered a job as a model in the local art college he jumped at it, and took the opportunity to begin his arts and crafts education, which ended with a teacher training certificate. This continued over the years, during which he regularly lunched with the poet Louis McNeice, and met the artists Francis Bacon and Augustus John. A trip to Spain during a college summer holiday transformed his life. After weeks of sun, interesting food, wine, and a vibrant culture, he made up his mind that 'there was no way I could continue to live in the UK with its grey people and miserable climate. Ireland was not an option either ... My future would be in a sunny clime ...' It took a few more years, during which he married his wife Patsy Brown, an Englishwoman from Hastings, and even visited Iceland at a time when few went there who did not need to go, but eventually the sunny clime was attained. This was in 1962-3, when Australia and New Zealand were still granting assisted passage for £10 to suitable immigrants. The McGraths and some idealistic friends planned to set up a commune, far from the threat of the nuclear war many expected would break out in that decade. They also wanted to get as far as possible from the capitalist system, and they have managed to live their lives without borrowing money. They eschewed the £10 passage and made their own way, which gave them the freedom to settle wherever they wanted in New Zealand. Patrick had admired New Zealand for its progressive social policies which dated back to the 1930s. The commune never materialised, for various reasons, but the McGraths settled in a rural area outside the city of Nelson, and embarked on a life that seems to have been idyllic. While both Patrick and Patsy earned their living as teachers, they lived a life close to what it might have been were they in a commune. They built their own house from local wood, planted woods and an orchard and grew vegetables. At one stage they had a flock of 70 sheep, included in a land deal with David and Linda Menely, who just happen to be the parents of the rock star Courtney Love, widow of Kurt Cobain. Courtney spent her youth in the Nelson area. Their political activism included involvement in the foundation of the Values Party, possibly the world's first green party. They both stood, unsuccessfully, for Parliament but gained much useful publicity for green views, which were new then but have now been accepted by the mainstream. They were instrumental in having the New Zealand electoral system changed from the unfair first past the post system to one based on the German MMP â€â€ Mixed Member Proportional â€â€ which has allowed access to minority parties, including a Maori party. The McGraths also founded a charity which has had considerable success helping poor people in Bali to better themselves. Interspersed in this biography are contributions from other family members on both the McGrath and Brown sides. In one way it falls between the stools of a private family history, a memoir and an emigration saga, but mostly it is an absorbing account of a life less ordinary. Patrick McGrath is that rare being, an Irish radical who lived out his ideas, rather than confining them to the pub. He wants his epitaph to read 'Here lies a man who never entered McDonald's'.