Austin Currie
Born: October 11th, 1939
Died: November 9th, 2021
Austin Currie devoted his life to serving the Irish people and achieved the rare distinction of making a significant political impact on both sides of the border. In the course of a long and varied career in public life he was an early leader of the civil rights movement in the North before going on to become one of the founders of the SDLP, and a Minister in the first powersharing executive. In the Republic he served as a Fine Gael Minister and was the party’s presidential candidate in 1990.
Currie’s personal courage was his striking characteristic in the various roles he occupied. His life was in constant danger during his time in Northern politics but he never shirked standing up to the institutions of the sectarian Northern state, or later to intimidation by loyalist paramilitaries and the Provisional IRA.
While his role in the Republic was not as physically dangerous, he also showed great political courage and fortitude when, out of loyalty to his party and its leader Alan Dukes, he agreed to run as a presidential candidate when he knew from private polling that he stood no chance of being elected.
Born in Coalisland, Co Tyrone, in 1939 Currie went to secondary school at St Patrick’s Academy in Dungannon. Like many educated Northern Catholics of his generation, he benefited from the British free, third-level education system and went on to study at Queen’s University in Belfast, where he graduated with a BA degree.
Following graduation he became active in the Nationalist Party, and was selected to run as the party candidate in a byelection in East Tyrone in 1964. He was elected to the Stormont Parliament where, at the age of 24, he was the youngest member. He was returned again in 1965 and 1969.
He came to national prominence four years later when he was one of a group of protestors who occupied a house at Caledon that had been allocated by the local council to a young unmarried woman, who was the secretary to a local Unionist politician. At the time there were 250 people on the housing waiting list, and many Catholic families were living in overcrowded conditions but all 14 houses in the new council development were allocated to Protestants.
From an early stage Currie had to deal with intimidation from paramilitary groups on both sides of the sectarian divide
Currie was the leading organiser of the first civil rights march in the North from Coalisland to Dungannon on August 24th, 1968, and he then became one of the most prominent campaigners in the movement for civil rights. He was inspired by the American civil rights movement for racial equality.
Frustrated by the slowness of the Nationalist Party to modernise and adapt to changing circumstances in 1970, he joined other leading opposition members of the Stormont Parliament, John Hume, Ivan Cooper, Gerry Fitt, Paddy Devlin and Paddy O’Hanlon to form the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP).
He was elected to the Northern Assembly in 1973 and the following year was appointed as Minister for Housing in Northern Ireland’s first and, sadly, short-lived powersharing executive. He subsequently served in the Assembly at all times arguing for a peaceful resolution of the North’s problems and strenuously opposing violence.
From an early stage Currie had to deal with intimidation from paramilitary groups on both sides of the sectarian divide. In 1972 his wife Anita was viciously assaulted at the family home in Dungannon by loyalist thugs. while he was away on a speaking engagement. He also drew the ire of the IRA for speaking out against violence and insisting that the SDLP should contest the Fermanagh Tyrone constituency in Westminster elections, regardless of whether that split the nationalist vote.
When the Northern Assembly was closed in 1986 and direct rule imposed from London, he saw little political future for himself in the North. He had won the respect and admiration of many of the leading political figures south of the border through his involvement in the New Ireland Forum in 1983 and following the abolition of the Assembly, he was offered a job as a special advisor to Ireland’s EU Commissioner Peter Sutherland.
In May 1989 Currie received a phone call from Garret FitsGerald inquiring if he would be interested in running as a Fine Gael candidate in the snap general election of 1989 in the Republic. His family, who had been living under police protection for years, urged him to accept on the basis that he could have a successful career in the Dáil and they could all live a more peaceful life in Dublin.
Currie accepted the invitation and the family moved to Lucan in the Dublin West constituency, where he was nominated to contest the election as a Fine Gael candidate. He was elected to the Dáil on that occasion and served as a TD until 2002.
He earned a great deal of respect inside and outside Fine Gael for the dignified way he conducted himself, in what he knew to be a hopeless cause
He was faced with a serious dilemma when he was barely over a year in the Dáil, and he was asked by party leader Alan Dukes to become the Fine Gael presidential election candidate, after both FitzGerald and Peter Barry had declined to run. Mary Robinson had already been campaigning for months and Fianna Fáil had nominated Brian Lenihan as its candidate.
Research conducted for the party by the polling company MRBI showed that Currie had no chance of winning. He was shown the research but Dukes pleaded with him to run anyway to avert a crisis in the party and he agreed. In the event the contest was won by Robinson and Currie finished in third place behind Lenihan, just as the research had predicted
However, he earned a great deal of respect inside and outside Fine Gael for the dignified way he conducted himself, in what he knew to be a hopeless cause. His political reward was his appointment as Minister of Sate at the Department’s of Health and Justice by John Bruton in the Rainbow Coalition government of 1994 to 1997.
He retained his seat in the 1997 general election but was one of a raft of Fine Gael TDs who lost out in the election disaster of 2002. He retired from politics at that stage and some years later wrote his autobiography All Hell Will Break Loose. His daughter Emer contested the 2020 general election in the same constituency and while she failed to be elected, won a seat in the Seanad.
Currie is survived by his wife Annita, children; Estelle, Caitríona, Dualta, Austin and Emer; their partners, and 13 grandchildren.