McGrady, Eddie (Edward Kevin)

by Patrick Maume

McGrady, Eddie (Edward Kevin) (1935–2013), activist and politician, was born on 3 June 1935 in Downpatrick, Co. Down, one of eleven children (nine sons and two daughters) of Michael McGrady, a merchant tailor, and his wife Lilian (née McGrath), originally from Fermoy, Co. Cork. The family was prominent in Downpatrick Urban District Council (one of the few nationalist-run Northern Irish local authorities) since McGrady's uncle (also E. K. McGrady) became a town commissioner in 1925. Young Eddie was educated at St Patrick's Grammar School, Downpatrick (built on land supplied by his family), and then trained as an accountant at Belfast Technical College while apprenticed to the practice and insurance brokerage established by his elder brother Malachy, in which Eddie became a partner (retiring 1989). Malachy McGrady (1926–2017) served on several public bodies including the supervisory board of the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast, and chaired the Northern Ireland Central Council for Health and Social Services. He was vice-chairman of the Eastern Health Board but resigned in 1982 after being passed over for the chair.

Eddie McGrady entered politics in 1961 when elected to Downpatrick UDC, which he later chaired (1964–73). Since there was no nationalist organisation other than temporary election-time groups, he described himself as an 'independent nationalist'. On its formation in 1963, he joined the National Democratic Party (NDP) and became vice-chairman of its executive. In the 1969 Stormont election he was NDP candidate for East Down, opposing Brian Faulkner (qv) and polling forty-two per cent of votes. During minor rioting in Downpatrick in 1969, McGrady led a cross-community group of councillors and clerics to pacify the situation. He ascribed the relative peace of Downpatrick-Lecale in the early Troubles to the council's economic record and relatively good local community relations (it operated a housing points system from 1961 and had cleared its housing list by 1968). As the Troubles developed, however, Downpatrick and other towns and villages of south and east Down experienced republican and loyalist paramilitary violence; McGrady and his family faced threats and intimidation. After Downpatrick UDC was subsumed into Down District Council, McGrady served on the new body until 1989; he was chair in 1975 and on three subsequent occasions, and vice-chair between 1974 and 1976 (alternating with a UUP councillor). Maurice Hayes (Downpatrick town clerk, later a prominent civil servant) described McGrady as the most effective chairman he ever encountered.

On the formation of the SDLP in August 1970 the NDP merged into the new party. McGrady became founding SDLP chairman (1971–3). In 1973 he was elected to the new Northern Ireland Assembly, and chaired the SDLP parliamentary group until the executive was formed, when he was replaced by Paddy O'Hanlon (qv). He participated in negotiating the 1973 Sunningdale agreement, particularly its financial provisions, and claimed that the executive's economic programme reflected SDLP policy. He became a non-voting executive member, responsible for planning and co-ordination. The civil servant Kenneth Bloomfield recalled this as an impossible position, since full members of the executive resisted ceding departmental authority to McGrady. Faulkner, however, stated that McGrady's mediation helped resolve tensions between unionist and nationalist executive members.

Shocked by the downfall of the executive after the Ulster Workers' Council strike of May 1974, McGrady claimed it had been 'working all too well for some vested interests' (the Provisional IRA and anti-Sunningdale unionists), that popular unionist opposition was directed at the Council of Ireland rather than the executive, and the strike only succeeded because of 'inept handling of events by the then Labour Government' (Fermanagh Herald, 25 August 1990). He concluded the 'shameful and treasonable' strike showed the necessity of a formal role for the Irish government as guarantor of nationalists' rights, and within days of the debacle called for British withdrawal within five years.

The stresses faced by McGrady were exacerbated by (successful) radiotherapy for cancer (1973–5). (He was also a diabetic and had hearing difficulties.) A family member and several friends developed leukaemia, which McGrady attributed to radiation released in the October 1957 fire at Windscale (later Sellafield) nuclear reprocessing plant in Cumbria. Throughout his career he advocated closing Sellafield, and publicised official cover-ups of radioactive discharges into the Irish Sea.

After the collapse of the executive, McGrady became SDLP treasurer. Elected to the abortive 1974–5 Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention, he endorsed the 1976 Peace People campaign and denounced the introduction to Northern Ireland of the SAS, describing them as 'thugs in uniform responsible to no-one' (Ir. Times, 10 January 1976). He was a member of the Northern Ireland Housing Council and the board of the Northern Ireland Housing Initiative.

McGrady promoted Down District Council and other councils where offices were shared between nationalists and unionists as models for a power-sharing Northern Ireland Assembly. He opposed any pacts with Sinn Féin after it entered local government in the early 1980s, and believed the SDLP should have stood against Bobby Sands (qv) in the 1981 Fermanagh-South Tyrone by-election. Accusing the unionist-dominated Association of Local Authorities of sidelining SDLP councillors, he argued that unionist-majority councils' refusal to share power with nationalists indicated it was unsafe to extend the powers of local government without an overall settlement; councils should never regain the fuller powers abused under Stormont.

In 1979 he contested the South Down Westminster constituency, but was defeated by Enoch Powell of the UUP. In 1982 McGrady was elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly established by Northern Ireland secretary of state James Prior; the SDLP did not take their seats, a policy McGrady supported after initial reluctance. The Assembly was dissolved in 1986.

SDLP representative at the 1983–4 New Ireland Forum, McGrady was regarded as the third most senior party member (behind John Hume and Seamus Mallon) but privately complained Hume did not brief him on the negotiations leading to the Anglo-Irish agreement (1985). He was enthusiastic about the agreement, and spoke of leaving politics if it was not ratified. All fifteen unionist Westminster MPs resigned in protest against the Anglo-Irish agreement, contesting the resulting by-elections (23 January 1986). In South Down, Powell slightly increased his majority in the absence of a DUP candidate while Sinn Féin split the nationalist vote. After intense SDLP reorganisation, McGrady captured the seat at the general election of 11 June 1987, declaring this 'moved the Border from Carlingford to Strangford Lough' (Belfast Telegraph, 14 August 1987). He emphasised local issues, criticising Powell's opposition to the European Community (and neglect of EEC concessions beneficial to local farmers) and his failure to address rising local unemployment, sectarian attacks on local catholics and the threatened closure of Downe Hospital in Downpatrick. He later said that if he had been defeated he would not have stood again.

McGrady became chief whip of the SDLP MPs, as well as party spokesman for health and social services, employment, local government, the economy, the environment and housing. He opposed privatisation of Northern Ireland Electricity and Belfast Port. Strongly lobbying for local causes, he increased his majority at the 1992 election. He worked with Northern Ireland Office minister Richard Needham to develop new roads, promote tourism and encourage economic development by twinning Downpatrick with Chicago, and in 1991 joined Secretary of State Peter Brooke on a US tour to attract investment. Needham found McGrady 'a solid, sober man in whom burns a real determination to see an end to the Troubles', resembling 'a well-to-do Bavarian businessman' (Needham, 241). McGrady was strongly committed to the fishing ports in his constituency and called for restrictions on submarines in the Irish sea after collisions with trawlers. An active chairman of the revitalised Down County Museum (in Downpatrick), he encouraged development of a large St Patrick Heritage Centre.

His attendance at Westminster was intermittent, partly because of SDLP emphasis on Anglo-Irish and international negotiating fora, but also because his wife suffered chronic ill-health. SDLP MPs tended to operate as local 'chieftains' with little co-ordination; however, during the finely-balanced 1992–7 parliament McGrady's role as chief whip assumed some importance.

McGrady joined unionist MPs in opposing extension of the 1967 Abortion Act to Northern Ireland. A pious catholic, he was a member of the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association and of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre, a catholic chivalric order. Harold Miller, Church of Ireland bishop of Down, recalled him as 'a man of faith, committed to understanding across the churches' (Belfast Newsletter, 13 November 2013). His hobbies included choral music. He loved Down GAA, particularly the hurling team (four of his wife's uncles were county players in the 1940s) and became president of St Patrick's GAC, Saul.

He publicly expressed concern over Hume's clandestine talks with Sinn Féin from 1988 (he had not been consulted). He would have preferred SDLP–UUP talks, and criticised unionists for negotiating with the secretary of state but not the SDLP. Strongly opposed to paramilitary violence, he called on nationalists to give information to the RUC to prevent attacks, for which he was condemned by Sinn Féin. He also demanded that the UDR be confined to barracks until leakage of documents to loyalist paramilitaries was investigated, and he wanted the Irish government to use the Anglo-Irish agreement to demand a thorough investigation of allegations that the former senior policeman John Stalker had been unjustly suspended after discovering a shoot-to-kill policy.

McGrady supported the 1997 presidential candidacy of Mary McAleese, and defended her against accusations of being a Sinn Féin supporter; she had assisted him in the 1997 Westminster general election. This was the last Westminster election in which the UUP were McGrady's principal opponents; boundary changes and increasing Sinn Féin support meant the contest was between the SDLP (assisted by unionist tactical voters) and Sinn Féin.

Involved in the negotiations that shaped the 1990s peace process, he was elected in 1998 to the Northern Ireland Assembly established under the Good Friday agreement. He served as SDLP chief whip (1998–2002), but stood down at the 2003 election for personal reasons. He would have liked to be a minister (preferably for finance) in the new Northern Ireland executive, and resented being passed over.

A member of the Northern Ireland Policing Board (2001–5), he insisted on full implementation of the Patten Commission recommendations on police reform. He criticised republican vigilantism under the cover of Sinn Féin-sponsored restorative justice schemes, but also demanded investigations of illegal killings by state forces. In January 2005, after a large-scale bank robbery attributed to the IRA, he suggested the SDLP might join the DUP in an executive excluding Sinn Féin.

McGrady intended to retire at the 2005 Westminster election but was persuaded to defend the seat against Sinn Féin; two senior Fianna Fáil ministers campaigned for him, and he increased his majority. After serving as party chairman (2007–9), he left Westminster at the 2010 election. His successor Margaret Ritchie (MP 2010–17, SDLP leader 2010–11) was his former parliamentary assistant. He chaired the SDLP Lecale branch until his death.

He died on 11 November 2013 in Downe Hospital, Downpatrick, of pancreatic cancer, which he had suffered since 2011. In 1959 he married Patricia Swail (d. 2003); they had two sons and a daughter. His niece Fionnuala McGrady, a solicitor, was a member of the Independent Commission for Police Complaints.

McGrady was widely respected even by opponents as a plain-spoken man committed to the wellbeing of all the people of Down. His managerial skills were denied a wider stage, and he is often regarded as a local old-style conservative nationalist chieftain overshadowed by Hume. (Although McGrady called himself a socialist, he defined this as neighbourliness and fairness.) His strong denunciations of Sinn Féin and paramilitary violence, and belief that peace required mutual recognition by both communities, can obscure the fact that he was a committed nationalist with bitter memories of the Stormont era who believed that unionists required intergovernmental prodding to make them see sense, and that a united Ireland by agreement was the only long-term solution.