25 years ago, 50,000 mourned Cork's Jack Lynch: and Old Ireland died too

It was said there were 50,000 Cork mourners on the streets of the city when Jack Lynch was laid to rest 25 years ago next week.

It was the best-attended funeral the city has ever known; will we ever see its like again?

A GAA legend who became twice Taoiseach, Lynch was given a State Funeral, attended by the great and good of Cork and of Ireland, who crammed into the Cathedral of St Mary and St Anne - where he had been baptised 82 years earlier.

Those hordes standing outside in rain, wind, and sun in silent tribute to him that day in October, 1999, may not have received an official invitation, but their presence said just as much about his legacy, if not more. They gave Lynch a farewell befitting a true man of the people.

As the heavens opened at one point, an elderly mourner remarked: “Happy is the coffin that the rain falls on.”

Another smiled as he pictured Lynch’s reunion with an old sporting friend. “Yerra, knowing Ringy, he’s probably telling him, ‘What took you so long, boy? We’re short of a good midfielder’.”

It’s an Irish tradition to never speak ill of the just-departed, but the best Lynch’s political critics could come up with upon his death was that he was too decent and honest for his own good. I’d take that ‘insult’ on my tombstone any day of the week.

Looking back 25 years on from that Saturday of the Jazz Weekend in 1999 when Cork paid homage, shops shut, and pubs fell silent, it is pertinent to point out that the funeral of Jack Lynch was much more than a farewell to a great man who lived a long and fruitful life; in the dying embers of the 20th century, it was a day when Old Ireland was buried with him.

The Celtic Tiger was clearing its throat and starting to purr; after decades of economic misery, the nation was rising. A new Ireland would emerge in the new century, very different to the one in which Lynch lived and died.

But let’s not kid ourselves that the great man didn’t play a pivotal part in helping that New Ireland rise from the dark decades of the 20th century. He never saw his beloved nation in its years of plenty, but he sure helped to create them.

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The two great achievements of Lynch’s political life were to bring Ireland into the forerunner of the European Union, and to provide a steady hand on the tiller in the Republic at a time when the North and UK were in danger of erupting into an all-out war that would have devastated the island.

Both those legacies were pivotal planks in the turnaround of Ireland’s fortunes in the years after his death.

Those who saw him as weak, even naive, have been proved wrong in the fullness of time - not that Lynch didn’t have great human qualities that endeared him to the public.

In the 1960s and ’70s, his innate decency and modesty made him trusted and popular - in 1969, he became the only Fianna Fáil leader other than Éamon de Valera to win an overall majority in a general election.

Here in Cork, he was revered as The Real Taoiseach.

Even Lynch’s greatest opponent, Fine Gael’s Liam Cosgrave, hailed him as “the most popular Irish politician since Daniel O’Connell”.

Tellingly, Lynch’s greatest foes came from his own party.

It’s fascinating to note now that, after his death on October 20, 1999, his old adversary Charles Haughey, and also then Fianna Fáil leader and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, attended his funeral in Cork - but neither was asked to give the graveside oration.

In what was perceived by some at the time as a snub to both, Des O’Malley, a Fianna Fáil ally of Lynch who was expelled from the party by Haughey, instead gave the speech, and rather pointedly referred to it as being a time politically when “integrity is so badly needed”.

A dig from beyond the grave at Charlie and Bertie, perhaps?

Journalists certainly noticed that Haughey and O’Malley failed to offer each other the sign of peace during the requiem mass! There were also reports of boos aimed at Haughey on the streets of Cork that day.

In an oration that rings as true today as it did 25 years ago, O’Malley said of Lynch: ”He was the bridge to the Ireland of Europe and beyond. He effected a transition that was not always popular but still patently necessary. He opened up our economy and began to open our minds.”

O’Malley had much to say about Lynch’s human qualities too, pointing to his special bond with the people. 

“It is a love that will not easily pass from the hearts of the Irish people, and least easily from those in Cork,” he said.

It was a point also made at the funeral mass by Bishop John Buckley: “Jack Lynch never lost the common touch, he was one of our own.”

Referring to the prospect of war in the North, O’Malley said: “Had this country taken the wrong turn 30 years ago, I fear to think what might have befallen us. We didn’t, and for that alone, Jack Lynch deserves his place in history.”

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The impact of having a Taoiseach as one of our own was huge on the Rebel psyche. A journalist down from Dublin in the 1970s wrote of an exchange he had with a local in a Cork pub. “You’re down from Dublin now, aren’t ya? Well’s here’s something to print in your paper,” he was told.

Using his fingers to keep count, the man ran off a list of great Corkmen. ‘Pat O’Callaghan,’ he said, ‘Ireland’s greatest Olympic athlete; Tommy Kiernan, the world’s most capped rugby player; Frank O’Farrell, manager of Manchester United; Christy Ring, the greatest hurler of all time; Jack Lynch, Taoiseach; and Bishop Connie Lucey - the next Pope!’”

Lynch’s GAA legacy is a legend in itself.

In 1939, he became the first player to captain both the inter-county football and hurling teams in the same year - a distinction that will surely never happen again. In 1946, he was the first player to win six consecutive senior All-Ireland medals - five in hurling and one in football.

It was a talent that was honed in the basement of the home where he was reared in Blackpool.

The late RTÉ broadcaster Liam Ó Murchú, born in Blarney Street in 1929, once recalled: “The Lynch brothers lived up the road from us. They had a basement in the house where they would repair, to continue a hurling match when the weather turned wet outside.

“Just imagine the congestion and the contention - no matter how big a basement it might be. Amongst the contenders would be Jim Sonny Buckley and his brothers, Jack and Din Joe, ‘Cooper’ Moylan, Paddy Donovan - to say nothing of the Lynch brothers themselves, Theo (Baggy), Charlie (later the much- loved Fr Charlie), Finbarr and the youngest, Jack. That was the backbone of the Cork senior hurling team which went on to win five All-Irelands.

“Years later, Jack would tell me everything he knew about politics - the rough and tumble, the wild strokes and clever ones, the blindness of umpires and the vagaries of referees - he had learnt long, long ago on the hurling and football fields.”