Michael Pat Murphy, who died on October 28th aged 81, was a formidable electoral performer, holding a Labour Dail seat for 30 years in the Cork South-West constituency. Like other rural Labour TDs, he retained the seat through assiduous constituency work, surviving the fluctuating fortunes of his party nationally, as well as its occasional redefining of ideology and electoral strategy.
He was a junior minister in the 1973 to 1977 Fine Gael-Labour coalition government, with responsibility for fisheries, an area in which he was well briefed, representing many fishermen in his sprawling constituency. They were an important part of his support base, which saw him first elected to the Dail in 1951 and in every subsequent election until his retirement from national politics in 1981.
Conservative and rural Cork South-West was not fertile Labour party territory. Michael Pat Murphy's vote was essentially personal, built up over decades by hard work and a minimum of rhetoric, and this became obvious when the party's share of the vote in the constituency dropped from 20.3 per cent in 1977 to 9.6 per cent on his retirement in 1981.
A native of Drimoleague, Co Cork, Michael Pat Murphy followed the traditional route of the time into national politics. He was co-opted to Cork County Council in 1948, serving as chairman during the 1950s and 1960s. He was also a member of the Cork County Committee of Agriculture and the South-Western Regional Development Organisation.
He rapidly consolidated his base following his election to the Dail in 1951, becoming a poll-topper in subsequent elections in the 1950s and 1960s. By then, he was living in Schull and married to Hettie Ann Roycroft, with whom he had four sons and two daughters. One of his daughters, Kate Ann, is married to the Minister for Justice, Mr John O'Donoghue.
Labour's opposition to coalition in the 1960s meant Michael Pat Murphy was confined to the Opposition benches, where he was his party's spokesman on agriculture. In the 1961 election, he topped the poll with 7,381 votes, increasing it to 7,971 votes four years later.
Like the other Labour rural deputies, he was uneasy with the party's decisive move to the left in the late 1960s, as it reaffirmed its opposition to coalition on the basis that "the seventies will be socialist". Nationally, it was a heady time for the party, with high-profile candidates including Conor Cruise O'Brien, David Thornley and Justin Keating, contesting seats in Dublin in the 1969 election. Many in Labour felt their hour had finally come. The 1969 election was bitterly contested, with Fianna Fail warning voters of what it considered to be the dire consequences of Labour's social and economic policies.
Michael Pat Murphy read the electoral warning signs for a rural Labour TD. Michael Gallagher, in his book, The Irish Labour Party in Transition, 1957-'82, wrote: "The outgoing TD for Cork South-West, Michael Pat Murphy, made no secret of his intention not to use any of the centrally prepared literature and to campaign, as always, on his personal record.
"His local newspaper advertisements detailed this - his efficient and speedy work on behalf of his constituents, his promotion of tourism and industry in the constituency, and so on - at length, and mentioned only twice, unobtrusively, that he was the Labour candidate and had carried out his services to his constituents as `a Labour TD'."
As the campaign intensified, Michael Pat Murphy alleged that in his constituency Fianna Fail had claimed Labour policy would be to throw priests into prison and torture them.
He defied, with Dan Spring in neighbouring Kerry, Labour's administrative council ruling that outgoing TDs should take at least one running mate. They survived, while other Labour TDs perished, as the party's breakthrough nationally failed to materialise. In Cork South-West, Michael Pat Murphy lost his place at the top of the poll to Fianna Fail's Flor Crowley.
Labour later reversed its opposition to coalition, forming a government with Fine Gael in 1973. Michael Pat Murphy was appointed parliamentary secretary (minister of state) to the minister for agriculture and fisheries, where he served until February, 1977, when he was made parliamentary secretary to the minister for agriculture and the minister for fisheries in a reallocation of departmental responsibilities.
His brief was to deal with fisheries, and he took to the job with relish. When some reduction in salmon licences was required, he took a novel approach for the time in calling a consultative meeting in Dublin, attended by 430 people. It was the first time that fishermen had been treated in that fashion, and a settlement was reached which was considered fair by most of the fishermens' organisations. He treated the herring skippers in a similar way at a meeting he called in Waterford. The issue was conservation of the Celtic Sea stock, which maintained the Dunmore East fishery. A voluntary ban on weekend fishing was agreed.
He was intolerant of what he considered to be unnecessary bureaucracy and delays in producing reports on the industry. In May 1975, he strongly criticised the non-appearance of a report from the Inland Fisheries Commission after four years. "We are waiting, waiting, waiting painfully, and if I had my way I don't think we would wait much longer," he said.
Despite the swing against the outgoing government in 1977, when Fianna Fail secured a 20-seat majority, Michael Pat Murphy was only narrowly pipped at the top of the poll by Fianna Fail's Joe Walsh, who secured 6,789 votes compared to the Labour TD's 6,768. Reflecting the views of many of his generation, and a considerable number of his constituents at that time, Michael Pat Murphy opposed liberalising the contraception laws and the introduction of divorce. When Labour's annual conference, in October 1980, called on the parliamentary party to introduce a private member's Bill proposing a divorce referendum, he warned it was a move which would cost the party seats at the next election.
The following month, he announced his retirement from politics for personal reasons, adding it was time for a younger candidate, who, he said, would have his full support. Michael Pat Murphy is survived by his wife Hettie, sons, Michael Pat jnr, Tim, John James and Edward Thomas, daughters, Gabriel and Kate Ann and brother PJ.
Michael Pat Murphy: born 1919; died, October 2000