Obituary: Valentine McEntee (2008)

Obituary from the September 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Irish comrades report the sudden death in May of Val McEntee. Val joined the Islington branch of the party in London in 1982 as a young man in his mid-twenties. At the time this was perhaps the party’s most dynamic branch and Val was one of its active members. He worked in the accident investigation department of British Rail, and was a keen photographer, building up a collection of photos of party speakers at Hyde Park and elsewhere as well as tape-recording meetings. In the mid-90s he moved to Ireland, in a sense back to Ireland since though bought up in England he was of Irish traveller origin, to live in a small village in Co. Limerick where he earned a sort of living as a professional photographer. In Ireland he took part in the leafletting and other activities of the members there. His death was sudden and, with the authorities unable to contact any relatives, he was buried in the local Catholic church, even though the priest later told a member that he thought he was an Anglican, no doubt because of his English accent and because he didn’t attend mass. The member decided that discretion was the better part of valour and didn’t tell the priest the truth: that he had buried a non-believer in consecrated ground.