1980s’ student leader at the epicentre of social change in Ireland
By Garbhán Downey
Back in a very different country, Stephen Grogan was the Union of Students in Ireland (USI) president sued and threatened with imprisonment for publishing information on where Irish women could access abortion services in Britain.
In 1989, he and his fellow USI executive members, along with officers from Trinity and UCD students unions including the current Labour Party leader Ivana Bacik, were warned by their counsel, Mary Robinson, to pack their toothbrushes and prepare for jail after breaching the statewide ban.
But human rights advocate Robinson, who would become President of Ireland the following year, ultimately succeeded in getting the case, brought against them by the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), redirected from Dublin High Court to the European Court of Justice. And by 1992, the prohibition on the provision of information on pregnancy termination outside the state would be removed by virtue of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.
In November 2023, Stephen acknowledged in an interview with Trinity News that the court case was a ‘contributing factor’ in his decision to leave Dublin in 1990 for the International Union of Students (IUS) in Prague.
He commented: “I had no resources or assets and at the time Czechoslovakia was a socialist country, so there wasn’t any way for SPUC to pursue me across that particular geographic/legal line. But no, I didn’t flee either.”
In all, Stephen would spend more than a decade in student politics. He started out as President of Galway Regional Technical College (RTC) Students Union in 1986/87, then spent three years in Dublin with USI, another four as Executive Officer with IUS in Prague, two in Vienna as Director of the European Students’ Union, and then a year as Secretary General of the European Youth Forum in Brussels.
He returned to Dublin in 1998 to work with the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed, and finally headed home to Mayo where he managed the Ballyhaunis Family Resource Centre before his sudden death on August 17.
It was no surprise he travelled so widely. In his spell with USI, it was clear he was a political polyglot, able to speak and understand the many different languages of union leaders across the island.
He was equally comfortable debating the potential pitfalls of the Single European Act with his brother-in-arms Marty Whelan and the radical lefties in TCD as he was discussing social justice with the Jesuits in Milltown. With his protégé Éamonn Waters and the RTC’s, it was regional imbalance and the lack of degree recognition; while with Dáithí O’Connor and Aidan Kerins at the Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT), it was inner-city deprivation and the cost, quality and availability of student accommodation. On his regular visits to the Belfast office, he would sit up to the small hours fine-tuning USI’s anti-extradition and miscarriage of justice policies with Queen’s SU leaders, and the next night he would be thrashing out democratic centralism and the decriminalisation of cannabis with reps from the University of Ulster.
In Dublin, he was just as much at home holding court in USI’s ramshackle North Great George Street offices, where the sometimes-heated officer board discussions would be moderated by the ever-calm Tadhg Daly, as he was in Blessington Street with the Shinners, in Connolly Hall with Emmet Stagg and the Commies, in the Buttery Bar with Michael D, or at The Shakespeare on Parnell Street, picking the brains of former USI luminaries such as Peter Graves, Ciarán McCann, Úna Gillespie, Paddy McPoland, Rosa Meehan and Declan Turnbull.
While he had a massive appetite for research and debate, and both the intellect and energy to go with it, he wasn’t just a compassionate theorist – he was also an activist.
On Budget Day 1988 he led a memorable sit-in at Fianna Fáil’s Mount Street offices, to highlight hikes in student fees. The building had been targeted before, so the party had cleverly installed a state-of-the-art CCTV system to keep the student hellions out. Always a step ahead, Grogan disguised himself as a helmeted motorcycle courier carrying ‘a parcel from the Dáil’ and, after getting buzzed through, managed to jam the door open to allow in about forty of his colleagues. He then wired off his contacts in the media, ensuring that the protest would be the lead story in the evening papers, knocking the government’s estimates off the front page. Indeed, for a number of years after that protest, Stephen carried a liberated Fianna Fail membership card in his pocket as an ID card to hand to Gardaí whenever stopped.
The forced emigration of jobless students and graduates was another issue dear to his west-of-Ireland heart. And in a particularly strategic piece of PR, he scored a front-page picture of himself remonstrating with government ministers, by brandishing his passport and telling them that’s all that young people had left to them.
He wasn’t always successful in his efforts, and a plan to disrupt Charlie Haughey’s 1989 re-election launch at Stephen’s Green came unstuck when two young, plain-clothes Special Branch officers infiltrated the student demonstration and mushed the eggs stashed in his jacket pockets. Stephen did, however, get his revenge a couple of days later by leading an ambush on the Taoiseach’s visit to UCD, forcing the cortege to cut short its mission and drive away at speed. Indeed, footage of the protest can still be found in RTÉ’s archive, featuring Stephen in his trademark fairisle jumper alongside scores of fellow officers including Anne Marie Keary, Diarmuid Coogan, Maxine Brady and Mick Clifford.
He also once took on the Labour Militant club at its annual fundraising quiz on Burgh Quay, mischievously christening his team ‘The Ice-Picks’. His sharp-witted band looked certain to scoop the £100 prize, so the scurrilous Trots rigged the result at the death to allow a team of their own colour to win. The victors immediately handed the money straight back into party funds, and Stephen had to be worked with on his way home.
But apart from the odd fraternal blow-up, Stephen was for years a linchpin of a generation of student leaders, many of whom would go on to play their part in delivering social change in Ireland.
Some of those he served with, such as Claire Daly, Dawn Doyle and Mick Murphy, would go on to become lifelong political activists. Many would make their mark in the media, such as Mary Carolan, Trish Hegarty, Gearóid Ó Muilleoir, Emmett Malone, Tom Duke, Kevin MacDermott, Dundas Keating and Mark Little. Others remained in education, including Dr Eucharia Meehan, Professor John Doyle, Dave Dwyer, Ivan McPhilips, Sean Ó hArgáin and Pat O’Flaherty. While yet others would become prominent legal authorities or human rights campaigners, like Fidelma Joyce, Karen Quinlavin KC, Grainne Murphy KC, Nick Reilly BL, and his good friends and USI cornerstones, Alistair Rutherdale BL and Peter O’Neill.
Throughout his life, Stephen remained loyal to his crewmates, composing letters and notes on bereavements and marriages, hiding his gentle nature behind a gruff, professorial manner that we could all see through. Those who followed him will remember him as a wise and patient mentor. And he was a gracious and attentive host, delighting in showing old colleagues around his adopted Prague in the months after the Velvet Revolution, eagerly pointing out the ‘blight of encroaching capitalism’ in the form of his three new nemeses: Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and Marlboro cigarettes. Happily, he quickly adapted.
His unexpected death was a shock to those of us who could never match his energy or drive and assumed he would outlast us all. But his contribution to the betterment of Irish society, and his still-enduring influence on his student generation, will never be forgotten.
Garbhán Downey was Deputy-President of USI in 1988/89.
A selections of photographs from over the years
