It’s been ten years to the day since the disability movement was shaken by the passing of our beloved Martin Naughton. You only had to meet Martin once to know that you were talking to someone special. He lived in-between spaces; as a child, he moved from his home in the Gaeltacht in Spiddal to St Mary’s in Baldoyle without a word of English (legend has it that his friend John Doyle taught him English); he worked in St. Mary’s teaching swimming classes when many of his fellow residents were passive recipients of care; and he fought for the right to true independent living at a time when, in Martin’s own words, disabled people “were to be cared for rather than cared about.”
In the later years of his life, Martin approached Joanna Marsden, former editor of the Irish Wheelchair Association’s feature magazine, SpokeOut, as well as being a journalist and author extraordinaire, with the proposition of helping him to pen his memoir. Sadly, when Martin passed away on 13 October, 2016, Joanna had not yet finished penning the memoir, and was hesitant to complete the project without him. Thankfully, Joanna came to the same realisation as many of us who have worked with Martin in the past, myself included: Martin wasn’t one to hold someone’s hand. He had great vision, but often needed help in executing his grand ideas, and so he had a rare ability to encourage people to trust in their own capabilities and to have the courage to make mistakes. Thus, Joanna completed and published Martin’s fascinating memoir, Never Know Your Place, and in doing so, played a pivotal role in keeping Martin’s spirit alive.
Everyone who has ever met Martin seems to remember their first meeting. Many people were introduced to him in Chief O’Neill’s, a hotel that was once located in the heart of Smithfield. When I met him, I was only twenty-one years old, and I was eager to be spoonfed, but it soon became clear that Martin wasn’t going to do that. He wanted me to establish a Leader Forum in Dublin. The disabled people I met during this time, including Hubert McCormack and Peter Moore, helped me more than I ever could have helped them. Thus, I was able to apply what I learned during the summer of 2005 to my everyday life long after the summer job had ended.
Martin became the recognisable mouthpiece of the Independent Living Movement, often filmed or photographed in a red jumper and matching taqiyah-style hat.
With his soft-featured face and largely paralysed body, he could elicit pity from the coldest of politicians, but once he started speaking, he made it clear that he was not an object of pity, and that he meant business. After all, government cutbacks were a constant threat to his independence and in turn, his freedom and his livelihood. Accidently or otherwise, guarding these for himself – and his peers across the country – became Martin’s top priority. Some would say that Martin was only too happy to be the face of the Independent Living Movement, and if that’s the case, then we as a movement were happy to have him stand at the coalface. We praised him, doubted him, admired him but I, at least, never envied him. Campaigning for the right to true independent living wasn’t just something Martin did, it became something Martin was: a symbol of disabled people’s ambition, of our quest to live the lives that we deserved.
Seeing the recent campaigns led by disabled activists around introducing a once-off cost of living payment for disabled people made me swell with pride, as Martin and others taught us younger activists to never take no for an answer. Martin and his peers were notorious to resorting to outlandish measures to get his point across. One of my favourite photos of Martin (which I can’t find on the web right now) shows him and Michael McCabe, dressed in stripy black and white prison uniforms, surrounded by a cage. The purpose of this demonstration by the pair was to illustrate how disabled people were becoming imprisoned by cutbacks.
Martin Naughton touched the lives of both disabled people and our non-disabled allies. Then president of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, paid tribute to Martin on his passing. Christian O’Reilly, a now prominent playwright and screenwriter, landed one of his first jobs working with Martin in the mid-nineties, and immortalised him in the film Inside I’m Dancing/Rory O’Shea was Here, and later in the stage play No Magic Pill. Christian later explained that he wrote the latter because he wasn’t satisfied with his attempt to capture the tenacity, the cheekiness and the complexity that embodied the man with the hat.
This challenge is not Christian’s alone. Younger activists coming behind us will never have the privilege of meeting him in person, and that’s why, ten years after his passing, I think that it’s crucial that we remember him, talk about him, and strive to honour his amazing legacy. To do this, we must believe within ourselves that we are worthy of equality. We must insist on sitting at every table where discussions about our lives are taking place. We must resist the urge to shake those collection buckets and instead demand our rights, which have been denied for all too long.
We owe it to Martin, and indeed to all the activists who have since passed away, hoping that their contribution to society will make it a little better. This year, the Irish disability community lost another remarkable activist – who “was born in 1954, the same year as Martin” – our comrade Dermot Hayes. Dermot and Martin were great friends, and although Dermot was very much an activist in his own right, establishing many community initiatives for both disabled and non-disabled people alike, he still looked up to Martin and credited him for the support Martin gave him.
And to those of us who knew them, they will never be forgotten.
