Eulogy for Friend

Eulogy for Friend

I'd like to say a few words of tribute to this special man, from me and on behalf of other close friends of his.

When he heard the news of Alan's death, a mutual friend and colleague noted poignantly that Alan was a man that was non-judgmental. Alan accepted people largely for what they were and for who they were.

Alan was a man without prejudice. His many friendships crossed the barriers of social position and educational background.

And his spirit, his generosity, his warmth also reached through barriers of race and cultural background. They reached through the barriers of age and generation.

Because everyone was welcomed into Alan's circle of friends and what a multi-coloured, multi-cultural, multi-national, and multi-generational circle of friends it is indeed.

What's more, Alan worked eagerly to bring these people from different backgrounds together. To me, he seemed happiest when he'd organised a gathering of the most diverse people one could imagine.

If Alan couldn't remake the world outside to his liking, he would make it so in his backyard.

He was a man without prejudice. This was not just a matter of principle for Alan, not something he merely theorised in his academic work and teaching. It was his instinct, his very nature.

This was not simply tolerance, it was his personal culture.

Because when we stop to think about it, Alan's preoccupation in life was people. He was always introducing people to other people. Always saying: you must meet so and so; and with his extraordinary sense of social occasion, by and large you did get to meet them. How many people have we met and got to know through Alan Smith?

Dr Alan Smith was among the most intelligent people I have ever known. A sociologist by original training, he completed his Bachelor degree with Honours at the University of Wales in 1978 and was awarded his Doctorate by that University in 1990. His doctoral thesis, titled 'A Cartography of Resistance: The British State and Derry Republicanism' was a learned study of the Irish republican struggle. The freedom of the Irish people and Gaelic people generally was a cause very close to his heart throughout his adult life.

His experiences in Londonderry in the 1980s exposed him to the brutal realities of war and I think shaped his political outlook in particular ways.

One of these I believe was to deepen his affinity with people from oppressed nationalities and cultures wherever they were and whenever he came across them in his many travels around the world.