Obituary: Vin McMullen KSG

Vin McMullen, who died on Palm Sunday, was a truly remarkable man. From the most unpromising start in life he rose to become educator, author, voice for the voiceless and inspiration to many. He also made a crucial contribution to the development of Cafod at a turning point in its history.

An impoverished childhood in Wallsend on Tyneside during the depressed 1930s was made harsher by the violence he saw inflicted on his mother by a drunken father. The family escaped from his clutches, with all their furniture and possessions on a coalman’s cart, to another part of town where they lived in the flat above the “ragshop” alongside the railway.

Saturdays were bath nights when the four McMullen children took turns in the zinc bath before the fire in the open range. Their one toilet at the end of the yard was frozen for weeks on end in the severe north eastern winters of that time. Their mother left early each morning to earn a few shillings each week as a cleaner.

A brief period of wartime evacuation to a Northumberland village nurtured in Vin a lifelong love of its country and coast pursued, when older, through hiking, camping and youth hostelling with friends.

He left school at 13 and served his time as an apprentice joiner at the famous Swan Hunter shipyard on the Tyne. His work there led to the asbestosis which only manifested sixty years later and from which he died. Two years’ National Service in the RAF might well have been followed by a lifetime’s work in the shipyard but Vin, feeling that he might be called to the priesthood, entered the novitiate at Campion House, Osterley, London.

His time there was not to lead to ordination but did fire him with a zest for learning and a call to a career in Catholic education. With helpful advice from the rector at Osterley, Fr Clement Tigar, SJ, and after passing the London University Special Examination Board, Vin secured a place at a training college and qualified as a teacher. He then returned to his native North East, his first appointment being at the tough, boys only, St Aloysius Secondary Modern School, Newcastle, where, on his first day, the headmaster, as was the custom in those days, handed him a cane and told him not to hesitate to use it.

Vin soon concluded that there were better ways to achieve discipline and after ten years’ teaching in a number of schools was appointed head at St Cuthbert’s Primary School in Amble, Northumberland. There later followed a cross-country move to the headship of St Edmund’s Junior School in Liverpool where, as at Amble, he won the respect and affection of pupils, parents and staff.

Early retirement brought the opportunity of following a different calling which had long been powerful but latent. Vin’s early life had imbued him with a deep commitment to social justice – he was a member of the Labour Party who voted Lib Dem, tactically and successfully, in his Southport constituency. At a time of growing awareness of the plight of the poor in the developing world, Vin was appointed as Cafod’s first ever regional organiser, his north west “region” stretching from the Scottish border to south Shropshire and the Welsh Marches. The appointment was a pilot scheme to test whether it would enable Cafod to reach out to the Catholic community and so promote its work more effectively.

His prodigious energy, eloquent advocacy (honed years before when speaking for the Catholic Evidence Guild in Newcastle’s Bigg Market) and warm, engaging personality, which enthused a formidable team of supporters, quickly ensured the pilot scheme’s success. Cafod became a greater presence in parishes, schools and the lives of ordinary Catholics.

As a direct result of Vin’s achievement, regional organisers were quickly appointed for the whole of England and Wales and Cafod ceased to be merely London-based. In the words of Julian Filochowski, then Cafod’s Director, “Vin made the difference”.

Vin was also to play an important role in the later decision to replace the regional with a diocesan structure so as to engage still more closely with church members. He was saddened when, last year, that structure was dismantled with resulting staff redundancies.

Visits to El Salvador and the Philippines made a deep and lasting impression on him and increased his determination to work for justice for the poorest of the poor. His book Looking at the Philippines Through the Eyes of the Poor gives a powerful account of his experience there, especially living with those who scavenged for their very existence on the rubbish dump known as “Smokey Mountain”.

It came as a matter of disbelief, almost embarrassment to him when he was awarded a Papal Knighthood of St Gregory for his unstinting pursuit of justice and dignity for poor in countries like the Philippines.

Other books were to follow, notably an autobiographical trilogy which vividly tells his life story with complete candour and with his lifelong, puckish sense of humour. His faith and his family were all important to him. An enthusiast for Vatican II he warmly welcomed the prospect of Pope Francis at last putting collegiality and subsidiarity into effect.

Vin was at his happiest when surrounded by Gill, his devoted wife of 56 years, and their large, close family, joining in the craic and the singing – though always in a different key from everyone else.

John Mulholland is a former member of Cafod national committees.