When the TV producer told me he would like a report on smuggling, I knew it would require full disclosure.
The time had come to spill the beans, to tell the story of a man with a colourful reputation.
His name was Sam, “Sam the smuggler”. The newspapers called him “Ulster’s Robin Hood”.
In the early 1950s, he began bolstering his modest income by exploiting the Irish border.
It was tea at first, then butter and finally cigarettes. Evading the customs became his favourite pastime.
He didn’t always succeed. Sam was convicted of smuggling and twice served time in prison.
Image: Tales of him out-running police cars have gone down in folklore
At the height of his cross-border game, he was making £300 per week, a lot of money back then.
But he was losing just as much – some £20,000 in fines and in the value of goods and cars seized.
The thrill of the chase kept him going. He just got a buzz from his clandestine escapades.
Accounts of him out-running police cars, on both sides of the border, have gone down in folklore.
He came clean in the end and confessed to having been a professional smuggler for eight years.
“I am not ashamed of my past,” he would say, “everyone was smuggling when stuff was scarce.
“If only I had stopped” when making more than losing, “I would have been on top of the world.
“The one really big mistake of my smuggling career was when I decided to keep going.”
Image: Fifty years after his death, people still talk about “Sam” who went onto stand for election
Neighbours, with whom he had shared his loot, later persuaded him to run for a seat at Stormont.
So the North Armagh constituency had an unlikely independent candidate on the ballot paper in the 1958 election.
He didn’t win but the honest confession of his shady past had gained him an unexpected admirer.
When Sam died suddenly, aged 55, the Rev Ian Paisley turned up and participated in his funeral.
On both sides of the political divide, there was a cultural ambivalence about subsistence smuggling.
Fifty years after his death, people still talk about “Sam the smuggler” who stood for election.
His campaign slogan: “Thank heavens, here’s Blevins.” Yes Blevins. Sam was my grandfather.
Source: Sky