Whisky and Wisdom

In 2025 we lost John O'Brien. Those who knew John knew him as wonderful friend and source of love and wisdom. Others will have been influenced by John, perhaps without even knowing. because John played a critical role in developing many of the most important innovations in policy and practice of our time. 

For Citizen Network he was the primary source of inspiration for everything we have done over the past 16 years. John was also our first Fellow and he continued to support our work until the very end of his life. 

To honour him and his contribution to creating a world where everyone matters we are publishing a series of articles that reveal different dimensions of his work.

Author: John Dalrymple

I first met John one late afternoon in the arrivals hall of Glasgow airport over 30 years ago. I was to drive him the thirty miles south to a hotel in Irvine where the next day he was to lead a training session for a mixed group of professionals and family members (a group of “folks” as I would quickly learn John would say) preparing for the possibility of a programme of institutional closures. 

His reputation I knew in advance, but there were a number of things I wasn’t prepared for, the various aspects of his striking giant appearance amongst them. Sitting in the passenger seat of my modest vehicle it seemed he was having to stoop slightly to avoid his head scraping the roof. Neither was I prepared for his limited appetite for conversational small talk – at least on first acquaintance! Two introvert strangers awkwardly hunched together, failing to get to know each other as each passing mile lengthened into the evening. 

The following day of course the giant stood tall, in command of the room and his interactions, simultaneously soothing and inspiring with vivid and humane accounts of how life changing it can be for some folks to leave the institution. 

We already miss that compelling voice today.

The last time I spoke with him was many years later, again in Ayrshire, in the home of Jaynie Mitchell, on the eve of the Inclusion Institute being held in
Seamill the following day. Many men and women had moved on from Scottish institutions in the intervening years, and many of the same institutions had closed, though at that time most of us were naively unaware of the almost invisible drift of new people into new types of institution. 

(Though I recall now that back in Irvine all those years previously he had used a “zig-zag” illustration – of African origin? – demonstrating that while human progress in certain spheres continues in the same direction it is never in a straight line, and some of the hair-pin changes of direction can be unnerving.) 

Our conversation on this occasion was as warm and free-flowing as our first had been stilted and embarrassing, and I will always remember him landing on a story of how during his presidency Richard Nixon had been working on a proposal for Universal Basic Income which, had it not been for Watergate, might in all likelihood have been introduced. Twists and turns. 

Back to nearer the beginning, sometime in the nineties, the Strathclyde social work learning disability team had arranged several events for John to lead and participate in over the course of a week. On the Saturday evening, to mark the end of his stay, we had arranged a social evening in Lesley Houston’s house in Glasgow, with food and singing. The awkwardness of these early stages of our relationship with John was compounded by his discomfort at being the honoured guest and at our attempts to make him the centre of attention. These he fended off with practiced determination, and he gradually took himself off to sit somewhere less prominent, though still within the circle, where he could participate with quiet humility on his own terms. One of his many “accomplishments”!

That evening, for no particularly well-thought-out reason I decided to leave him with my copy of Neil Gunn’s book, Whisky and Scotland, which he shyly accepted.

On reflection, however, I think the subtitle of that book – a practical and spiritual survey – distils the essence of what John has left for us: tools and concepts to promote inclusion that are never divorced from the simple, sacred humanity of its meaning.

You can also read more about John O'Brien and his work here.

The publisher is Citizen Network. Whisky and Wisdom © John Dalrymple 2026.