By David Nyhan, Globe Columnist, 9/24/2000

ermot Shea is 84 now; if he hasn't seen it all, he's seen most of it.

He is one of the warriors of the political game in Massachusetts, an irascible old codger who was a firebrand in his youth, and learned how to make a contribution by learning how to make a deal. Just shy of 40 years ago he was made the executive director of the old Massachusetts Consumer Council by the late Governor Endicott Peabody. From that obscure perch Shea helped launch an era of consumer protection laws that today are taken for granted. But it was not always thus.

Shea grew up in Depression-era Chicopee, a hard-luck mill town. His father was a doctor, who was elected mayor by patients who took his medicine and advice, but couldn't pay him back with anything but their vote. ''The people of Chicopee were coming to his house not for medicine but for food,'' the son remembers. ''It was awful.''

By the time Shea arrived at the Consumer Council, the consumer movement was gaining traction in the activist Sixties. With the prodding of the Globe's reformist former editor, Thomas Winship, Massachusetts adopted a series of progressive laws: Truth in Lending; the Retail Installment Sales Act; the Consumer Protection package, which empowered the attorney general's office to come down hard on fraud; the Bottle Bill; and more.

But Shea parted company with the reformist Globe of that era on the eventually-successful campaign to reduce the size of the Massachusetts House from 240 members to 160. Both legislative leaders of that era, House Speaker David Bartley and Senate President Maurice Donahue, battled the Globe and the League of Women Voters fiercely. But public anger at the Legislature of that time eventually prevailed.

Last week Shea spoke of the result. The House cut had the effects that its opponents feared: ''... the power of the Speaker would become too great, and the lobbyists too powerful to control ... the minority [Republican] party would be decimated, as well as ethnic minorities diminished.''

His letter helps explain why less than 10 percent of the state's voters cast ballots in Tuesday's election, which featured few meaningful contests. The hapless Republican Party, under its virtually clueless governor, could muster hardly any challengers. House Speaker Tom Finneran's icy grip on the docile membership is characterized by a its lockstep march to one man's tune.

This circus doesn't fly. The center does not hold; lobbyists are in the saddle. Comments Shea grimly, a one-man Greek chorus: ''The recent Globe Spotlight Team article illustrates that Massachusetts, in effect, has become a legal pawnshop,'' headed by a governor who ''has continued to disregard apparent conflicts of interest.''

All of those landmark consumer protection laws passed in the late 1960s and early '70s would never make it in the current legislative environment, Shea argues. Why? Because the legislative leaders of the earlier era ''were able to resist tremendous pressure'' from lobbyists and corporate barons. That is not the case now.

''Now it is the state Senate that is the progressive body, and the House that is the House of Lords,'' he said. ''Most of the reps are like flaccid potted plants - only coming alive when watered by money from special interests.'' Shea blames the House cut drive of 1970. ''The suppression of dissent in the Massachusetts House is dangerous. I don't like it. It's become a cover for doing nothing for the little guy. People are not aware of the quicksand we're on.''

So turnout Tuesday dwindled to one voter out of 10. ''I voted in Precinct 10,'' (Back Bay) said the old consumer protection warrior. ''I was the 12th voter, at 2 in the afternoon.'' I guess that proves his point.

Here's something I didn't know: After oil, the import Americans spend most on is ... coffee! Oxfam America is pushing the Fair Trade Coffee Campaign today under the slogan ''Changing the world one cup at a time.'' Twenty million people grow coffee in 80 countries. Americans spend $18 billion a year on java.

And you can get a free cup today from noon to 3 p.m. on Boston Common. You can compare brews and beans, schmooze with Central American farmers, tune in to live Latin music and dance, and help save the planet. The Fair Trade Festival celebrates gains made in Coffee-land, improving living conditions. Oxfam, the hunger relief outfit, has signed on to the third-party certification process.

Says Adrienne Smith, Oxfam's Boston-based spokewoman, ''Bostonians can now get their coffee from a number of New England-based coffee companies.'' The good guys on Oxfam's Fair Trade list buy beans at a price farmers can make a living on. They include: Equal Exchange, Green Mountain, Dean's Beans, Peet's, and, soon, Starbucks.

The Fair Trade label marks coffee bought from small-scale organic farmers who protect wildlife habitat and help preserve natural forest canopy. This meshes with the Oxfam goal of fostering self-help peasant communities where families get more than the $3 per day average coffee grower income. Oxfam is pushing Fair Trade coffee for campuses, companies, and the coffee maker on your own kitchen counter. As they say in the NGO world: '' You can make a difference.''

So, if you're downtown today and crave a jolt before you bolt, motivate on over. From noon to 3 p.m., there will be an awful lot of coffee on the Common.

David Nyhan is a Globe columnist.