HE HAD wanted to die "in the streets"--that is, in the act of principled protest, deep in the trenches of a never-ending war against injustice. Instead, Anakpawis party-list Rep. Crispin "Ka Bel" Beltran died after falling off the roof of his modest, mortgaged house, in the act of tending to his family's needs. He was trying to fix the roof before the rains fell.

"While Ka Bel didn't get his wish that he die in the streets fighting against tyranny and exploitation, he did not die in vain," said Elmer Labog, chairman of the Kilusang Mayo Uno Beltran once led. "His whole life offered in the service of the Filipino people and other struggling people in the world makes him a hero no less."

It may not have been a hero's death, but it was still a virtuous one, with a timeless lesson in personal integrity. It showed an astonished nation that it is possible to remain poor while serving in Congress, despite the trappings, the generous staffing budgets, the access to pork barrel funds. Despite all that, the 75-year-old Beltran remained a member of the working class he represented.

His life may have been lived (without compromise, his sometime lawyer Sen. Joker Arroyo said) according to the loftiest principle; but his death showed he had lived it with the highest integrity.

It is not only, as his daughter Ofelia Ballate told reporters, on the day of his sudden death, that he was "hands-on with household work"--although this is no mean thing, this respect for honest labor, for the work of the hands.

It is also because he lived a poor man's life, even when he was already on his third term as a party-list representative in Congress. His unpainted house in San Jose del Monte, Bulacan was his first, bought using a loan from the Government Service Insurance System. (He paid P5,000 a month in amortization, his gallant widow, Rosario "Ka Osang" Beltran, said.) He listed two barong tagalog among his assets. He slept in a folding bed.

One of his neighbors summed it up neatly: "By his living here among us, we knew he was not corrupt."

Some of the praise that immediately came his way adverted to his leftist politics. "We may not agree with Ka Bel's ideology but he fought for the common man without counting the cost. His loss is irreparable," said Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr. "We may differ in our views on some issues but I feel assured of his sincerity whenever I faced him," said Sen. Benigno Aquino III.

Some had complimented him in kind, and without knowing it, long before he died. Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez, for example, caused his detention and that of other leftist party-list congressmen on trumped-up charges. (The Supreme Court cleared the "Batasan 5".) The dictator Ferdinand Marcos caused his incarceration in 1982. (He escaped from prison in 1984.) In both instances, they were paying tribute to a true leader who had the courage of his convictions.

It is not Beltran's fault that the principle he fought for throughout his life, the right of workers to organize themselves, has lost some of its urgency and its appeal. The ranks of organized labor are thinning, in the Philippines as well as abroad. In large part, this is the result of improvements in work conditions. (That was always a failing in Marx, the inability to see that capitalism may have a self-healing capacity.)

But it is entirely to Beltran's credit that he continued fighting on behalf of the Filipino worker to the end of his days. Because despite enlightened business owners or modern business practices, workers continue to be at risk. (That is the nature of free enterprise.) In particular, Filipino workers are among the victims of an aggressive, survival-conscious Arroyo administration. That Beltran could always be counted on to add his voice to the chorus of protest, or to stand in the House and vote for greater accountability from the President, or to remain firm while suffering official harassment--this was his way of preparing, for the coming storm.