My political pilot light had flickered and spluttered for decades, finally going out shortly after the euphoria of the Good Friday Agreement. It wasn't long until our politicians got back to business; business as usual. Sour faced men continued to fight and squabble, blame and sulk. Experts were brought in periodically to plead with them to behave and get on with it. Northern Ireland didn't have an Obama to inspire and lead us with a, "Yes, we can". I looked hard for inspiration but it wasn't there. Scandals began toppling politicians off their celestial thrones. In most cases it seemed their political thrones were more secure. The run up to the elections in Northern Ireland in May 2010 held no interest for me. The two new voters in my household were frustrated that I refused to give advice; I didn't have the energy.
I was woken in the early hours of May 7th to be told that Naomi Long, our 'wee' Belfast Lord Mayor had tipped the mighty First Minister and former DUP member for East Belfast Peter Robinson out of his very comfortable 31-year-old seat. My pilot light flickered, spluttered and slowly reignited. I didn't know much about Alliance's Naomi Long but maybe it was time to find out.
Naomi's constituency office isn't hard to find. It's bright and bold and unpretentious. A corner shop conversion on the front of the busy Upper Newtownards Road. Politicians I have had to consult in the past reveal themselves in uncanny ways: their choice of decor, their fragrant personal assistants hired to meet and greet. The political nurturing begins even before you are escorted into the inner sanctum. Art collections have been explained in detail, herbal teas offered, personal details intimately shared, all intended to enchant and charm and wrap you up warmly in their particular political glow.
As I enter Naomi's constituency office I am welcomed by a pleasantly nervous young woman whose desk is in the front window of the 'shop'. No tastefully arranged floral arrangements or photographs of the 'victorious one' to be seen. As the young receptionist shepherds me up a steep staircase I glimpse Naomi behind a screen with a helper, so busy sorting through papers they don't even lift their heads. The interview room is sparsely furnished, no curtains, no pictures, no time or money wasted.
Naomi is suddenly there and she's raring to go. She remarks that she hopes my newly acquired tape recorder is working as she is inclined to talk quickly. In fact, she doesn't draw breath. She hasn't had one day off since last February. It doesn't show. She was hoping to take a break after her Lord Mayor's year of office was completed but it wasn't going to happen now. All she can hope for is a weekend break soon with her husband Michael, a fellow Alliance councillor. When I ask her if she can switch off when she's away, it is no surprise when she says she can't: 'Politics is my passion; not just my job.' I am beginning to believe her.
She's seems mildly bemused to find herself an MP, even though she firmly believed she was going to win. She works hard for her constituents. They promised her their support and they didn't let her down. She won't be considering whether a Unionist strategy to unite and overpower her in the next election will be a threat: 'The Unionists won't decide; the constituents of East Belfast will do that.' Her ascendancy has been swift and she remembers every step of the ten year road, from her first days in Belfast City Council when she had to be coaxed to speak up. 'When I joined the Alliance party I never expected to be anything other than a paid up member but passion took over and I gave up a career in civil engineering to devote myself to the party fulltime. I'd never have believed it if someone had told me where I'd be here in ten years time.' She has arrived in Westminster without having time to rest along the way.
Naomi's roots are just down the Newtownards Road, in an area built to house the workers of the once great Harland and Wolff shipyard. Like many Belfast families her grandfather came in from the country to work. Her father and uncles spent their working lives there except for the youngest brother who obtained a university place. The rest of the family worked hard to support him, proud of his achievement. She had a cousin on her mother's side who was a teacher but her family roots, she assures me, are firmly working class, a typical East Belfast family: 'Good decent hard working people, like many of our neighbours.' Naomi, a cherished only child excelled at school, a ferocious reader who had finished the Chronicles of Narnia before she was nine. Her love of reading continues and on a rare evening off she relaxes and switches off with a book. She cites To Kill a Mocking Bird as one of her all time favourites.
It is telling that the book's theme of challenging wrongdoing without losing hope or becoming cynical about the future is how Naomi goes on to describe her political motivation. I ask if she believes the Alliance Party is still viewed by many as a middle class party for middle class voters. She is adamant: 'It isn't and never was.' She blames parodies like Give My Head Peace on this misconception. I try not to laugh, remembering when 'Ma' joined the Alliance party; suddenly developing a North Down accent and hosting 'fork suppers' in her flat in the Divis tower. I am curious to know if she had any idea if she managed to obtain many votes from the East Belfast diehards: 'My votes came from across the religious and class divide. People are more intelligent than we give them credit for. They don't just vote along sectarian lines.' I find myself hoping she is correct.
Naomi's great passion along with her vision for a shared and peaceful Northern Ireland is education. After clean water, food and sanitation she believes it is the most important asset any individual can obtain. She abhors the mess the education system is in at the moment: 'The confusion around selection is even more divisive than what we had before. Asking children to pay to sit exam to try for a grammar school place is totally unacceptable. My own parents couldn't have afforded the fee, never mind negotiated their way round the system and they would have been too proud to ask for the money.' She is adamant that the right uniform, the networks built up by grammar school pupils whether they fail or succeed academically give them an unfair advantage over those who go to non-selective schools: 'Young people need to be older and more aware of their strengths and interests before they, the system or their parents can select the most suitable educational path.' She feels sure the schools in East Belfast could cope very well with a flexible system where children from all different backgrounds and abilities would receive the education most suited to them. For her Caitríona Ruane has painted a murky picture of the future of secondary education that many like her believe will end in disaster.
She abhors anyone who lowers the benchmark for working class children. Hopelessness, despair and pushing the barriers until they are looking into the abyss are what she believes some of the young people in her area are experiencing. She believes banning the latest drugs is only a small part of the answer: 'We must give our young people hope, aspirations and achievable goals.' She quotes the mantra of a local non selective secondary headmaster to his pupils: 'If it's going to be, it has to be me.' Disadvantaged parents need to understand that their children deserve the very best and nothing less.
She recalls her own mother forcibly challenging one of her former headmasters at a PTA meeting when she was at primary school about his low expectations for his pupils because of where they came from. I add that in my experience, this malaise is unfortunately still present in some schools in Belfast today. She insists that 'this type of attitude must be challenged.' Naomi's mother never questioned her choice of career, later admitting she didn't really know what a civil engineer was but if that was the career path her daughter had chosen and Bloomfield Collegiate approved that would be grand with her.
As Naomi reflects on her life she is aware of the incredible positive influence her mother has had. She was widowed when Naomi was 11, having already experienced difficult times when her husband was made redundant and suffered ill health. She continued to work to ensure she and her daughter were financially and emotionally stable. Stability is a word Naomi uses often. She remembers her mother as someone who spoke her mind but with good humour; she wasn't interested in gossip or telling people what they wanted to hear. She recalls clearly an incident which epitomises her mother's strength of character: 'There were men collecting money in our street so they could paint the paving stones red, white and blue. My mother wouldn't pay up. Her resistance resulted in a large Union Jack being painted right outside our house but in the middle of the road. My mother explained to me that the men were doing this to intimidate young workmen who were from the Republic of Ireland. She wanted nothing to do with it.'
She concludes that honesty from politicians and those in power is the only way forward: 'Respect for our differences is just as important as equality.' She deplores scare tactics designed to win votes. She refers to rumours being circulated that Martin McGuiness will become First Minister. She is sure that anyone who understands how things work knows full well that it won't make any difference whether a unionist is at the helm or not: 'This sort of behaviour just poisons the atmosphere; it frightens people into voting for the wrong reasons.' She wants people to vote for those who get things done and will lead them to a better, more stable future: 'Standoffs over contentious parades, protests on interfaces, orchestrated riots all damage the ordinary working class people of these areas and they need to be told that.' She points out that we now more than ever desperately need jobs coming into Northern Ireland. She is sure employers will not invest in areas scarred by the remnants of our troubled past: 'We can be proud of where we came from but we need to focus on where we are going.'
One of Naomi's greatest regrets is that her mother didn't live long enough to see her take her seat as Lord Mayor or achieve what seemed the unachievable in East Belfast. I've a strong feeling, as I leave her, that Naomi's mother would approve of a daughter who is not only proud of where she came from but may help to inspire people like me to focus on where we are going.
