Travelling across sprawling Fermanagh and South Tyrone, while seven months
pregnant, Michelle Gildernew laughs at the very idea of the glamorous,
high-flying, expectant mother.
"I read about all these celebrities glowing through pregnancy. Well, maybe
it's possible with an array of stylists, make-up artists and people to
airbrush out your stretch marks.
"But try living in the real world - getting a toddler out of the house in
the morning, then canvassing all day. It's big stretchy trousers, whatever
else is comfortable, and just making the most of it."
Anywhere but Northern Ireland, Arlene Foster would be gunning for her.
They'd probably be best friends. They're both 34-years-old,
university-educated women from rural backgrounds; both juggling politics
with raising young families.
The last time they were even pregnant together. If Gildernew had been a few
days late, and Foster a bit early, they could have been just beds away in
the maternity unit of Enniskillen's Erne Hospital.
But this is Northern Ireland. Gildernew is the local Sinn Féin MP and
Foster, the DUP candidate, wants her job. "Your next MP will be a woman.
Make sure it's the right woman. Vote Foster!" is her campaign slogan.
Yet she knows mixing pregnancy and politics can be tough. An Ulster Unionist
before defecting to the DUP last year, Foster recalls an emotional address
to the UUP AGM on the RUC's future.
"I was eight months pregnant and very, very big. As I was speaking, I could
see the eyebrows being raised. Some delegates were obviously thinking 'how
awful getting up to speak in her condition!'"
Foster is proud her election campaign is predominantly female. Driving the
DUP people carrier is Kate McClements. A host of other women follow. There
is a man though, back in the office, Foster's secretary.
The candidate has just spent the morning celebrating daughter Sarah's fifth
birthday. "There were 13 girls. My wee boy George was as outnumbered as the
men on our election team!" she rejoices.
Sarah thinks only her mother should be smiling from trees and lamp-posts,
and wants the other candidates' posters taken down. Meanwhile, Gildernew is
explaining to her son Emmett that, at three, he's too young to canvass.
"Arlene and I have loads in common," she says. "It's far more than what
divides us. I don't know her very well personally but I certainly don't
dislike her."
Foster's attitude differs: "I've absolutely nothing in common with Michelle
Gildernew and I don't speak to her. She represents an organisation which
will never be legitimised until it completely abandons terrorism and
criminality.
"I've no problem with nationalist women in the SDLP. But Michelle Gildernew
isn't an ordinary politician. There is a private army behind her. I don't
talk to Gerry Adams or Martin McGuinness. Why should I make an exception for
her? I'm a unionist first, a woman second."
Foster grew up on a remote Border farm in Roslea. When she was eight, the
IRA tried to kill her police officer father: "They shot him in the head as
he was closing in the cattle. He came crawling into the house, blood
streaming down his face.
"We couldn't stay in Roslea. I'd to move house and school - it was
traumatic." Nine years later, she was on a school bus. The driver was a
part-time UDR man. "A bomb exploded under the bus. The girl sitting beside
me was badly injured."
Foster speaks of hundreds of Border Protestants, bereaved or maimed by the
IRA, still in pain. If elected, she will give them a voice. A close friend,
Aileen Quinton, whose mother died in the 1987 Enniskillen bomb, has taken a
week's holidays from her London job, to join Foster's campaign.
Gildernew says the IRA has apologised for certain incidents and unionists
should stop portraying it all as "poor beleaguered Protestants", while not
acknowledging that loyalists and the state caused suffering too.
She points to her own family history. In 1968, police removed her pregnant
mother and aunt from a house in Caledon. They were squatting in protest at
its allocation to a Protestant woman while their huge family lived in
cramped conditions with in-laws. "My mother is my heroine," Gildernew says.
The incident helped spark the civil rights' movement. "So you're the ones
who started all this!" Sinn Féin colleague Gerry Kelly announced on first
meeting her. The Gildernews endured "concerted police harassment" during
the Troubles, she says.
"When I was five my grandmother was shot at. A bullet lodged in the
living-room wall. Then, a bomb was left under my uncle's lorry. Later, my
two uncles were shot in the legs by the RUC and my father was badly beaten.
"There have been endless raids on our home. I went travelling to Australia
and on my first weekend home, the RUC tried to put in the back door with a
gas cylinder."
>From "Derrylin to Dungannon", dozens of nationalist families who lost loved
ones due to security force collusion, still await justice, she claims.
Thursday's election takes place on Bobby Sands' anniversary. Gildernew is
"deeply honoured" to represent his old constituency.
Despite her family's republicanism, she has no IRA CV. She sees Sinn Féin
as "the most progressive party on the island" on women's rights. Gerry
Adams is a "great advocate". Her own rise has been rapid. She dropped out
of college, travelled the world, ran Sinn Féin's London office, and became
an MP four years ago.
Foster had a much tougher time. As a Young Unionist chairperson, she was
widely tipped to become the UUP's first female Westminster MP. But her
fall-out with the leadership over the Belfast Agreement ended that.
"I was persona non grata for years. I faced as much opposition from within
my own party as from outside it." In the Assembly elections, some UUP
canvassers told people to vote SDLP instead of her.
The situation was even more stressful because, while challenging leadership
policies, she worked as a solicitor in the Enniskillen practice of UUP
chairman, James Cooper. She went searching for, and found, another job when
expecting her second child. "Arlene has bottle," says a colleague.
Foster says unionists are wrongly suspicious on human rights' matters. She
expresses concern at the Blair government's infringement of civil liberties.
Although disagreeing with the leftist politics of the barrister, Helena
Kennedy, she supports her on many legal issues, including the legal system's
treatment of women.
Gildernew's seat is secure but Foster can hope to secure second-place in the
constituency, ahead of the UUP. "The perception of the DUP as anti-woman
annoys me. I'd be the first to complain if sexism was there," she says.
Paisley is "very encouraging". His 'battlebus' has joined her canvass and he
rings regularly to offer help. "The only phone call I ever got from David
Trimble was to tell me not to go on TV. Of course, I ignored him!"
Gildernew's time outside politics is spent on "Gaelic football and catching
up with the washing". She enjoys chick lit "like Marian Keyes". Foster
"relaxes" in bed by leafing through a George VI biography, before falling
asleep. "Very boring!" declares husband Brian.
The DUP candidate dislikes the label "feminist" yet that is what she is. She
has dreamed of Westminster since she was 17. Her heroine is Baroness
Thatcher, "a strong leader but too much a queen bee who didn't help other
women up the ladder enough." Foster delights that two women have joined her
on the local council DUP ticket.
Gildernew didn't consider herself a feminist when she won the seat in 2001
but motherhood converted her. "It's a big challenge, trying to be a mammy at
home and an MP everywhere else. It's hard for all women who don't have
nine-to-five jobs."
Gildernew is lucky it's her second pregnancy because she's being regaled
with childbirth horror stories from women voters. She hasn't time to think
of a name for the baby: "I'll get the election out of the way first."
She's not "making a song-and-dance about it" but she hopes her condition
will encourage young women: "If they see me so heavily pregnant on their
doorsteps, maybe it'll show that women can combine work and motherhood and,
even though it's difficult, that combination can be quite a wonderful
thing."
