A PAINFUL MEMORY
MLA COLIN McGRATH ON SUDDEN DEATH OF HIS TEENAGE SISTER
Q You were born in Downpatrick, but who is in your family?
A My mother Rosemary and father Brian. I had two brothers, Philip and Stephen, and a sister Alison. I had a very challenging upbringing.
When I was 10 my sister died of leukaemia. She was 16 years old at the time. She took ill on a Friday and was dead on the Monday. It was a cold that progressively got worse and was then diagnosed as a very severe form of leukaemia. She was taken to hospital and put on life support, but 48 hours later they had to switch that off. It was a very traumatic time.
About three months later my brother Philip, who was then 19, had a very serious car accident that left him in a wheelchair.
That made a huge change in my life because although I was the youngest we all very quickly had to learn about making amendments to the house. There were particular places we could and couldn’t go because of access for disabled people. It was a challenge for us a family, but we faced those challenges.
Philip, unfortunately, passed away in January of this year.
Q That was clearly a difficult time that changed your approach to life, but can you tell me about the single most positive thing to happen to you thus far?
A I can remember the night I decided to go to the youth centre in Downpatrick.
I had some friends who were going and they asked me to come along. I wasn’t sure.
I had to ask my parents if I was allowed, but
I did go and from that moment I felt I was part of another community. I was welcomed in, I made new friends.
To date the people who are in my closest group of friends are people I met there. My closest friend, for whom I was best man and godfather to his child, I met at the youth centre.
It gave me the opportunity to travel all over Europe, Ireland and the UK. It became so much a part of my life and it was all down to the decision I made that first night about whether I should or shouldn’t go.
Q What was Downpatrick like for the young Colin McGrath?
A Downpatrick was a good place to grow up. I don’t think it is big enough to talk about suburbs, but we lived about a mile away from the town centre. I was able to walk out my front door and be in the town, and I was able to walk out the back door and be in fields, so I had a country upbringing, but in the town. It meant we had plenty of places to go and explore and play in.
As a teenager I expanded my world to Downpatrick town centre, and that was when I joined the youth centre. It was the same youth centre that I joined as a 12-year-old that I became deputy director of when I qualified 10 years later.
Q What took you into politics?
A My background is in youth work — that was my career and that involves helping people in the community. I have always had that sense of activism. When you mesh all that together, politics is a fairly natural step.
Q Why the SDLP?
A To me the SDLP is the true party for social justice. Politics has to be about helping people and making people’s lives better. It is about intervening and doing what you can to improve lives. That social justice is in the DNA of the SDLP.
Q You are the education spokesman for the party. Why do you think some pupils leave school with few or no academic qualifications while others excel no matter what social background they come from?
A There could be a fundamental issue with the ‘one size fits all’ approach to education. An education system should be responsive to the educational needs of young people.
Categorising pupils and telling them “this is the curriculum you must follow” isn’t always the best approach. We need to make the education system more reflective of the needs of the pupils, so if you are going to excel at languages, science and maths, then that is what you should be studying. But if you are going to excel at woodwork, plumbing and English, then those are the subjects you should be studying.
The curriculum that you follow should be responsive to the needs that you have. That might mean a wholesale review of how we deliver education, but if it meets the needs of the young people then we would be getting it right.
Q What are your views on the transfer tests that children still sit despite the 11-plus being abolished nearly 10 years ago?
A I think the majority of society agrees that it’s not the best way of delivering education. What we have are schools that parents want their children to go to, but I would like to see us reviewing it so that every school is a school that parents want to send their children to.
To have that level playing field is important, but also it’s this thing we have of taking 10 and 11-year-old children and branding them as failures and then saying that this is an appropriate way to educate our children when it absolutely isn’t.
Q Do you approve of grammar school education or do you favour the comprehensive system some politicians advocate?
A It is not whether a school is a grammar or not, it is whether it has open access to everyone and whether there is selection. The issue is whether or not you support selection, and the SDLP has categorically said it does not on the basis that it brands a large portion of children as failures and puts an inordinate amount of pressure on them.
Q You attended a grammar school yourself. How did you get on?
A I got on fine — the school also happened to be the closest school to my front door but there was huge pressure on me. I was the fourth child in our house out of four and all three in front of me had passed the 11-plus.
I remember the pressure that I was under to pass that exam.
That wasn’t necessarily from parents telling me “you must, you must, you must”, but can you imagine being the fourth in a house and not passing it when everyone else had? These are the pressures we need to reflect on and ask is that good for a 10-year-old.
Q Your degree was in community work which took you on placements to various parts of Northern Ireland but also Durban in South Africa. Why did you go there and what was that like?
A It was a really crucial element of the degree. The idea was because I was doing my degree in Northern Ireland in the mid-1990s that there were huge community-based problems and massive community relations issues based on being a Catholic or a Protestant.
The idea was to go and see and experience youth and community work in another part of the world where the issue wasn’t about religion. It was an
My brother was left in a wheelchair after a crash... unfortunately he passed away in January of this year
OCTOBER 16
1555: Bishops Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley were burnt at the stake for heresy.
1793: Marie Antoinette (above), Queen of France as wife of Louis XVI, was convicted of treason and guillotined in Paris.
1846: An anaesthetic was successfully used for the first time at the Massachusetts General Hospital where dentist William Morton used diethyl ether before removing a tumour from a man’s jaw.
1847: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte was published under the pseudonym, Currer Bell.
1854: Oscar Wilde (below), was born in Dublin.
1881: The Sunday People was published for the first time, as The People.
1902: The first detention centre for young offenders was opened at the village of Borstal, Kent.
1946: The Nuremberg executions began. They included von Ribbentrop, Rosenberg and Streicher.
1958: Blue Peter started on BBC TV. The presenters were Leila Williams and Christopher Trace.
1964: Harold Wilson became prime minister of a Labour government which won a general election with a majority of four.
ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR:
Boris Johnson claimed his previously unseen newspaper column in which he backed staying in the European Union was ‘’semi-parodic’’ but admitted he was ‘’wrestling’’ with whether to back Brexit.
BIRTHDAYS:
Angela Lansbury, actress, 92; Peter Bowles, actor, 81; Terry Griffiths, former snooker player and coach, 70; Tim Robbins, actor, 59; Gary Kemp, actor/musician (Spandau Ballet), 58; Flea (Michael Peter Balzary), rock bassist (Red Hot Chili Peppers), 55; Davina McCall (below), TV presenter, 50.