Michelle Gildernew hopes to be a strong voice in Brussels for disillusioned Irish farmers
“I never had any aspirations to go into politics,” is the surprising statement made by Michelle Gildernew.
Surprising in the sense that the Gildernew name is synonymous with politics in the North of Ireland – with Michelle herself being one of the leading lights.
Gildernew is one of two Sinn Féin candidates who’ll be on the ballot paper for June’s European Elections for the Midlands-North West seat in the European Parliament.
The party will be hoping to get current MEP Chris MacManus re-elected and Gildernew herself to join him in Brussels.
Both Michelle and the Gildernew family as a whole have been prominent figures on the political scene across the border in the North of Ireland – be it as elected representatives or activists.
Michelle’s brother, Colm, is an MLA for Fermanagh & South Tyrone in the North Assembly. Her sister Gael was last year elected as a Councillor for Mid-Ulster Council, while her family were leading figures in the Civil Rights Association in the North during the 1960s.
Gildernew herself has been an MLA for Fermanagh & South Tyrone, the Minister for Agriculture and is currently the sitting MP for the Fermanagh & South Tyrone seat – one that she will vacate if voters in Sligo and the rest of the Midlands-North West constituency elect her as the area’s MEP this summer.
While the Gildernew family is steeped in politics, Michelle’s own political awakening came in 1981 when the Westminster seat she would one day win was being contested by a certain Bobby Sands in a by-election.
This was no ordinary by-election. Sands at the time was not only a prisoner of war at the Maze ‘H-Blocks’ Prison near Lisburn, but was also undertaking a hunger strike in a bid to restore political status to all POW’s who had been convicted and incarcerated during The Troubles.
His victory was a seismic one which still reverberates around the world today. As was his death soon after which was a result of the hunger strike itself.
“I never had any aspirations to go into politics,” says Michelle. “Never did I ever think that I would end up as the MP for Fermanagh & South Tyrone.
“I was 10 when Bobby Sands stood for the MP for the seat that I currently represent. I remember being old enough to realise what was happening (when Sands stood for election) and that this was different from previous elections.
“I said to my Mummy (Geraldine), ‘why is this election so important?’. She said, ‘Michelle, if we win this election we could save Bobby’s life’. Obviously we know that didn’t happen but Bobby’s election changed my life.”
Two years before Michelle was born, the Gildernew family was involved in what became a landmark event in the campaign for Civil Rights – one that highlighted the injustices faced by the North’s Catholic population.
The Caledon Squat of 1968 saw the Co. Tyrone village come under the world’s spotlight. New houses were built and to be allocated equally amongst the Catholic and Protestant communities.
However, Councillors at Dungannon Council (now Mid-Ulster Council) reneged on the deal with the gerrymandering that had plagued the North since the partition of 1921 had established the statelet coming into play.
One house in particular had been earmarked for members of Michelle’s family who were moving back home from England only for it to be given to a Protestant woman, Emily Beattie, who worked for a local Unionist politician.
The family, along with other activists – including Nationalist Party MP Austin Currie – staged a sit-in squat before being forcibly removed by the (discredited and now-disbanded) RUC with one of the policemen being Emily Beattie’s brother William.
“We were, I suppose, a political family,” adds Michelle. “My granny and granddad were activists long before I was born. When Caledon happened in 1968, my Granny and my Mother were keen proponents of that decision to squat in the house at Caledon.
“At that time in the North, if you had a house, you had a vote. So if you couldn’t get a house, you didn’t have a vote. This was a very blunt instrument that was used to stop the Nationalist franchise.
“Basically, they were using housing as a way of disenfranchising Nationalists (from having the vote).
“My aunt (Mary Goodfellow) had come over from England. She had a husband, two children and another baby on the way. The local Republican club had campaigned to have houses built in the Bantry (townland of Dungannon, Co. Tyrone). They had built 15 units in Caledon with seven houses allocated to Nationalists and eight to Unionists.
“So my aunt was led to believe she was getting a house by the way they were (meant) to be allocated. She didn’t get one – the one she thought she was getting was allocated to a 19-year-old single girl (Emily Beattie) who worked for a local Unionist politician.
“Our family squatted in the house and tried to get proper rent, the ability to rent the house. In response, they (Dungannon Council) wouldn’t turn on services such as electric and running water.
“They were evicted in a blaze of publicity. My Mother, who was then pregnant, and my grandmother were both dragged out of the house (one of the RUC officers performing this act was the brother of Emily Beattie, William).
“So that all happened before I was born and I grew up with a strong sense of right and wrong, a strong sense of injustice and discrimination in regard to what it both meant and actually looked like.
“I’d go to (primary) school in Caledon and recognise that we were not obviously ‘good enough’ to get a house there at that time.
“Many of us in the family had a strong political bent I suppose. I didn’t aspire to be a politician – even today, it doesn’t sit comfortably with me but I’m an elected representative and I’m here to work for the people.”
Gildernew has gone on to represent Fermanagh & South Tyrone both in Stormont in Belfast and at London’s House of Commons.
She continued: “I was elected to the first (post-Good Friday Agreement) Assembly of the North in 1998 as one of the ‘new kids on the block’ and it was a very steep learning curve as you can imagine, but I really enjoyed my years in the Assembly.
“In 2001, I was then asked to run as MP for Fermanagh & South Tyrone. I was honoured to win the seat back then. The first time I won it, I did so by 53 votes which was then reduced to 51.
“My smallest majority was by four (2010 UK General Election) which was subsequently reduced to (following a court appeal by the defeated Independent Unionist candidate Rodney Connor) one vote.
“So I fully understand that every single vote counts. Come election time, the unionist parties come together and back one candidate in the hope of preventing a Nationalist MP in what is a constituency that has a Nationalist majority.
“People point to the small amount of votes that I’ve won by but when you look at it, I’ve won with unionist votes. While political unionism comes together to keep me out, ordinary people from the unionist background vote me in.
“They do so because they know that I work for everybody and treat everybody the same way. There’s not a sectarian bone in my body. Those voters know that what they see is what they get – a really hard-working committed MP who will work for all of them. That’s very humble.
“The electorate deserve to see you work for a living. They want to see you canvassing because that’s a great tool for communicating. We don’t just go door to door to talk – we go there to listen.
“People who I engage with on the doorsteps know that those five or 10 minutes that you’re at their door is giving you both a chance to get to know one another.
“I don’t take a single vote for granted. We have to go out and work for every vote we can and I think people recognise that when they vote for Sinn Féin, they know what they’re going to get.”
So why now run for the European Parliament?
Michelle explains: “I didn’t actually make the decision – it was Matt Carthy (TD for Cavan-Monaghan) who came to me and said ‘we think you should run for Europe for the MEP seat’.
“Up until that, it hadn’t been on my radar at all. But I do believe Ireland needs to be at the fore in the setting of the direction of the European Union for the years ahead.
“I want to play a role in making that happen by bringing my years of negotiating experience and dealing with institutions as a former Agricultural Minister to the job of standing up for Ireland in the
European Parliament.
“It’s very exciting – it’s a new challenge. We’ve got a great MEP in Chris MacManus and the fact that the party has put their faith in me and asked me to run alongside him to try and win two seats is a very exciting prospect.”
If successful, Gildernew insists there won’t be any ‘double-jobbing’ and that she will step down as MP for Fermanagh & South Tyrone in order to give her full attention to the Midlands-North West European seat.
“The Westminster election will probably be (taking place) in a matter of months. We expect it to happen before the end of this year,” she said.
“If I’m elected as MEP, there won’t be any double-jobbing. I’m fully committed to the role of MEP and for working for the interests of the people in the Midlands-North West constituency.
“As regards to Fermanagh and South Tyrone, we don’t think there would be a by-election. The party will go into the Westminster election as usual and we will be putting up another candidate.
“Hopefully, we’ll hold Fermanagh and South Tyrone but we don’t take anything for granted.”
Gildernew hopes to use her experience as being a former Minister of Agriculture in the North to fight for the farming community of Sligo and the rest of the constituency.
The European Parliament has been labelled as being obsessed with red tape and bureaucracy but Gildernew insists that from her own experience in dealing with Brussels, it is there to help, not to obstruct.
She said: “When I went in as Agricultural Minister for the North, one of the asks was from the Ulster Farmer’s Union wanted to get rid of European red tape and – as they saw it – nonsense’. “When I went in and looking at of the levels bureaucracy were there, realised they were there