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Unlike
recent candidates seeking election to the assembly
in tomorrow's poll, who have been interviewed by the
Blanket, Julian Robinson is firmly situated on
the right of the political spectrum. No Marxist revolutionary
or tree-hugging environmentalist, he chairs the Northern
Ireland Conservative Party. As part of his learning
curve, however, he once attended a meeting of something
called the Revolutionary Workers Party while living
in Liverpool. I suppose if Everton were the only home
team that day then why not pass an hour with the cults?
A suitable punishment for somebody subscribing to
right wing ideologies. He seems to have thought so
too, finding that they 'had no sense of humour! They
wanted to lead a revolution but I knew there weren't
going to be many laughs along the way. What's the
point in that?' I could identify with the feeling
- know a few myself, faces like lemon suckers, the
only books they ever got as children at Christmas
were those containing turgid tracts about Bolsheviks
and Mensheviks. While the rest of us played cowboys
and Indians, those PC kids on the block were immersed
in strategic games of bourgeoisie and proletariat.
Anyhow, on his return from Liverpool, Julian became
one of the founding members of the Conservative Party
in Northern Ireland.
I
first met him while we were both panellists on a Sunday
radio broadcast. He was personable and engaging, no
airs and graces - much removed from what the popular
republican perception of Conservative Party members
is. Although apart from one caustic exchange with
the bumptious Rupert Allison, the Tories I have debated
with were civil and courteous. That we could debate
at all was amazing in itself. At one point the hatred
was so mutually intense that the Conservative Party
gloated at the deaths of our hunger strikers and we
celebrated their sleep being disturbed by the Brighton
bomb. Whatever else about the peace process, it has
created an environment in which people can find the
space to engage, including those who do not support
it.
The
Northern Ireland Conservative Party tends to confirm
for people living here just how unlike Finchley the
North actually is. Although the party in Britain is
a pale shadow of its former self, endowed with as
much appeal as the last two leaders had hair, Michael
Howard may insert a steel rod into its back at a time
when the spin and spoof of the Blair government is
threatening to take sizeable bites from Labour's huge
electoral and parliamentary majority. Blair's addiction
to lying may just be the Viagra that puts an end to
the present flaccid Tory performance. But in the North
the party is unlikely to benefit from any stiffening
of resolve in what Conservatives here would call the
mainland. The North truly is a place apart. The conventions
that apply across the water have little currency here.
The
Northern Ireland Conservative Party is a marginal
body and has never again attained what minimal heights
or exposure to publicity it managed under the leadership
of Lawrence Kennedy. The price of that profile on
one occasion was almost his life. The INLA took over
his house but intervention by the RUC prevented the
organisation proceeding with whatever plans it had
in mind.
What
stares the Tories in the face is that the North has
its own specifically local parties which people remember
at election time, despite backstabbing all year round,
discard their reason and come out to vote for. If
our selection of candidates were to appear in Finchley,
the public would suspect an alien invasion from the
planet Uranus, where the inhabitants have the unappealing
habit of talking out their backsides. They in turn
would find little in Finchley that would persuade
them to stay for any length of time. After all, for
them, Northern Ireland is the most important place
in the world.
Standing
in North Down where he is trying to build on his performance
from the Westminster election of 2001 when he secured
815 votes, Julian Robertson's chances of winning a
seat do not seem good. At present the party has no
elected representatives.
At
one stage we did have the largest Party on North
Down Council but then the Party went into a nosedive
and our fortunes followed. We nearly unseated the
late Jim KIlfedder in North Down too but just fell
short. I often wonder how things might have been
if we had just managed to take that seat. Oh, the
heady days of near-victory! However, our Party is
rejuvenated and reinvigorated and we are coming
back. We will continue working hard to build up
strength and target a seat or two to get that breakthrough.
It will happen some day, I just couldn't bet the
mortgage on when.
Nor
would I. The words Robin Day once scorned Jeremy Thorpe
with after the latter detailed his visit to a British
power station - ‘as close to power as you will
ever come’ - crept into my mind. A brief look
at Tory electoral fortunes gives the party little
cause for comfort. In the 1993 local government elections
Lawrence Kennedy won 414 first preference votes and
managed to take a seat. In 1997 Julian Robertson's
vote was 112; in 2001 it increased by a mere 60 to
172. Married with three children Robertson runs his
own business, is affable and possessed of a sharp
intellect. He hardly needs politics to find friends
and seems more than capable of sustaining a career
outside of the murky world. So why do the Conservatives
bother organising or standing in the North given the
seemingly fixed political allegiances? Even Labour
won't do that. With unionist and nationalist conservatives
in abundance British conservatives can only spoil
the broth. Does Churchill's statement about the dreary
steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone not loom ominously
on his mind when traversing the political landscape
here?
It’s
not a question of bothering if you only think you
can win. After all, if that were the case we wouldn't
stand in the cities of Liverpool or Glasgow at the
moment either. I agree that political allegiances
do seem to be stubbornly fixed but that does not
mean they will be forever. After all, if the Assembly
survives as a stable institution, do you think people
lying in a hospital bed care if the Health Minister
is a nationalist or a unionist? No, what they want
to know is are they going to get the care they need
when they need it. How does the Orange/Green divide
come into that? Just because you are a nationalist
or unionist, does that mean you have the same outlook
on healthcare delivery as every other nationalist
or unionist? I think not. The pressures on local
parties to adapt to the new politics will grow as
we take charge of our own devolved affairs and the
opportunity is there for ourselves and Labour ...
Finally, I am a Conservative and I am from Northern
Ireland. Why shouldn't I stand for my beliefs? Why
do other small parties stand? I never said success
would be easy or a short-term thing but we shall
get there in the end.
A
reasonable assumption elsewhere, perhaps, but surely
a waste of time here. Moreover, from 815 votes to
a position where obtaining a seat becomes a realistic
possibility, the Tory vote would need to grow exponentially
and there seems no way that this is going to happen.
How can the Tories persuade voters that they can make
a serious challenge for an assembly seat? What has
changed from 2001 that would convince a sizeable portion
of the electorate to break with ingrained habits and
go for the Conservatives?
I
have principles too you know. A political party
exists to fight elections, not hide behind the net
curtains and wish the electorate would all come
knocking at our door and say how wonderful we are.
The Conservative Party has been through the doldrums
nationally and obviously that affects us locally.
We are getting our act together nationally, starting
to build our strength up and we are now doing so
locally. Standing in the Assembly elections is only
one step in the process of building up this party.
If we have not had our act together locally, that
is due to our mistakes and our inexperience. That
is changing, and as leader of the party here I can
assure you that come November 27th we get up out
of bed and carry on with the process of building
up the party, no matter how many or how few votes
we gather in the Assembly elections. We are becoming
more hard-nosed, more determined, more experienced
and ready. You should not underestimate the effect
a rejuvenated Conservative Party can have.
North
Down being the most affluent constituency in the North,
the Conservatives may think it is good to be amongst
rich friends. But they are fielding a further six
candidates outside the constituency: South Antrim,
East Antrim, Lagan Valley, East Belfast, South Belfast
and Strangford. And in a revealing glimpse of Tory
populism the manifesto says it is insufficient to
keep development restricted to one part of the North.
The party feels that there is a serious problem of
over-government here. It points out that in Scotland,
where there is three times the population, there are
only 129 members in its parliament whereas Stormont
has 108. At least the Scots can claim to be doing
something other than whining for their living. But
is the critique of government size genuinely motivated
by the obvious bungling inefficiency that characterised
the last executive or merely an ideological assault?
Are the Tories simply not saying let the free market
rule and the devil take the hindmost - invariably
the poorest in society?
Nice
try to bring in an ideological criticism but the
two halves of your question don't go together. The
larger the government, the greater the bureaucracy,
the greater the waste. All we are saying is why
do we need so much government? I understand all
the arguments about keeping people on board and
smaller parties involved but do we need so many
government departments and so many MLAs? The irony
is those people who want to keep things large, cumbersome
and bureaucratic will actually end up undermining
that which they wish to protect. Government is there
to serve the people and if the people end up viewing
it as the other way round, with government having
a self inflated view of itself and MLAs having their
noses in the trough how will it gain respect?
Linked
to the issue of Leviathan government is the make up
of the health service. The Conservatives wish to replace
the four health boards with one servicing commissioning.
But apart from centralisation and the problems that
it brings how much more effective would it be?
For
a place the size of Northern Ireland, we have to
question the need for four health boards. Yes we
want to streamline to make sure more of the money
goes to the front line but we also want to give
primary care a much greater role in commissioning
services. 80% of contact with the NHS begins and
ends with GPs and we wish to see resources reflect
that, with GPs given a greater role in commissioning
services.
How
then would the Conservatives assess the role of Bairbre
de Brun as Health Minister? After all she was introducing
right wing measures that even the Tories under Thatcher
are said to have balked at.
Her
one key reform was the introduction of Health and
Social Care Groups. However, in the process she
managed to alienate GPs so that across Northern
Ireland they refuse to take part in them. She was
a minister who brooked no compromise, her way was
right and that was it so she did achieve the near
impossible and unite GPs. Her period in office was
characterised by an inability to tackle strategic
decisions on the reform of hospitals, trusts and
Health Boards so that the modernisation of the health
service now lags 3 or 4 years behind England, Scotland
and Wales.
In
the educational sphere Julian Robertson is a supporter
of academic selection and a strong opponent of the
Burns Report. 'How the proponents of these measures
can look us in the eye as they contemplate this wanton
destruction ... is beyond me.' He has still to come
to terms with our political scenery where all the
players give you a dirty look straight in your face
when you don't believe the obvious lies they are telling.
But without academic selection, perhaps the way is
clear for achievement on the grounds of merit. Given
his strong views on education how does he assess the
role of Martin McGuinness as Education Minister in
the last executive who pushed for an end to academic
selection?
I
don't think my views are particularly "strong".
I simply recognise that this is a key, perhaps the
key, issue we need to address. The future of our
economic well being, our success in building a prosperous
society lies in giving our schoolchildren the best
education we can. And that is before we even consider
our duty to try and offer each and every pupil the
opportunity to fulfil their own personal potential.
And
Did McGuinness prove a barrier to this?
What
I will say about Martin McGuinness is that he said
what he wanted to do and did it. Rather like Maggie
Thatcher, love them or hate them, you have to acknowledge
you know where you stand with them on certain issues.
Is that the first time Martin McGuiness has been
compared to Maggie Thatcher? However, I think his
policies on education are wrong. I do not doubt
the sincerity of those who want to abolish any form
of academic selection to schools and their belief
this will improve education opportunities for all.
They are just misguided. We all know there will
always be some schools performing better than others.
Unless we have a factory hidden away somewhere churning
out identikit teachers and children, it's inevitable.
Parents will want to send their children to the
school they think will best suit them. That too
is natural. Abolishing academic selection will simply
mean allocating places by postcode. As in Edinburgh,
people with money will move to areas beside the
best schools to ensure places and house prices will
soar. Can someone explain to me how that improves
the chances of someone from a deprived area to get
to a better school? I can't see it. I see no reason
to destroy what we do best but see every reason
to focus on those areas in which we are not doing
well. You watch our politicians as they end up following
the example of Diane Abbott and bailing out when
they feel they have to!
In
the Conservative manifesto the party was critical
of Alliance, the SDLP and Women's Coalition, but Sinn
Fein escaped opprobrium, prompting me to speculate
that there might be something in common between the
Tory policy and Sinn Fein's?
I
wouldn't read too much into SF not being mentioned
in the manifesto - just to put the record straight,
SF, Alliance, Women's Coalition are wrong. The SDLP
are wrong and a lot of them are hypocrites trying
to pull the ladder up after them, the PUP are wrong,
the Greens are wrong, the UUP and DUP just flap
around. Is that everyone?
No
Tory platform is complete without a full frontal assault
on crime. And the need for enhanced police powers
is at the centre of the Tory manifesto. But the party
would do well to read a thoughtful piece penned by
the loyalist prisoner Clifford Peeples in Maghaberry
Jail for Fortnight which seriously questions
the extent to which imprisonment does little other
than increase recidivism. But the key concern on my
mind was whether he felt Patten had fundamentally
altered the RUC?
Only
in that it doesn't exist any more! I know republicans
love to still refer to the RUC but, from my perspective,
that isn't true. You won't find any objections from
me on the principle of having a police service drawn
from and serving the entire community, nor will
you find objections to a service evolving to meet
change. Any police service that doesn't is in trouble.
You will find objections if the usefulness of that
service is compromised by some politically correct
requirement. For instance, discrimination is wrong
and positive discrimination is also wrong. It doesn't
effectively redress the balance and simply builds
up further resentment which is why I believe the
50:50 recruitment rules is misguided. I think we
would be much better off in directing resources
at those areas from which recruitment is low be
that defined by religion, geography, race, or gender.
Disliking
what I had long viewed as the gung ho militarism of
the Conservative Party and its penchant for foreign
war criminals such as Augusta Pinochet, I probed Julian
on the present bout of adventurism abroad. Why should
the voters give their preference to a party that backs
the present war on Iraq - or do foreign matters not
greatly impact on Northern Irish voters?
Why
shouldn't they? Your assumptions are all a bit awry
here. First of all, there is no longer a war on
Iraq. There is certainly a war in Iraq as the various
terrorist groupings have moved in to fight the war
against the west. The war on international terrorism
is one we can't avoid. Secondly, you assume everyone
in Northern Ireland thinks the decision to support
the war was wrong - how do you know that? The Conservative
Party supported the government because we were led
to believe Iraq posed a major threat with the development
of WMD - time will tell just how much sexing up
went on. Thirdly, of course foreign policy matters
to us. Indeed, Irish soldiers were involved too.
It also worth noting, the Assembly won't be declaring
war on anyone as that is not devolved! Is it?
Well,
it declared war on the poor, awarded itself pay rises,
cut back on health services, deprived the public of
£1million a day from the public purse and began
the construction of an environment suitable to the
privateers. But overall the Robertson response was
typical Tory-speak. Every country the British have
ever subjected to armed invasion suddenly appears
disproportionately populated with criminal and terrorist
types. Inevitably this type of chauvinistic thinking
led me closer to home and the Tory record over here
during the worst years of the conflict. Both Conservative
and Labour talk of the sectarian squabble - but does
the Conservative Party not accept any responsibility
for the conflict here? Three key events on the watch
of the Heath government launched the conflict into
an orbit all of its own from which nothing could ground
it: Falls Curfew of 1970; internment of 1971 and Bloody
Sunday of 1972. How does the chair of the Northern
Ireland Conservative Party respond to criticisms that
the North would have found peace much sooner were
it not for the Tory Party and for that reason the
best thing the party could do in the North is disband?
Now,
don't make me cross. You could point to any episode
and say the same. All you mention are typical of
the sordid little war we have come out of and are
a stain on us all. As are Teebane, Greysteel, Oxford
Street et al. How can anyone look at any incident
in isolation and say if that hadn't happened then
such and such would / would not have occurred? Could
you not point to any number occurrences and say
we could have found peace earlier, if only? Should
SF not disband as Martin McGuinness admits he led
the Derry IRA for a while? Should the DUP not disband
because of Ulster Resistance? Should Labour not
disband because of Iraq? Perhaps you think they
should! The Conservative Party is a Party of the
United Kingdom. We can potentially form a government
and we wish to have elected representatives in all
four parts of the UK. We believe we have and are
developing policies to address the issues which
affect us all and we want to argue our case and
ask for the chance to put them into practice. I
believe Northern Ireland has opted out of "proper"
politics for too long and it is time we had our
input - lets have a few more Irish accents within
the Conservative Party I say!
Rich
plumy North Down ones I think. But the party leader
argues that ‘there is a need to move on beyond
the orange/green cleavage and take up the more left/right
one.’ That would be all very well if we could
find a left. But given that the Conservatives are
not allowed to register in the assembly as right,
what hat would they wear?
The
Conservative candidates believe it is a point of
principle worth stating that we would not wish to
designate as either but as "Other". I
am afraid that our beloved Assembly reinforces sectarianism
and the need to identify with a tribe by having
the requirement to designate as one or the other.
I really, really do not believe this contributes
in any way to resolving our differences and pulling
together. I listened to Alex Maskey recently in
a hustings meeting explain why he believed the designation
system was necessary and I can understand the reasoning
why people feel the need to have that safety net.
However, in the longer term it is self-defeating
and we should aim at some stage to get rid of it,
replacing it with some sort of majority weighted
voting system.
The
IRA’s war is over and the organisations objectives
are as close to being achieved now as they were in
1974. Sinn Fein is obviously spoofing when it claims
there will be a united Ireland in 2016. But do the
Conservatives feel there will ever be a united Ireland?
Or do they still believe as Tom King did - the former
secretary of state for Northern Ireland - that the
North would remain within the UK in perpetuity?
Do
you know, I don't really know the answer to that
one. There is so much in the melting pot to consider
over and above any crude religious headcount. How
will attitudes change, harden/soften as peace beds
down, how will the UK and Ireland's attitude to
NI change over time, how will relations between
countries change as the European Union progresses
or recedes? Obviously, I believe we are best within
the UK and I hope that stays the same. If there
is to be a united Ireland I feel it is some way
off. I would hope that the issue of any referendum,
time predictions and such like aren't used along
with crude census data to keep the pot boiling from
time to time.
The
interview completed, I waxed ironical on the situation
we find ourselves in today. Julian Robertson may never
prove successful as a Tory politician in the North
- there is little space for British conservatives
in an arena awash with Irish ones. But the British
state, to which he gives his allegiance, won its battle
in Ireland. The IRA’s war is over and the party
of Margaret Thatcher is contesting elections in the
North. The British are still here on the very same
terms they have been stipulating for decades. Republicans
now accept those terms - the British can stay as long
as they have the consent of a majority in the North.
How many times did Thatcher promise to grind us down
until we arrived at this position? Had somebody suggested
during the H-Block struggle that this was the way
to go they would have been dismissed as working for
the other side. The Conservative Party is a pro-Good
Friday Agreement party, yet still there remain those
who would insist the GFA is revolutionary, never stopping
long enough to ask themselves Susan Griffin's uncomfortable
question: 'how old is the habit of denial? We keep
secrets from ourselves that all along we know.' Martin
McGuinness, who at least seems to win a grudging admiration
from Julian Robertson, has asked for the electorate
to vote Sinn Fein ‘down the slate’ and then
transfer to other pro-agreement parties. Twenty years
ago Sinn Fein leaders were exhorting us to kill the
Tories, now they are asking us to vote for them in
preference to the socialist Eamonn McCann. Politics
- a funny old game, which Oscar Levant perhaps got
right when he said of a politician, 'he'll doublecross
that bridge when he comes to it.'
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