A Lib Dem made in Mayo

How did a Mayo man whose family was active in the local Labour Party end up standing as a Liberal Democrat candidate in the upcoming British election, having spurned the British Labour Party? IARLA KILBANE-DAWErecounts his journey

THE ELECTION campaign is just over a week old and I’m already exhausted. This was not the plan. Four years ago, I stepped away from involvement in politics to focus on the day job. I’d had a rough few years, with tragedies among family and friends that had really knocked me, and spending my energies getting the Lib Dems elected in north London didn’t feel like the mission it had before. I walked away from it all, got a new job and got on with my life. But when my old parliamentary constituency of Edmonton, in north-east London, came up, I felt I couldn’t resist.

Edmonton is a fairly safe seat for a Labour MP, and the nearest challenger is a Conservative. In this case a self-made multi-millionaire Conservative with the expansive manners of a north-east London local lad done good who I’m sure is making Alex Douglas-Hume spin in his grave, but a Conservative nonetheless (if you’re reading this Andrew, more power to you). I reckoned I was on to a pretty safe bet that I wouldn’t make a total mess of my current life plan by getting elected, but would still let me keep my hand in and do my bit for the cause.

The whole point of all this is that people run for election for a reason. Whether or not you ever get elected, that reason stays with you all your life. It’s like an itch you have to scratch, or a phantom limb or a nicotine habit – you can’t ignore it, it’s always hanging around. The itch is believing that something out there is wrong and that someone, somewhere, has to do something about it, even if it’s someone as daft as you.

In my case the itch came from growing up in the west of Ireland in a family of people who believed that Ireland could and should be different. They were active with Michael D in the local Labour Party.

My mother spent the energy of her youth fighting for women’s rights in Ireland in the 1970s and 1980s. She ran a family-planning clinic in Galway with other dedicated individuals, at a time when condoms were illegal, divorce was unconstitutional and homosexuals impossible. I’m incredibly proud that my mother and her friends succeeded, and glad that evil, repressive Ireland is dead.

So for me it was perfectly natural to join the British Labour Party when I came to England in 1992 to do a PhD. I joined up but didn’t do much, concentrating instead on the ozone layer I was studying, the river I was rowing on in a new-found sport, and the general business of growing up.

When 1997 came, I’ll never forget the queues down the streets outside the polling stations in Cambridge as people patiently waited for hours to cast their votes and get rid of the Tories. I’d spent the day knocking on doors, getting the vote out, running from one door to the next asking the Labour voters if they’d voted yet, or if they needed a lift, or what time they were going down.

Within a month of coming to power, Tony Blair had taken a £1 million donation from Bernie Ecclestone, and then intervened to secure Formula 1’s exemption from a tobacco advertising ban, so I resigned from Labour. But the itch wouldn’t scratch and I always found myself reaching for the missing leg when the government was doing something particularly annoying. I just couldn’t stand not doing anything.

One day I finally paid attention to the Liberal Democrats. They stood for ideas that made sense to me. A fair voting system and a written constitution. A socially free society. Taxing the rich to pay for decent services for all – but not so much that you kill off healthy entrepreneurship. All sensible stuff, it seemed to me, so I joined in 2000.

Over the following years I got more and more involved, helping run elections, helping define some national policy on climate change, generally doing my bit. And in 2005 I stood for parliament in Edmonton. I’d gone for it because I was mainly occupied with trying to get my local parliamentary candidate elected in Islington, and standing for parliament somewhere with little chance of winning would let me concentrate on getting my friend elected. I’d got on fine, apparently had come across well in the couple of speeches and interviews I did, and received kind and generous compliments from opponents. In the end we didn’t win the election that I really cared about, but that’s politics. You move on.

This time around, for this year’s election, I’m here to give Edmonton my full attention and see what it teaches me about the next time, if there is to be one. Already it is utterly different from any election before, both more full of promise and more full of dread.

The promise comes because, for the first time in a generation, Britain has a chance for real change in its government and becoming a normal democracy, instead of an elective one-party state. For 65 years this country has been run by the Tories or Labour, playing pass the parcel with the country’s future and really making a mess out of it. The ultimate example of this is British education.

I can’t comprehend how it is that in the poor Ireland of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s it was possible to give kids a good education on a shoestring budget, but in Britain today – despite endless billions invested – children are leaving school unable to read, write or count. In my own constituency, three of the four state schools have GCSE pass rates under 44 per cent. If that been the Inter Cert pass rate at my school in Galway, nobody would have sent their kids there.

The dread comes when you look at the alternatives – staying a one-party state, in particular a one-party state under the Conservatives. The Conservative manifesto this time around is an insidious document. It completes the Thatcherite project begun in the 1980s of the Americanisation of British Society. There would be an end to elected authorities to be replaced with “tsars” and the like, and endless divisive local referendums that will drive people apart rather than bring them together.

THE ELECTION BEGANfor me when I was asked to speak at the launch of the Federation of Irish Societies (FIS) manifesto. The FIS helps a different generation of Irish from mine, people for whom success was defined not by becoming millionaires but by settling down, not making a fuss and being accepted by their neighbours. For many of them, even that wasn't possible. Too many ended up in Arlington House men's hostel in Camden, too ashamed to visit their families back in Ireland for fear of what people might think of them.

Before me a black Labour MP from Kilburn spoke, telling us how great the Irish were at making roads. What better epitaph is there for the way Labour has treated the Irish in Britain? While they’ve meant well and tried their best, it has been more from a perspective of benign ignorance than one of keen insight and understanding.

Peter Bottomley spoke for the Tories, and though he didn’t have much to say, he said it well and honestly, because he cares about Ireland. He finished by talking about the Catholic Church and Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams’s comments on it, and how the archbishop hadn’t really meant to offend.

I started with the church, and the fact that while Ireland has changed, the Catholic Church has not. And that they should face the criminal law, the same as anyone else.

I had to say it for a reason. Many people left Ireland not only for work, but also because it was one of the most repressive societies in Europe. The Irish in Britain still carry that legacy today.

Things had come full circle. The questions that had influenced me as a child were giving me voice today. And the power of elections is they allow your words to mean something. For a few weeks, your words count. The things you say briefly have power, whether to fight for a cause, or attack something you disagree with or to consign you to the dustbin of electoral history in a matter of seconds if you say something stupid.

So even if I’m not elected, I feel as if by speaking up on the things I believe in – human rights, the environment, defending immigrants from demonisation – that somehow I’ve done a little bit to make things better.