Interview with Richard Boyd Barrett….

Interesting piece in the Mail where Jason O’Toole interviews Richard Boyd Barrett. Barrett is 43 which slightly surprised me, though I’d seen him in person at one event or another I always thought he was a bit younger. It deals with his biological mother being Sinead Cusack and the fairly remarkable following fact “that Richard’s brother, Douglas Boyd Barrett, was one of the two sons Fr Michael Cleary fathered with his housekeeper Phyllis Hamilton. ‘There’s a lot of adoption in Irish life, particularlyfrom that period,’ he says”. Which is more interesting than I’d have thought – not least because of the further insight it gives into the nature of adoption in Ireland in the 1960s, but politically what is there is perhaps what one would expect. Though it sounds like his adoptive parents are roped in to the whole thing and generous with their time and energy even if not quite on the same wavelength politically as him…

Even though [they] will be obviously proud to see him getting into the Dáil, he concedes that they were initially taken aback when he opted to get involved in socialism – particularly after putting him through fee-paying secondary school and seeing him graduate with an MA from UCD. ‘They probably would have preferred if I’d taken up a more conventional occupation. My dad would not be of the same political outlook as I am but he respects where I’m coming from. But that being said, they’ve been pretty supportive and would help me out in the campaigning and come to fundraisers and distribute leaflets for me.’

His range of influences, politically are interesting:

…as a student, he spent a summer working in Israel. ‘We were looking for somewhere exotic to work – and the only place we could afford to get to was Israel. We didn’t know anything about the politics. I was working with Palestinians down at the Dead Sea, and they were from a refugee camp. They were giving me a day-by-day account of the uprising and their history and the conditions they were living in. ‘Shortly after that, I went and stayed with them in the refugee camp and I saw first hand what was going on. And following that I started to look more into it. ‘I saw some horrific stuff: I saw Israeli soldiers shooting peaceful protesters; I saw a massacre take place in Jerusalem, when 13 people were shot on the Temple Mount. ‘Obviously, that has a big impact on you. It’s funny being in those situations – it’s almost surreal. You almost can’t believe it’s happening. ‘But it had a political impact on me because I was just horrified that such an injustice could take place and that the whole conflict can be so badly misrepresented.

His stance on abortion is hardly a surprise either…

‘I can see how somebody might put it in those terms but I can equally see the other side of the story. ‘It was always very clear to me that adoption or unwanted pregnancy arose from the very conservative social culture here – as a domination of the Catholic Church. ‘So, for me, it wasn’t the individual, who is in any way culpable, it was the circumstances. So, I respect the choices that people make in difficult situations. ‘I’m just pro-choice. As an absolute minimum, we should legislate in line with the X Case. And I think that’s in line with the sentiment in this country. ‘I was actively involved in the time of the X Case, in the whole issue. That situation was barbaric where a 14-year-old rape victim was prevented from making her and her family’s own decision about a pregnancy from rape.’

Nor his social liberalism on drugs…

Richard also believes in the decriminalisation of drugs – and not just so-called soft drugs like marijuana but also harder drugs like heroin and cocaine. He says: ‘I’m not a hippy. I don’t think if we all smoke weed the world’s going to be a better place. But I do think prohibition and criminalising something that is a social phenomena – for better or worse it’s here to stay – is not helpful or a useful deployment of our resources. ‘But there is a [drug] problem. And you need to deal with the social causes of drug addiction, whether it’s alcohol or illegal drugs or pharmaceutical drugs. They should be treated as a medical problem. ‘I don’t think we should criminalise any drugs but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t control their use. But it would be better to deal with it in a regulated way, primarily through the health service.’

And what’s the aim of getting elected to the Dáil…

‘We want to use [the Dáil] as a platform to highlight issues and to organise people to campaign against injustices and to campaign for positive alternative economic and social programme for this country. ‘Even when we had no public representation, we had an impact because we organise on the basis of people power. We stopped the privatisation of the seafront in Dún Laoghaire through people power, not speeches in council chambers.’ The alliance’s main aim in this election, he says, is to ‘burn the bondholders’. But the mainstream parties and political pundits would argue that such talk is simply populist and an unrealistic goal. And, besides, surely it’s unlikely that the United Left Alliance could possibly have any real impact in the Dáil? Richard vehemently disagrees. ‘We’ve influenced the debate around the issue of the bondholders and we’re putting pressure on the political establishment. ‘We’re the only people who are saying that the bankers, developers and the political elites who are responsible for this crisis should pay to clean it up. ‘It’s unacceptable that working people, the unemployed, young people, pensioners should pay the gambling debts of private speculators. ‘Now that there’s a political voice in the country that is gaining influence, that is saying clearly you should burn the bondholders. I think that’s beginning to have an impact on the debate. That will be even more the case if we have a significant block in the Dáil…’

According to the article ‘Paddy Power has him as a 1/2 odds-on favourite’. His chances should be good to make it to the Dáil.