10000 marched their way around for 2011 Belfast Pride. The 21st annual march was watched by 20000 in the city centre.

BY BEN FINCH AND LORCAN MULLEN 

The march left Custom House Square at two o’clock and headed to City Hall. Open-sided lorries carried pole dancing men, while red sightseeing buses were full to the brim with cheering crowds.

Mobile advertising hoardings stated: “Gay, lesbian, straight, we are all people.”  The bystanders watched approvingly as transvestites walked past in towering heels, walking with greater assurance than most girls would be able to in the same shoes.

As the parade passed City Hall there was heckling from an organised group of fundamentalist Christians. There was reports of an assault, but nothing confirmed by the PSNI.

The parade returned to Custom House Square for the Party in the Square, where Lisa Scott Lee and Cubstars performed.

Drag queen Dusty Drawers, dressed in a pink leotard with a rainbow tail and a red feather headdress, said: “It’s fabulous this year. It’s been really well organised.”

Pete Woolfe, a representative from the shopworkers’ union USDAW, was visiting from Manchester said Belfast was “just as lively, but smaller.” He also had some advice for dealing with protests which aren’t limited to Belfast. “In Manchester you get people waving the bible at you but there’s people in the parade waving the bible right back. We get people to line in front of the protests with curtains on their arms to block them out.”

Pride photographer David Hall said that while Northern Ireland is “still behind the rest of the UK”, the day allowed people the space to be themselves, to “get out, be who you are…just being alive.”

Padraig Lawlor said: “there’s still an element of watching your Ps and Qs, about not ‘rubbing it in someone’s face’.” Alanna McCormack felt that Pride has become less political. She said: “most of the political aims have been achieved, it’s much better than it was.” Steven Donnan, chair of the Northern Ireland Green Party’s LGBT group said:“the stigma is changing slowly but surely.”

The SDLP’s Conall McDevitt,  MLA for South Belfast said: “I thought this year was particularly good. One of the nicest things was the number of teenagers walking around and embracing the occasion and the diversity.”

The parade doesn’t meet the approval of all in the city. Some people who were approached for a comment during the parade simply shook their heads and said nothing. However, one ‘born again’ Christian who didn’t wish to be named said, “A man’s supposed to go with a woman. If your parents had been gay then you wouldn’t be here. When god made Adam he didn’t make another man.” He also stated that equality of any sort is impossible: “There isn’t equality. Christ is the head of the man and the man is the head of the woman.” He thought gay people should “just stay single. I mean I’m single and I’m fine.”

McDevitt described people like this as being “such a tiny minority in the city these days.”

The People and Planet Green League have placed Queen’s University Belfast in 53^rd position amongst UK universities, with a score of 33 out of 70 for their environmental management and performance.  Although Queen’s has placed similarly as in academic university guides, Oxford and Cambridge score much lower, coming in 103^rd and 68^th respectively.  In contrast, University of Ulster is in the top 20, placing 19^th with a score of 41.5 and receiving a first class award.

BY EMMA GALLEN

VP Welfare, and member of the Green Party, Adam McGibbon, wants Queen’s to focus more on ethical investment. He said: “Queen’s should look to its fellow Russell Group institution University College London for inspiration on ethical investment.” UCL scored full marks in its evaluation of ethical investment as did Russell Group member London School of Economics, which is the only Russell Group University to have received a first overall.  UCL placed 83rd.

McGibbon said: “In particular, as the Green League shows, QUB’s record on ethical procurement is pretty abysmal. One example of this is the sponsorship of Belfast Festival at Queen’s by Ulster Bank, an RBS subsidiary.” RBS have been involved in funding the exploration of Canadian tar sands in order to extract oil, which McGibbon describes as “horrifically polluting and unethical.”

Although he says he won’t be happy until Queen’s are number one, McGibbon is pleased with the progress, as QUB have moved up 12 places since last year.

Something interesting is happening in North Down; people are saying they would vote Sinn Féin, but feel they can’t. This is because of the role that its members may (or may not) have played during the Troubles. Nevertheless, in a constituency that in its history has always returned Unionists to Westminster (at one point a single candidate got 98% of the vote), this is a fascinating turn of events.

BY BEN FINCH

At the beginning of this election campaign Peter Robinson said this would be the first election fought on policy and economics in Northern Ireland, and for once he’s close to being right. It is Sinn Féin’s policies that are attracting voters here, but it is their past that’s turning people off. People are starting to move away from the old sectarian headcount into an almost normal way of thinking about politics. Some are even asking what difference it would make to become a part of the Republic.

I have no doubt the normal candidates will be returned for the DUP. The UUP may be wiped out since Sylvia Hermon and Alan McFarland became Independent, and there is the increasing possibility of Steven Agnew taking a seat for the Greens. Even this result would show there has been a sea-change and people are beginning to think progressively about Northern Ireland; about the possibilities there are for the country. They’re caring more about what politics means for their families, their work, when their bins are emptied, than about divisive, tribal loyalties.

Whether or not this translates across all the constituencies in the North is a moot point. Catherine Wylie’s piece for the Independent a few weeks ago shows that on the opposite side of the country there may be a slight return to the old ways. But then those I’ve met from the West don’t hold these views, in fact they’re almost always strongly opposed to them. One of the best ways that the dissidents can be shown there is no support for their activities is for a high turnout and a show of confidence in normalised politics, no matter who gets voted in or out.

North Down is not representative of Northern Ireland, it is regarded as being wealthier (although not in all places) and well-educated. This may explain why people are willing to closer examine what parties are saying. Maybe sometime soon we’ll be divided along left and right rather than by religion.

BY ADAM MCGIBBON

Northern Ireland isn’t much different. Despite the Green Party here being severely hindered by the onset of political violence in the province, every election since the Good Friday Agreement has seen the Green vote grow and grow, culminating in the election of the first Green councillors in 2005 and the first MLA, Brian Wilson (North Down) in 2007.

The lazy tree-hugger stereotyping of the past has now largely disappeared; the Greens are now recognised as providing a serious and well-considered social, economic and environmental alternative. Party leader Steven Agnew has become well-known over the last few years and has developed a higher profile than many sitting MLAs, the ranks of which he intends to join, standing to replace Brian Wilson as the Green MLA for North Down on May 5th.

The ‘Green New Deal’ is the Greens’ main priority in the next Assembly; to push for mass investment in public transport and renewable energy to create badly-needed jobs, restart a shattered economy and deal with the problems of depleting fossil fuels, fuel poverty and climate change. The plan has received widespread support and boasts diverse supporters, from the CBI to Greenpeace.

So credible is this idea that many of the other parties attempt to sing off the Greens’ hymn sheet, while on the other hand trying to discredit them as ‘hippies’. While imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, voters are smarter than that. At a time when they are the only party in the Assembly that refuse to take donations from business, they benefit from the shattered credibility of the big parties.

Despite predictions 4 years ago of the Greens being a flash-in-the-pan party, they look set to increase their representation in the Assembly and local councils. With the mechanics of the NI Assembly meaning that the Green Party were the only party not in the NI Executive at the end of this Assembly term, the Greens have an important opposition role to fulfil.

A truly ‘post-conflict’ party has emerged. Peter Robinson said at the start of the election campaign that Northern Ireland was about to enter its “first everyday issue election,” then followed that by pandering to the same old nationalist/unionist division to lobby for votes. However, the Greens have fought every one of their elections on everyday issues, and it has to be said that the growth of issue-based parties like the Greens can only be healthy for Northern Ireland politics.

The Green Party’s manifesto is available at:http://www.greenpartyni.org/documents/Green%20Party%20NI%20Manifesto%202011.pdf

Adam McGibbon, the recently elected Union vice-president for welfare, is set for a second daunting electoral challenge this semester, successfully landing the Green Party’s nomination for Belfast South in the upcoming UK general elections. Queen’s University is situated in this constituency.

BY LORCAN MULLEN

The current MP, the SDLP’s Alasdair McDonnell, will be defending a slim majority against McGibbon, the UCUNF’s Paula Bradshaw, Sinn Fein’s Alex Maskey and Alliance’s Anna Lo, among others. In 2005, McDonnell won with 10,339 votes. In the 2007 Assembly elections, Green candidate Brenda Cooke secured a tally of 737 votes.

A postgraduate politics student at Queen’s University, McGibbon joined the Green Party in 2007 at the age of 19, becoming the youngest member of the Party’s Executive Committee and is currently the Chairperson of the South Belfast branch. He was elected unanimously at a meeting of the branch, and has already begun canvassing in the area.

Speaking to The Gown, McGibbon insisted that such canvassing, so far confined to non-student areas, had elicited an “excellent response”, with the Greens’ flagship ‘green new deal’ proving popular on the doorsteps. This ‘green new deal’ would see an estimated 38,000 jobs created in the renewable energy sector, with a particular boost for the beleaguered construction trade. Initial investment would go towards home insulation and indigenous forms of power generation, like woodchip farming and burning. McGibbon pointed out that these new blue-collar jobs would be largely immune to outsourcing, the consistent scourge of the North’s ever-faltering economy.

In South Belfast, McGibbon will be pushing a “20 is plenty” speed limit in built up areas, while also supporting free home insulation for any house that needs it. According to the Young Green, the apparent malaise over environmental campaigning after the failed Copenhagen summit, coupled with the murky media hype surrounding leaked emails from the University of East Anglia, has not reached the doorsteps of South Belfast. Rather, “people are more convinced that action has to be taken by them, not just governments.”

Apart from environmental and economic considerations, McGibbon stressed the power of the Greens’ untainted “new” politics, outside the bickering of sectarian division and unsullied from the various recent political scandals at Westminster. He asserted that the Greens are the only party in Stormont who do not accept corporate donations.

When pushed on the charge that his movement is a strictly middle-class pursuit, McGibbon reported a particular warmth from working class constituents when told of the Greens’ absence from the oft-repeated ‘heads in the trough’ behaviour of a large number of incumbent MPs and political leaders.

McGibbon also refuted the argument that a Green vote would increase the chances of the UCUNF (Conservative) candidate defeating Alasdair McDonnell. McDonnell and the SDLP typically vote with Labour at Westminster. He questioned the true progressive impulses of McDonnell, but also the Alliance Party, stating that “they aren’t honest in how they present themselves.”

Most importantly, McGibbon encouraged students to participate in the elections, primarily through registration at their place of study, “where they spend most of their time…let’s talk about cold houses, fuel poverty, student fees.”

With more than 20,000 studying at the university, a significant Union voter-registration drive could well see students dominate the political debate in this constituency for years to come, leveraging votes to commit the MP for South Belfast to policies that are good for students and young people, not just “permanent residents.”

BY ADAM MCGIBBON

Agnew, who left Queens with a degree in Philosophy in 2001, spent his post-university years as a Support Worker for the homeless with a well-known charity. He joined the Green Party in 2003, not primarily as an environmentalist, but as someone more interested in the Greens’ policies on social justice.

To a room full of interested students, Agnew talked about his experiences in the European election. The ‘Green tide’ which led to a 31% increase in the Green vote from 2007 and a dramatic 300% increase in the vote since 2004, was hard-won. He spoke of the mad rush of a European election campaign during which he was the subject of a documentary about elections, interviewed by Catalan Radio, and overwhelmed by the amount of people who turned out to support the Greens – “We even had a lemonade man in North Belfast delivering leaflets and canvassing!’

Asked by students what his plans were for the future, he responded that the Greens were looking forward to the 2010 Westminster elections, but were mostly setting their sights on the 2011 Local & Assembly elections. Agnew spoke about the importance of young people to the Green Party, saying that The Green Party needs younger members to take it from modest beginnings to a Green future. He anticipated future gains for the party, which currently has 3 councillors and one MLA in the Assembly.

For someone who didn’t become an MEP last June, Steven Agnew’s profile remains high – he has recently been named as one of the nominees for Slugger O’Toole’s ‘Up and coming politician of the year’ award. Whatever happens in the future, it seems that Steven Agnew will be one to watch.