A Different Path
by Monica McWilliams, The Observer op-ed
November 16, 2024

We live in a most contrary and contradictory region. On the one hand, we have a plethora of new regulations preventing people from voting not only once, but twice or three times. On the other hand, people are seriously concerned about alleged apathy among the electorate leading to a low turn-out in the forthcoming Assembly elections. Now it may well be that there is nothing so effective in stirring up apathy as those over-the-top election posters of grinning candidates that festoon our lamp-posts. Quite apart from having life-sized versions of political leaders bearing down on people wherever we go, perhaps the growth in apathy is linked to the insidious (and expensive) spread of political marketing and spin.

The Northern Ireland Women's Coalition places its emphasis on value for your vote. We have not given you big election posters, but we have given people hard work and concrete achievements. We brought forward the idea of the Children's Commissioner, who is now in post. We chaired the Pro-Agreement Implementation Committee on the Human Rights Bill. We listened, and then represented individual constituents that had been abused, intimidated or talked down to. We also worked with pensioners' groups, carers' organisations, people with disabilities, and community representatives, to ensure that these issues received political attention. This, to my mind, is what politics is all about, not the slick party machines that appeal to people's fears rather than their intellect.

From our nightly experience of canvassing what we are finding is that the majority of people are frustrated, not with the Belfast Agreement itself, but at the mess that has been made of its implementation. People doubt that certain politicians, not the Agreement, can or want to deliver. They are infuriated by the fact that Sinn Fein and the Ulster Unionist Party could have negotiated together over a protracted period of time with apparently nobody taking the minutes about what was agreed. It is the sheer inefficiency of it all that is in danger of inducing voter disgust, if not apathy.

Notwithstanding this, an election is the only time that the public gets to take the megaphone off the politicians and to send its message loud and clear through the ballot box. Opinion polls and anecdotal evidence suggest that people do want a stable, peaceful and prosperous Northern Ireland. The effective implementation of the Agreement can achieve this. If the politicians seeking to be elected will make the Agreement work, then people will come out on 26 November and support them. Certainly, Women's Coalition candidates have received a very positive reception on the doorstep.

Support for the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition is neither unionism lite nor nationalism lite. It is a vote to change the face of politics: both the faces in the Assembly and the way politics is done. Our approach to negotiation is not 'I win therefore you lose', but rather, we have a shared problem, how can we work to solve it together? This is about having the confidence to be able to reach solutions to achieve the greater good for our society. It is also about being broad enough to place an emphasis on social and economic issues rather than simply the constitutional question. Isn't it amazing with people facing job redundancies and problems of poverty, that the parties fail to emphasis health, education or other social issues?

Some parties would prefer to concentrate their energy on helicopters and glitzy press conferences than the hard ground work or doing their homework on policy. Time will tell if the public prefer it.

We are constantly being asked 'What's special about the Women's Coalition?' The reality is that we have a niche as a cross-community party, appealing to Protestants, Catholics, Hindus, atheists, and more. We are acutely conscious that some 14 per cent of people here do not come from Catholic or Protestant traditions, and still more are politically homeless in a political culture which focuses obsessively on the constitutional issue.

Our secret weapon is the ability to gather votes from across the community, something which none of the mainstream parties has yet been brave or interested enough to do. We will continue to use our elected positions to facilitate negotiations within and between parties in order to achieve the effective implementation of the Agreement and to progress social and economic issues. But we also intend to continue to argue for the increased representation of women.

Fearful of our pressure, other parties make a virtue of how many women they have standing. But who represented these parties on David Dimbleby's Question Time last week - right, you've got it, four men. Enough said.

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