Support for Equal Marriage in Northern Ireland

The Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey recently asked

Do you think marriages between same-sex couples should or should not be recognised by the law as valid, with the same rights as traditional marriages?

57% of people surveyed agreed they should be valid, with only 32% saying that they should not be. That means that in Northern Ireland, nearly twice as many people support equal marriage as oppose it.

As a Liberal Democrat, I support equal marriage, and it is encouraging to see that there is such broad support for it even in Northern Ireland, which is traditionally a socially conservative part of the United Kingdom. It is common for Northern Irish politicians to oppose marriage equality on grounds such as “the people of Northern Ireland don’t want it”. Thanks to this survey, we know that this is not the case.

See also

• Poll: 57% of people in Northern Ireland now support equal marriage

I’ve registered to serve you, now over to Greater Manchester Police

Police cordon at Sheffield Conference this March

As Michael blogged earlier registration for Autumn conference has now opened.

As is laid out in our parties constitution:

Article 6: The Federal Conference
6.1 The conference will consist of
(a) Representatives of Local Parties…
6.3 Representatives of Local Parties shall be elected by all members of the Local Party concerned…

As one of the four the local party elected that way last year I am duly honoured, and booked my hotel and flight to Birmingham months ago. I was just waiting for registration to be opened (I’d missed the deadline for dual registration) and also to know my conference status before applying. The earliest discount period runs out on 10th June giving people less than 10 days from when it was announced to apply, I expect a rush.

This year we all have to submit a new photograph. Mine was a new one only last year I believe! We also have to provide more information to the police not in the West Midlands, but in Greater Manchester to verify. This is more information than I think I had to provide to work at Stormont pre-devolution, it is also more than I recently provided to open a bank account. All because as Michael said I’m going to go for the  lively policy debate –especially seeking to keep the Parliamentary Party in check, the networking opportunities keeping up old ones and developing new ones, plus the Wide Variety of fringe events. Also because as my friend Caron has said of the new “more comprehensive security pass application”:

“do I want the policy of my party to be decided by people who think this sort of stuff is ok? That would just rip the heart and soul out of the party”

The answer of course is no! So I’m hoping to be heading off to Birmingham and have now jumped through all the hoops I have to, just now need to see where I land.

I’ve also put up with the somewhat illiberal way I’ve had to had over details to a police force and any other it would seem for perpetuity for future conferences despite my personal, and I thought party’s, stance against the ID card police state. It is now in the police’s hands whether I get accreditation not the members of the local party who voted for me to be their rep.

Being of course Northern Irish does throw up a couple of additional concerns that I may not be able to attend.

Image courtesy of Sarah Brown

The first form of ID that was requested was my passport number. I thought which one? I’m not alone in this Island of being one of those with more than one. Though I need not have worried as soon as I entered one it bounced up the question do I have a second one. So that is me flagged as a Republican, my fate might be in the hands of a dissident group after all this.

Of course the fact that I am applying for a Northern Irish Local Party may cause eyebrows to be raised. After all you will not find reference to our local party number 900 on the Lib Dem Federal website. Go on try to but in the postcode for Parliament Buildings at Stormont BT4 3XX into the find your local party finder on the home page. Or scroll to the bottom of that page and click on the link to Northern Ireland, do you end up here at Lib Dems NI or here at the Alliance Party? This is something the local party exec have raised with the powers that be and we will be raising it again as a matter of urgency.

So the possibility is that as  local party number 900 (Northern Ireland) somehow does not seem to exist on the party’s own website some over officious bobby may create “the unlikely event that [my] accreditation is unsuccessful” despite me being elected by you, a frequent voting rep in the past, having now paid for flights, accommodation and conference fees.

I just hope we don’t have a Orwellian thought police sanction imposed at future Lib Dem conferences, we like our debate but the hall would end up empty.

Update There is now a petition to keep Liberal Democrat Conference Liberal please go and sign it.

David Cairns MP RIP – a man who spoke up for LGBT Ugandans

David Cairns MP

The Labour MP for Inverclyde David Cairns sadly died today at the young age of 44. He had been admitted to hospital in March with acute pancreatitis.

He had a varied life starting out as a Catholic Priest in London and Scotland having trained at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and then the Franciscan International Centre in Canterbury. However, he soon realised that politics were his life and he gave up the life of the parish priest to become a director of the Christian Socialist Movement.

From 1994 he served in that role but because of his previous calling at that time could not enter Parliament as an MP. Ordained Catholic priests were forbidden from being elected to the commons under the House of Commons (Clergy Disqualification) Act 1801 and the Catholic Relief Act 1829.

However, his Labour colleague and fellow Roman Catholic Siobhain McDonagh, for whom he was working as a research assistant introduced the House of Commons (Removal of Clergy Disqualification) Bill which would allow all Clergy except those from the Church of England (due to their Lord’s Spiritual) from being eligible for election. Cairns had already been selected to replace the retiring Norman Godman for his hometown seat of Greenock and Inverclyde. He was duly elected in 2001.

As one of the growing number of LGB MPs David was also was also a patron of LGBT Labour and Chair of the All Parliamentary Group on HIV and AIDS. As the coordinator of LGBT Liberal Democrats Northern Ireland I wish to express my personal and those of the group’s condolences to his partner Dermot, father John and brother Billy, as well as the wider family circle, friends and colleagues at this sudden loss of a man so young.

With the bill to kill gay men in Uganda again top of the LGBT agenda it is perhaps worth remembering these words from David in the Commons’ Chamber last year:

“If I may borrow a phrase from Harold Macmillan and amend it, the wind of oppression is blowing through the African continent today, an oppression aimed largely at young gay men and women. It has become a much more pressing issue; and although it is not confined to Africa, it is in Africa that that dehumanising and brutal oppression is occurring on this very day.

“We are aware of the notorious private Member’s Bill tabled in Uganda by David Bahati that proposes
the death penalty for people who are HIV-positive and engaged in homosexual activity, life in prison for everyone else who engages in homosexual activity, and seven years in prison for people who counsel those who engage in homosexual activity. It is, as I said, a private Member’s Bill, and the Ugandan Government have distanced themselves from it. None the less, even without the Bill, it will be illegal to be gay in Uganda, and punishable by 14 years in prison. The President of Uganda has said that homosexuality is “alien”. In the last year for which figures are available, the United Kingdom Government gave £71 million in aid to Uganda.

“…

“It is not only on the ground of sexuality that countries oppress rights. As we heard from the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Mr Donaldson), some countries oppress people on the ground of religion, which may be rooted in differences of creed or race. If our international aid budget is rooted in our humanity, it does not come value-free, and it does not come free from a sense that the humanity of everyone must be respected.

“I have not even mentioned the utterly disastrous effect these policies in Africa are having on the rise in HIV and AIDS. If someone who thinks they might have HIV is told that to be homosexual is to be worse than a pig or a dog and is punishable by 14 years in prison, why would they come forward? What possible reason would they have to seek medical help and the method to prevent the spread of HIV? We are funding anti-HIV and AIDS programmes in countries with policies that do nothing to stop HIV and AIDS, and instead contribute to their spread.

“This is a big job for the Government. I do not pretend it is the most important thing on the plate of incoming Ministers, but it is important to millions across Africa whose fundamental human right to be gay or lesbian is being brutally oppressed by regimes. I look to the Government to give a lead by setting out what positive action we can take when our denunciations are brushed aside and doing something about this appalling miscarriage of human rights.“

What more fitting to an active campaigner for HIV and LGBT rights than for people to sign the petition to urge Ugandan President Musevini to veto the “Kill the Gays Bill”.

You can sign it here
http://www.allout.org/uganda

blogged elsewhere – freedom, fairness and responsibility: but not to NI!

freedom, fairness and responsibility

The three words that we are told by the Liberal Democrat Federal Party website sum up the Coalition Government’s Programme. However, I don’t see how it is promoting any of those when you consider what has just happened to the devolved countries’ finances.

Read more at Gyronny Herald

Human Trafficking: The Belfast Angle

Earlier this week, on my other blog, I found myself writing about human trafficking and how the United Kingdom government was not opting in to an European Union directive that would make it easier to stop this activity. Today here in Northern Ireland that cry could hardly be more pertinent.

The news this afternoon is that several victims of human trafficking for the purposes of sexual exploitation, both from the UK and foreign countries, have been rescued in a police operation. There are also suspects of this human trafficking being brought to Northern Ireland to be questioned by the PSNI.

Upon the completion of the operation the head of the PSNI Organised Crime Branch Detective Chief Superintendent McComb, said:

“Human trafficking and prostitution is no longer gender specific.

“Men and women are being tricked or forced into prostitution in major towns and cities.

“They are being robbed of their liberty, stripped of their dignity, and suffer intolerable conditions as unwilling emblems of the sex trade.

“This is modern-day slavery where human beings are treated like commodities by sophisticated organised crime gangs who are making substantial criminal profits from the sex trade.”

The Liberal Democrats are strongly opposed to enslavement, as were our Liberal forebears, indeed the pre-amble to our party constitution states (emphasis mine):

“The Liberal Democrats exist to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society, in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community, and in which no-one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity. We champion the freedom, dignity and well-being of individuals, we acknowledge and respect their right to freedom of conscience and their right to develop their talents to the full.”

Whether, those who have been victims of these human traffickers are through their poverty or ignorance or a combination of both we must champion their right to freedom. We can best do that through some of the good that the EU is doing such as this directive on Human Trafficking, however the Eurosceptic Conservative want nothing new to do with the EU even if it is for the good.

Therefore I urge to stand beside the Liberal Democrats on this issue. Write to you MP and ask them to persuade the Government to opt in to the directive on Human Trafficking. Or even go further and join us in the Liberal Democrats by pressing the link in the sidebar.