Looking For Richard

Richard Boyd Barrett isn’t exactly the sharpest of dressers. Proudly so. Despite the fact that he’ll be speaking in the House soon after this interview, the boyishly handsome 43-year-old arrives into Buswell’s Hotel wearing faded black jeans, a woollen cardigan and a flannel check shirt. He looks more like a trendy college lecturer than a Dáil representative.

When he was elected as TD for Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown in February, the People Before Profit Alliance candidate told journalists that he didn’t actually own a suit. That much hasn’t changed. “I still don’t,” he laughingly tells Hot Press comments on his casual attire.
Not that there’s anything casual about his demeanour. He’s carrying a stack of files under his arm and freely admits to being “quite stressed at the moment.” He’s speaking in the chambers later, he’s still sorting his offices and staff out, there are various meetings to attend, and... well, basically it’s all go.
Of course, it’s been all-go for RBB for years now. Regarded by some as the poster boy of the Irish Left, he has been publicly campaigning on numerous issues since the mid-90s, including political corruption, the Iraq war, Shell To Sea, privatisation, NAMA, renewable energy, generic medicines, the Rossport Five, genetically engineered food, Afghanistan...
Regularly quoted in the press and a frequent talking head on TV and in radio discussions, Richard hit the international headlines in 2007 when, in the middle of a general election campaign, the Sunday Independent revealed that he had been reunited with his birth mother, actress Sinéad Cusack. This made Oscar-winner Jeremy Irons his stepfather (“We often discuss what we should call each other. We haven’t quite put a label on it, but we get on well”).
Even more strangely, a few years before that, a tabloid had revealed that his younger brother, Douglas, was actually the son of disgraced priest Fr. Michael Cleary and his housekeeper Phyllis Hamilton. Both boys had been adopted as infants by David and Valerie Boyd Barrett – with whom RBB still lives in Glenageary.

OLAF TYARANSEN: What’s your earliest memory?
RICHARD BOYD BARRETT: God almighty, that’s a tough one... (pauses). I think it was being in Dromoland Castle when I was about two-and-a-half. My parents were at some ‘do’ there, with relatives who lived down that part of the country. And I remember crying in the cot because the lights were turned out. I was in a room off to the side, from where they were. I don’t think I was too damaged by the event (laughs), but it’s one of the earliest things I can remember.
What kind of upbringing did you have?
It was reasonably comfortable. My father was an accountant. My mum had been a hairdresser, but she gave up work to look after myself and my brother. Although there was some rough times as well, for my dad, there was periods of unemployment when things were pretty shaky.
What kind of child were you?
Well, I was very sporty. I played everything. Played soccer – and continue to play soccer. I think I played for nearly every club in the Dun Laoghaire borough! I played for the top team in the league, as a schoolboy, for St. Josephs in Sallynoggin. I played for Ballybrack, I played for the Workman’s Club. I played a GAA school’s final in Croke Park, which was a great moment. I played a bit of rugby, tennis, running! I did it all.
You don’t strike me as a team player necessarily.
I was a goalkeeper. Actually I started as a centre forward but very quickly moved into goal and, you know, I loved goalkeeping. And as I joked at a recent council meeting, I’m still trying to save things (laughs). So, yeah, I’m very much a team player. I always loved the team dynamics of soccer, but I also liked middle distance running, the endurance aspect. The strategy and the tactics of trying to win a middle or a long distance race.
How were you academically?
I always enjoyed school. I went to Johnstown National School, a great school. There was a good social mix there and a lot of good teachers, although there were a few that were way too handy with rulers and clogs. We used to get hit with rulers and clogs! But most of the teachers were very good. And then I went on to St. Michael’s after that, which was a very different set-up. There was some good teachers there, but I didn’t like that sort of school.
It’s a private fee-paying school, isn’t it?
Yeah. I wasn’t political enough to realise that it was a private school and what all that meant, but it certainly helped shape some of my views in the negative. But I don’t want to put everybody down, there were a lot of good people there and a lot of good teachers. I did quite well academically. I was always interested in literature, history, art. So that’s why when I finished school I was pretty determined to do arts at university. And I did. I studied English Literature.
How were you with women?
Em... (blows lips). That’s a difficult question, isn’t it? (laughs).
Well, were you popular with women growing up or were you an awkward shy type?
I was a bit more of a shy type actually. I liked the opposite sex. Depending on what your orientation is at a certain age you start to become interested in sexual matters, or relationship matters. So, I was definitely interested in those things. Even as a young person, I think you’d be concerned with whether you get a Valentine’s or not or who were you sending them to in school. But I started going out with girls when I was relatively young – about 12 or 13.
What age did you lose your virginity?
13. 13 or 14.
That was fairly young in the repressed Ireland of the time.
I was 14. Yeah, it was, she was older than me (laughs). It was an experience, that’s for sure. A lot of my friends were starting to go out with girls at 13 or 14. Maybe it was a bit young for losing your virginity, but it was probably because she was a bit older than me.
When did you first become politicised?
It was a cumulative process. My uncle was involved in the Labour Party, I had an aunt that was involved in Fine Gael, my uncle was a Fianna Fáil senator. My father, although not directly involved with politics, was very interested in ideas and particularly in economics and finance so there was always lots of political and economic debate going on, and I engaged with that at a young age. But then the other thing was definitely the punk music scene, which was still quite a big scene when I was young. We used to go into McGonagle’s and see bands and to the TV Club. Anyway, the Pistols, The Damned, Killing Joke – both the Clash and the Crass side of it was quite political.
So music led you to politics?
It played a significant part. We used to read avidly all the political tracks on some of the punk singles and albums, which would be about things like anti-nuclear, animal rights, anti-war stuff. It had an impact.
Did you join CND?
No, but we used to go to protests when they were on. And anti-racism was a big part of it. The punk and the skinhead scene was divided between the anti-racists and the racists. We were very consciously Jah Punks, so reggae and Two Tone and all that kind of stuff was very much a part of it. We were conscious that there was a political dimension to that. Quite an important moment was the miners’ strike because The Redskins were a socialist skinhead band that did fundraising gigs for the miners and they toured over here. I went to see them in McGonagle’s and they were very political,raising money for the miners. That made me think about Thatcher. I went to gigs in London when I was living over there, for the GLC. Ken Livingstone organised gigs and there were bands like Spear Of Destiny and Benjamin Zephaniah playing at big rally concerts to save the GLC when Thatcher was closing it down.
You went to Palestine in 1988.
Yeah. Although I was interested in politics I had no intention of getting actively involved. But going to Palestine changed me. After a year in college, I went with friends to London to work on building sites. They were just working class blokes, they weren’t going to university and had to leave here to get work. I went working on building sites with them with the intention of coming back to college. But they decided to travel, and got one-way tickets to Israel. I decided to skip the year and go with them. We arrived a few weeks before the first Palestinian uprising started. We were working for Israeli farmers in the southern part of the desert, but it wasn’t a Kibbutz so there were Arab workers there. Within a day or two of us meeting them, they told us they were Palestinians from refugee camps in Hebron and they began to tell us their history. Very shortly after that the first protest began of what became the Intifada, so we were getting daily accounts of events and we were seeing it for ourselves, how the Israelis treated the Palestinians. Then I went to visit the refugee camps in Hebron. I actually witnessed one of the massacres that took place in Jerusalem. At a distance, but I saw the shooting and heard the screaming.
Did you see the bodies?
I didn’t see the bodies, but we were standing up on the walls and we could see people running around screaming and we could see the Israeli military everywhere and the shots going off. I think 13 people were killed that day, and I decided at that point when I got back that I was going to get involved in politics.
So what was the first campaign you signed up to when you got back?
I went to an Amnesty International meeting. Amnesty are a good group, I don’t want to belittle them, but I was a bit unimpressed in that it was all about letter-writing and there was a lot of stuff about not interfering with domestic politics. That has probably changed a bit now, but I just felt it was too constrained. The situation in Palestine was urgent and needed a more active approach. So I went to a Socialist Workers Party meeting on Palestine, and they seemed to know what was going on. I remember at the meeting some pro-Israeli Zionist-type got up and started attacking the speaker saying the speaker didn’t know what he was talking about. I hopped up and said, ‘well actually the speaker is dead right because I’ve just come back from Israel’. That started an engagement with the Socialist Workers Party. I didn’t join them for about another eight or nine months but I started to go to meetings and they seemed to have a perspective that made sense and a genuine understanding of what was going on in the Middle East.
Although you were elected as a member of the People Before Profit Alliance, you’re still with the Socialist Workers Party?
Yeah.
I’m sure you’ve heard that famous quote: “If one is under 25 and is not a socialist, he has no heart; if one is over 25 and still a socialist he has no head.”
Yeah (laughs). I think that was Winston Churchill. But that’s the typically cynical attitude towards people who have ideas or want to change the world, and I reject it utterly. The guy who founded the International Socialist Tendency, which is the sort of sister group of the Socialist Workers Party – there’s a network of SWP-type of organisations across the world – he was a fantastic guy. He died a few years ago. He was a Palestinian Jewish guy of Eastern European origins but he was still as idealistic and as active at the age of 85 when he died as he had been since his earliest days of activism in Palestine, when he was opposing the rise of Zionism, within the ranks of Jewish society. He was an example to me. Or think about James Larkin, someone who built the Trade Union movement in this country. He made such a contribution to creating traditions of social justice and a theme of social equality in Irish society. He died in poverty, but he never sold out. So I just don’t buy it basically.
Are you a pacifist?
No. I’m anti-war but I don’t believe that in all circumstances it’s wrong to defend yourself using force of arms.
What about overthrowing something?
Well, I think the movement for change in society is a peaceful one. It’s one that’s against war, it’s against imperialism, it’s against injustice. And I think all those movements set out as peaceful movements precisely because they’re against conflict and war and injustice. But of course there are times when those movements are attacked by a system that doesn’t want change, and in those circumstances people have the right to defend themselves against State violence. But that being said, I think the movement that will bring about change is overwhelmingly about political debate, political argument and mass mobilisation of people. It’s the power of numbers that brings change. I don’t believe in small groups changing things, whether it is small groups of parlimentarians or small groups of guerillas with rifles. I think it is the power of people.
When was the last time you threw a punch?
Em... (pauses). God, I can’t remember. There used to be a lot of fighting when I was a teenager…
The punk years?
Yeah. Scraps, the mods fighting with the punks, and just teenagers trying to prove themselves. I don’t know if I was the worst offender but it certainly went on. As I went on in life, I realised that the way you win an argument, the way you deal with frustration, is trying to win people over to your side through debate and through political organisation, rather than taking it out in a physical way.
Are you an emotional type?
Yeah, I think, but in a complicated way. There are some things that really make me angry and sad at the same time. I mean what I saw in Palestine was gut-wrenching and it still motivates me today. I get upset thinking about what’s happening to people in Palestine. Or there are certain types of injustice, that I see daily in Dun Laoghaire. Pensioners in squalid conditions, families who through no fault of their own are in desperate straits. That gets me. I feel emotional about family and friends. But sometimes to do the political stuff, you have to be very focused and unemotional.
Do you believe in God?
No. I’m an atheist. I don’t believe in God. I don’t have a problem with people who do. And I find religion fascinating. I love reading things like the Bible or about the history of religion. Islam, I find fascinating, and how religious movements and ideas are tied up with historical and political changes.
Were your family religious? Did they go to mass?
They did, yeah, my mum and dad were very religious. At one stage my mum was nearly going to mass every day. When I was young I said my prayers and believed, and all that. But what actually changed me was in first year in UCD I did English, Philosophy and Psychology. One of the first essays I was ever asked to do was given to us by a priest who was a lecturer in there, Brendan Purcell. He gave us this essay to prove or disprove the existence of God. And he, in his opening lecture, said things like “Karl Marx isn’t a philosopher, Nietzche isn’t a philosopher”, and then went on to say Thomas Aquinas was a philosopher. So I was a bit suspicious about how the debate was introduced and who was dismissed and the fact that it was religious thinkers dominating his perspective. So I began to question a bit. But I remember even when I started off the essay, I actually started off to try and vindicate his viewpoint, but the more I looked into it, I concluded by the end of the essay that God didn’t exist (laughs).
You think when we die, we die, and that’s it?
Yeah, I do, which makes it all the more important that you make the best of what we have here.
Both you and your younger brother, Douglas, were adopted. Were you aware of that from a young age?
Yeah. From around seven.
Were you both told at the same time?
I think we were actually, but my memory is a little bit vague on that. We were told young. As soon as my parents realised we were old enough to comprehend what it meant, but also young enough that it could just sort of feel natural. I think if we were told later, it might be a bit more upsetting.
Were you upset at all?
Not at all. The way they put it, which I thought was very good, was that “we chose you”. So that thought makes you feel good about yourself. So I really took it in my stride. I mean, in the back of my head I think I was always a little bit curious and thought that one day I’d like to find out, but I never did actually pursue it. I was too busy doing other things!
When you were a teenager, and rebelling, did you ever find yourself going, “you’re not my real parents anyway!”?
No, no, never! They were my parents. It never felt like it was any different to anybody else. And sometimes I was even quite proud of the fact that I was adopted. But you’re a bit curious and occasionally you think, “could that person be my sister? Or my mother?” But that was about the extent of it.
Your birth mother turned out to be actress Sinéad Cusack. How did you find out?
I got a letter from the adoption agency asking would I be interested in meeting my birth mother, because she was interested in meeting me. And I said “yes”, straight away. They don’t reveal identities or anything, they just tell you that somebody wants to contact you. Sorry, not somebody, your mother! And then if you say “yes”, then there’s an exchange of letters. They still withhold identites in case either side decides at some point of the process that they don’t want to progress it. And it’s only when through letters, and through the mediation of the adoption agency, that both sides are happy that they would like to move to the point of meeting. At that point identities are revealed and you meet up. And it was all very good.
Were you shocked when you realised who your birth mum was?
A little bit. I mean I was aware of Cyril Cusack, obviously. They lived in Dun Laoghaire and I would have known him as a character around Dun Laoghaire.
Without knowing he was your granddad?
Yeah, there were lots of people who knew Cyril. And the fact that the Cusacks were originally from Dalkey, and my mum’s family was also from Dalkey, they were a stone’s throw away from each other. And they knew each other vaguely. So there was a lot of overlap. So that was kind of nice actually, that we had similar points of reference. Similar upbringings, really, and similar interests.
How did your adoptive parents feel about it?
I think they thought: if this is what you want, go for it. But it’s a bit jarring for any adoptive parents in that situation. It’s something they’ve come to terms with, and are quite happy with it now, but I suppose, when it first happens, parents feel a little bit anxious, thinking that somehow, they are going to be forgotten about. When they realise that’s not going to happen and everything remains the same... I just see it as, now I’ve got a bigger extended family.
Bizarrely, your brother turned out to be the son of disgraced priest Father Michael Cleary and his housekeeper Phyllis Hamilton. So you both turned out to be the sons of very well-known people.
That’s pretty astonishing, isn’t it?
Did you both find out at the same time?
No, no, that was much earlier. That all happened… I mean, I don’t want to go into that too much, that subject has had some pretty sordid coverage, but yeah it was pretty astonishing. That two kids were adopted from such prominent parentage to the same adoptive family. I don’t know what the thinking of the Catholic church was, I haven’t figured that one out. It was pretty mad. I think the way the sort of tabloid media jump on these thing makes me retch, frankly.
You were standing in the 2007 election when the news broke. Some newspapers accused you of milking it for publicity.
That was, I have to say, deeply dishonest on the part of the Independent newspaper group. Disgustingly dishonest. Because the Independent newspaper group were the ones who put it out in the public domain and then that same newspaper group tried to suggest that I exploited it, when it was them who had put it out there. That’s just their political agenda, to get at the Left and to sell their newspapers through sensationalism. But actually the attitude that I had was that it was not a secret, but neither should it be a story. I have an idea how they got the story, because I was at an event that the Independent were at, with Sinéad, and I think one of their journalists probably started asking questions of people who were there. And it sort of fed back then. But the idea that I put it out there is absolute nonsense. In fact, I was inundated with interview requests at that time, television requests. I refused all of them. If I was interested in the publicity I would have jumped at it. But as far as I’m concerned people’s personal lives are their personal lives.
Well, you might be in the wrong game for that.
Well, yeah, I don’t know. I think people are interested in the political substance. I dislike tabloids, I dislike their voyeurism and all that stuff. I’m pretty sure ordinary people judge you on what you do and the substance of what you say and your political record.
Have you met you biological father?
Yes, but I won’t say more about that.
You were elected to the Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council in 2009. Had you ever had a proper job before that?
Yeah, yeah, I was working as an organiser for the Socialist Workers Party for a few years before I got elected, and prior to that I was teaching. I was tutoring English literature to undergrads in UCD. I’d also taught English as a foreign language abroad, and in Ireland.
Are you a writer?
I write poetry and I’d like to write fiction if I had time, but I don’t have time. Someday.
There are people who think that with People Before Profit and the United Left Alliance, really it’s all the Socialist Workers Party.
No, it genuinely isn’t. People Before Profit emerged because lots of social movements started to develop after Seattle. And the Socialist Workers Party was very conscious of relating to this resurgence of social movements. Sometimes the traditional Left were involved, but often the bulk of people were not coming from the organised Left, even though what they were doing was left-wing. They weren’t doing it in the old way. And I think to the SWP’s credit it recognised that it had to relate to the movements that didn’t necessarily speak its language. Some of the Left I don’t think grasped that. They sort of thought that people had to come to us. The SWP realised that they had to deeply immerse themselves and learn from the movements. And that happened at an international level in terms of the anti-war movement and anti-globalisation movement. We, in the SWP, very consciously opened up, if you like, from being a somewhat small group focused on ideas to one open to social movements that were beginning to develop.
The SWP certainly seems to be involved in every protest going.
On a national level I was involved in the anti-war movement and the anti-globalisation stuff but on a local level I was involved in a lot of campaigns. And as these campaigns developed – Shell To Sea, etc – the question of elections posed themselves. So people were saying, “Yeah, okay, of course we can contest the electoral terrain”. But a lot of those people weren’t members of the SWP. So they might vote for SWP, maybe, but they didn’t feel it was their organisation. The majority of those activists wanted something broader. And it was in that context that really quite organically the idea of People Before Profit developed. Which was left-wing politics but of a new sort. That genuinely was the case in Dun Laoghaire. And then beyond that we then began a debate with the more traditional Left, about the need to unite, to overcome certain divisions. And I’m delighted to say that those have borne fruit in the development of the Left Alliance and it’s fantastic the impact it’s had. There’s been a real synergy effect. So the resonance of the United Left Alliance has gone far beyond its components. And the fact that we got five TDs elected and did very well in a lot of other constituencies, I think is indicative of how the development of a new type of left-wing politics really does fit the current situation.
How do you get along with the other Independents? The likes of Ming or Mick Wallace?
I like them. I like Mick Wallace, I like Ming. I think they’re good.
How about Shane Ross?
Shane Ross is coming from a different place politically. Although he always shakes his head when I say this at the technical group meetings. “No, no, we’re not that much different”, but I think in his attitude to things like the public sector and — you know, ‘the market’ — I think he’s very much for privatisation. And would be quite supportive of the idea of hacking up the public sector in certain instances. I’m not saying the public sector doesn’t need reform, by the way, but yeah, that sort of neo-liberal approach that I think he represents is at the opposite end of the spectrum. I do admire the fact that he’s said the right things about the banking crisis – burning the bondholders, the referendum – and I think he’s probably quite genuine in his calls for getting rid of corruption and sleaze in politics. There’s common ground with a lot of the Independents in that group. But actually the colouration of the Independent group is more Left. I would definitely consider Ming and Catherine Murphy and Mick Wallace and John Halligan to be on the Left.
Have you seen Michael Lowry around in the last few days?
Yeah, I saw him in there.
Have you spoken to him?
No, no (laughs). I mean you kind of feel a little bit conflicted watching anybody being interrogated and hounded in that way. But what went on at that time, seems to me to be rotten to the core. The country has paid a pretty significant price. You know in terms of the destruction of Telecom Eireann and we’re still paying the price in terms of the mess of broadband. The culture of people like Denis O’Brien being enriched because of inside contacts with politicians, and becoming tax exiles with hundreds of millions taken out of the State that we need pretty badly now. So it looks to me like Lowry was guilty as hell, and he’s got to pay the political price for that. And the investigations have to be pursued to get to the truth of the matter.
What do you think of your fellow socialist Bertie Ahern?
Bertie Ahern really was the master of the sort of cute hoor and cronyist politics that have led us into the mess we’re in now. Playing the part of the man of the people, but actually being part of a set-up, which was sort of mafia-like, really, in the way it championed the interests of the golden circle in this country at the expense of the rest of us. He’s got a huge part to play in the crisis we’re in now. And the fact that he’s walked off from that more or less scot-free with a lot of public money in his back pocket makes me sick, frankly. And even worse than that is that he’s now the chairman of this international forestry fund, which is a subsidiary of a Swiss money-laundering bank who are looking to buy Coillte. And who obviously recruited Bertie Ahern because of his inside knowledge and inside contacts in the hope that they can asset-strip this country of its forests. When you look at that, when you look at Bertie, you look at this Swiss banking firm and you look at these, what are they called? The seventeen individuals? The rich individuals? Peter Sutherland and all those.
Oh, the authors of the Blueprint for Ireland’s Recovery.
Yeah. They’re saying: sell off the State assets, and then you have the IMF telling us to sell off State assets to pay off the bankers. It’s like a pincer movement of the Irish and European elite using the current economic crisis – which they created – to asset-strip the country. It’s really outrageous and there’s got to be a fight against it.
Where do you stand on abortion?
I’m pro-choice.
Even as an adopted child?
Absolutely. I think unwanted pregnancy is a very difficult thing for people to deal with, and the only person who can make that choice is the person who’s in the situation. For anybody else to try and make the decision for them is utterly unacceptable. I know people have strong feelings about it but, in the end, who else can make the choice? Who else has the right to?
You recently spoke out in favour of legalising heroin and cocaine...
Yeah, that’s not exactly what I said. The Daily Mail specifically created a headline. What I did say, when I was asked, is it’s not a big campaign issue for me and I think drug abuse, drug addiction, social problems from drugs, which I’m very aware of in the Dun Laoghaire area... They are serious and complex issues which have to be dealt with. I have no way a sort of glib or flippant attitude, but the fact of the matter is criminalisation, like prohibition of alcohol in the United States, has not worked. I think it’s been counter-productive and it has created a criminal underworld, which has made a bad situation worse. So my point is that we should take it out of the hands of the criminal sphere. And when you’re talking about things like heroin addiction, it should be dealt with by the health services and pharmacies. It should be regulated properly by health professionals. And I think the criminalisation of marijuana is just crazy. But I don’t want to say, in any of that, that I’m promoting the use of these things. I don’t believe everybody smoking joints will make the world a better place. I know that there’s a certain hippy view that thinks that is the case. I don’t think that’s true.
Have you ever used illegal drugs yourself?
There’s nobody of my age that I know of who didn’t. Yeah, of course I experimented with all sorts of things when I was younger. But the fact is that people do that and I did it... Well, I think it makes me more aware of the reality of the issue. The futility of trying to criminalise the issue has to be tackled in a serious way.
Did you ever get heavily into anything?
No, never. Just the usual (shrugs).
Mick Wallace says that prostitution should be legalised. Do you agree with him?
Jesus, that’s a tricky one. I mean, prostitution is awful, frankly, because it’s the commodification of women and female sexuality.
Or male.
Or male. Indeed, sorry. Fair point. So yeah, I think people having to sell themselves sexually to make money is a pretty awful thing. And it results, for the most part, from poverty and social inequality and the position of women in society generally – because it is more women obviously. There’s all sorts of associated horrors with the sort of commodification of sex and the sex industry, all that stuff is horrendous. But again, does criminalising it work? Not really. It doesn’t work. So I think you’ve got to... I’m not quite sure – whether it’s drugs or prostitution – how you regulate it, but I think there’s got to be a more adult approach to dealing with these things, which takes it out of the criminal world.
Will you welcome the Queen’s visit to Ireland?
No. Not out of some sort of misguided nationalist viewpoint or being anti-British. Or in any sectarian way. I don’t believe in kings and monarchs, inherited wealth, inherited power of that sort. I think monarchs are symbols which are trying to entrench the idea of social inequality as legitimate. I think that’s wrong. This country was founded on the basis of ideas of equality. So I don’t see why we wouldn’t want to be critical of the idea of monarchy, and I think our solidarity should be with the many people in Britain who want Britain to be a republic and the vast wealth of the royal family actually being given back to the ordinary people of Britain.
It would probably be swallowed up by the NHS within about ten seconds.
It would still be better spent than paying for royals to swan around in luxury yachts around the world, doing nothing of any real value. And I mean the other important factor about the royal visit is that the Queen is the head of the British armed forces who are currently involved in a brutal war and occupation in Afghanistan; they’re bombing Libya. So Britain is still an imperial power, killing innocent civilians to further its strategic interests. I think, as an anti-war activist, one has to protest against that kind of thing.
So what about Obama?
The same. I think we need to protest against the continuing war in Afghanistan and the continuing occupation in Iraq. Obama was elected to a large extent on the back of anti-war sentiment, as well as obviously concern about the American economy. People hoped that he would end all that, but he hasn’t. And now there’s more bombing going on in Libya so I think it’s important to register protest about those policies when he comes.
Are you in a relationship at the moment? I know that you’re a father.
I am a father, yeah. I have a son and a stepson. I’m not with their mum anymore. We haven’t been together for a good few years, although we still get on very well. I see my boys all the time, we have a very good relationship. I have a good relationship with their mum, and obviously I’m mad about my boys. And yeah, I’ve been single for most of the time since but... I’ve been on a few dates lately.
You still live with your parents?
I was living in a flat with my brother for quite a while, but the rent was excessive, so I had to move back in with my parents. But that I hope will be a temporary thing.
I presume you’re just taking an average industrial wage from your TD’s salary.
Yeah, that’s what we do. I give the rest to the party and to campaigns. For example, in my first month’s salary, we were using a good chunk of it to bring over an MP from Iceland, who was involved in the campaign against the bank bail-outs, the IMF deal over there, where they succeeded through protests in forcing a referendum on the issue. So I’m using some of the salary to bring her over to tour the country, and we’re having a protest next week about the bank bail-outs, calling for a referendum. But, yeah that’s how the money will be used, for campaigns like that. The average industrial wage is what average workers are on and I think if you’re going to represent ordinary people you’ve got to be in the same boat. And that does put constraints but, that being said, I hope I’ll work out a flat-share with somebody soon (laughs).
Do you have a motto in life?
Don’t talk about things. Do something about them.