MLA Gerry Carroll speaks to Stuart Clark about marriage equality, Brexit and water charges

"He didnt tell me he was bopping to The Boss!"says the softly spoken 29-year-old. "I saw Bruce a couple of years ago in the RDS although I'm actually more of a hip hop fan. One of my first gigs would've been Gang Starr in the Mandela Hall in 2003, I think."
It was around the same time that Carroll helped bus hundreds of his fellow Belfast students over to Edinburgh for the Make Poverty History rally.
"There were 250,000 people on the protest, which gave me my first taste of people power," he resumes. "The TV news was always on and my parents got involved in trade union activity when I was a young adult, but I wouldn't say it was a political household."
Or despite living in Sinn Féin's heartland, a Nationalist one.
"I was involved in the Love Music Hate Racism campaign; took part in the school walkouts over the Iraq War, and demonstrated about student fees up at Stormont, but it wasn't until I got involved with People Before Profit at university that I thought about joining a party and standing for election."
Along with the aforementioned Eamonn McCann, Carroll cites Bernadette McAliskey as one of his political inspirations.
"She's got some stories!" he reflects. "Bernadette's been through a lot of campaigns, not to mention personal upheavals, and is someone who's 100% committed to fighting injustice at every level. She's stuck to her principles from 1967/]'68 right through to today. We're very pleased to have her supporting us."
The personal upheavals Gerry speaks of include members of the Ulster Freedom Fighters bursting into her home in January 1981 and shooting her fourteen times in front of her children. Following Gerry Adams' resignation as the local Westminster MP, Carroll ran for People Before Profit at the 2011 by-election where he polled a respectable 7.6%.
"We had a big campaign around water charges - we got in before you! - which really struck a chord. This was before the assembly was set up, and there was a strong suggestion from the then Northern Ireland Secretary, Peter Hain, that they'd be implemented."
Bona fides established, he got himself elected to Belfast City Council in 2014, and last year came second to Sinn Féin in the general election with 19.2% of the vote. It was Richard Boyd Barrett who told Hot Press in February that Carroll had a very real chance of bagging himself an MLA seat in West Belfast. What he didn't predict was his topping of the poll last month at the expense of Rosie McCorely, one of the Sinn Féin old guard who'd been jailed for 66 years for the attempted murder of an army officer and possession of explosives, but released under the Good Friday agreement.
"People Before Profit getting three TDs in the south certainly gave us a gee-up with our own campaign and a sort of legitimacy when knocking on doors. You'd be down the Falls Road and somebody would shout over, 'I hear Brid Smith's got in in Dublin.' It was a great boost for us."
Eamonn McCann's election mantra in Derry was, 'Neither green, nor orange but up for the fight.'
"We had a positive message, which was a critique of the Stormont House Agreement which has essentially been signed up to by all the parties, and will lead to 20,000 public sector job losses. At the same time, thereÕs a plan to slice corporation tax, which means big multinationals paying even less than they are now. The argument is that it's 'harmonising' in line with the South, but in reality it's a handout to them. We also focused on the huge levels of deprivation and poverty in not only West Belfast, but also in North Belfast where we had a very good candidate and in Foyle where Eamonn got in.
"We were saying that there's a new way of doing politics, which allows people to fight back collectively and doesn't bow down to the corporations like all the other parties have. We were able to knock on every door and get a fair hearing."
Was there a sense that Sinn Féin considered West Belfast to be their personal fiefdom?
"In the last two elections they had five out of the six MLAs, but what they've been pushing through in Stormont brings a lot of problems for them. They've signed up to slashing corporation tax, they've signed up to the Stormont House Agreement, which will only add to the levels of poverty and equality across Northern Ireland... They've bought into neo-liberal economics which has angered a lot of people, and rubbished their claims of being an anti-austerity party."
Having applauded loudly from across the border as the Republic voted in gay marriage, Carroll wants the same rights for his own constituents.
"Looking at it from the North, the campaign was really inspiring. You know, people from across the world contacting their grannies to say, 'Please vote "yes" for us.' The polls show there's a slightly higher number in favour of marriage equality here than there was in the South. There's a huge groundswell of support, which at some point the parties opposed to it will have to address. The DUP have used a petition of concern to block equal marriage, but if removed Stormont could pass the legislation without the need for a referendum. That would certainly be my preference."
Top of People Before Profit's current agenda is the EU Referendum.
"We're calling for a left exit, ultimately on a 32 county basis. What that means is that the European Union is undemocratic and controlled by unelected heads of the European Commission. There's too much power centralised in the ECB, around Germany in particular. It's also the organisation that didn't respect the democratic wishes of Greece when it said "no" to austerity or yourself in the South when people said "no" to the Lisbon Treaty. Because of 'Fortress Europe' hundreds of thousands of people fleeing war have died. The EU's undemocratic and not able to be reformed. If Cameron loses he's finished, which opens up the possibility of a Jeremy Corbyn-lead government."
With the Republic showing no appetite to leave the EU, a "no" vote would surely lead to more North/South division including the possible restoration of border controls?
"There's no guarantee of border controls," Carroll counters. "It's the same Project Fear rhetoric that was spouted during the Scottish independence referendum. The people forecasting economic Armageddon have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo."
What does Carroll make of the Cannabis Party, which also ran on a non-sectarian ticket at the Assembly Elections?
"They're obviously tapping into an area but, with all due respect, their votes weren't the highest. We should definitely be decriminalising cannabis and then having a discussion about other drugs."
Is he looking forward to sitting on the Stormont Naughty Step - or Noisy Step as it's been rechristened by Mr. McCann - with Jim McCallister?
"One thing's for certain; it's not going to be dull in our corner of the assembly," Carroll smiles. "Our politics are obviously quite far apart. His role is to attack the DUP and Sinn Féin from different standpoints to us. There's an attempt to bunch us all together but we'd massively disagree with Jim McCallister over issues like marriage equality and anti-austerity politics."
What new thinking do Carroll and McCann bring to the Flags & Parades debate, which come July 12 is guaranteed to be the headline story in the North again.
"We're articulating a kind of politics that says, 'People on the Shankhill and the Falls are both on the receiving end of brutal austerity programmes, so let's fight together.' You've political parties using sectarianism to drum up support in areas that have been ravaged by those parties' policies. Were not being naive, but there is a thirst to discuss what can unite rather than divide us."
You can bang on all you like about being neither orange nor green, but mention the 32 counties and automatically some people are going to have you pegged as a Nationalist party.
"In the same issue of a paper, we were described in one piece as Nationalists and in another as Unionists/Partitionists," Carroll concludes. "The confusion is in their heads, not ours. We know what we're about. We're fighting for socialist politics on a 32 county basis. We need a movement that challenges the State in the South, which is tied to the banks and still the church, and the Northern State, which thrives on institutionalised sectarianism."