Nearly 30 years ago, the then 19-year-old Andrew Muir wrestled with coming out as a gay man. He believed going public about his sexual orientation would spell the end to his dream of being involved in party politics in Northern Ireland.
Writing a letter then to the gay helpline Cara-Friend seeking advice, Muir declared: “My ambition is not to sail the world, but to simply be elected by the people and make some changes”. However, he added, “the key fact remains, what the electorate would feel if their candidate was gay?”
Twenty eight years later Muir has confounded his own teenage expectations. As the Alliance Party’s minister in the new Stormont powersharing Executive, he’s responsible for the Environment and Agriculture portfolio, a brief filled with political and economic troubles.
The 19-year-old Muir would find it difficult to believethis journey to become Northern Ireland’s first openly gay minister – a phrase that he uses – would have been possible.
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But the progress has not been easy. As a student in Derry, Muir had homophobic graffiti scrawled on his house, and rocks and verbal abuse thrown at him in the street. Calling on police for help, he and his friends found officers ill-informed about homophobia.
Volunteering to help police training, Muir and his friends asked a group of officers during one training session to write down their perceptions of gay people and were dismayed when the comment cards came back including offensive terms such as “paedophiles”.
Today, Muir “compartmentalises a lot” of those early experiences, he says. However, they formed him.“It made me into a person who said, ‘I’m not putting up with this and I am going to get involved in politics because I want to change this.’”
He signed up for the Liberal Democrats even though they didn’t stand for elections in Northern Ireland. Then he joined the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) largely out of admiration for John Hume’s pioneering role in the peace process.
Heartened by the inclusion of a reference to “sexual orientation” within the equality section of the Belfast Agreement, Muir found himself disheartened a decade later by the debate within the SDLP about forming a partnership with Fianna Fáil.
Finally, he decided Alliance was “heading towards becoming the real force that I want to be part of”. Once he made the move he had no regrets, feeling at home with political colleagues who he now regards as close friends.
Recently, the actor Andrew Scott suggested the “openly gay” phrase – one that is found offensive by many in the community – should be retired, pointing out nobody describes themselves as “openly Irish” or “openly left-handed”.
However, Muir disagrees, arguing: “It’s important to say it. History is littered with examples of people in politics, who were known to be or widely suspected to be gay, but weren’t openly gay. Perhaps the fact that I’m openly gay is reflective of a change in society, [that] it’s not a barrier.”
The Northern Ireland state should issue a formal apology to LGBTQ+ people “for the harm that was inflicted upon those citizens”, says Muir, noting the family members and friends that he, and so many others, lost along the way who took their own lives.
“It’s important to recognise there are people not with us today in Northern Ireland because of that homophobia and transphobia,” he says, though he knows that a Stormont apology is not forthcoming any time soon.
In the meantime, progress should be made on measures important to the LGBTQ+ community, such as a ban on so-called gay conversion therapy. Meanwhile, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) should look to its own record, he suggests.
The PSNI first allowed, then banned its LGBTQ+ officers from taking part in the Belfast Pride Parade in uniform. Defending the action, the PSNI said it had to be impartial. However, Muir wants chief constable Jon Boutcher to explain the logic behind the action.
Muir played a part in the notorious “gay cake” controversy in 2014 when Ashers bakery refused to supply a cake iced with a message promoting same-sex marriage for an anti-homophobia event he had organised. Muir cut a cake supplied by another baker, and initially backed an anti-discrimination case against Ashers. But as the legal dispute (which Ashers eventually won) dragged on, he called for mediation, increasingly concerned about the way it seemed to pit gays against Christians. “One person said to me you can’t be gay and also be a Christian, and I responded, ‘Don’t you dare rob me of that.’”
Muir is the child of a Presbyterian father and a Catholic mother. He went to a Catholic school but today attends his local Church of Ireland parish, the result of some years’ shopping around for a denomination where he felt comfortable. Muir’s mixed upbringing informs his sense of identity – he recalls his Protestant grandmother marching on the Twelfthwith her women’s Orange Lodge, wearing a pair of white gloves borrowed from his Catholic granny for the day.
Muir resents being put into anyone else’s box and particularly bridles at the “other” label attached to MLAs who designate as neither nationalist nor unionist. The designation system “does not reflect how Northern Ireland is, people here have multiple and complex identities”. Instead of “other” he signed in at Stormont as “European”; he carries an Irish passport and also regards himself as British, pointing to his Scottish surname. He tells me that, alongside the Northern Ireland media, he watches RTÉ Television every day and subscribes to The Irish Times, while also trying to keep an eye on BBC Scotland to see how his counterparts in the devolved government there are faring.
Muir had a relationship with a partner in Dublin for several years which involved him travelling south on a fortnightly basis, so he knows the city well. A keen runner, he has completed six Dublin marathons and still has lots of close friends in the city. Like him, they tend to be “political nerds” drawn from across the spectrum. Muir crossed the border to canvass in favour of same-sex marriage in the referendum in 2015 and regarded the election of Leo Varadkar as taoiseach as a “positive signal that Ireland really had changed from what it was”. He was sad to see Varadkar stepping down, paying tribute to his leadership during both the same-sex marriage debate and Brexit.
When it comes to the prospect of a Border poll, Muir defines himself as “persuadable. I shall listen to the arguments from both sides.” He thinks “the politics of Brexit has done significant damage to the UK” but adds that one of the key lessons of Brexit for Ireland is not “holding a referendum without an understanding of what the prospectus is around that. Both sides of the argument have a lot of work to do in outlining what their case is.”
A recent survey indicated more Alliance members favour a united Ireland over staying in the UK, a change from the days when Alliance was regarded as unionist with a small “u”. Muir says Alliance is willing to engage in the discussion, but if and when a Border poll happens the party’s council will meet and could decide to recommend taking a side or leave it up to its supporters to follow their preferences.
However, Muir is keen to stress that Alliance voters don’t have a Border poll anywhere near the top of their priorities. “If you want to make a case for constitutional change in Northern Ireland, you should first of all show this region is successful, that people can get seen by a doctor, can get a school place, can get assurance their environment is going to be protected.” He adds that more progress needs to be made on reconciliation after the hurt caused by the Troubles, the integration of schools and housing, and reforming the Stormont system so it better represents centre-ground voters.
When Muir was appointed to his Agriculture and Environment job there was some joking he might not be able to maintain his penchant for bow ties and natty dressing down on the farm. He responded by purchasing some designer wellies and a fashionable Barbour jacket, only to have to cover them up with a hygienic biosecurity plastic suit on his first photo shoot. While he might not be from a farming background, he has been given a warm welcome by his department’s rural stakeholders and is keen to emphasise that “farming and the environment go together, they shouldn’t be pitted against each other”.
Tackling climate change is a big challenge and Muir will be at the centre of the battle to mitigate the damage done to Lough Neagh, the source of 40 per cent of Northern Ireland’s drinking water. Last summer vast stretches of the Lough were covered by a thick sludge of blue-green algae, the product of a toxic combination of agricultural nitrates seeping into the water, the arrival of invasive species and increased temperatures. Muir admits “it’s very likely the scenes last year will repeat themselves this year”, but the difference will be that, with the Stormont Executive in place, “hopefully we’ll have a strategy to try to get ourselves through this”.
As a practical example of the need for North-South co-operation, Muir points out the zebra mussels which damaged the ecological balance of Northern Ireland’s lakes and rivers “partially came up through the Shannon estuary. They didn’t stop at the Border, so that’s why I have to engage with my colleagues north-south and east-west to tackle this.”
The new Minister seems confident the restored Executive will see out the three years it has got left on its current mandate, and talks optimistically about the initial collegiate atmosphere between the different parties. However, he knows that, whether it’s cleaning up Lough Neagh or dealing with other pressing issues, the voters will be looking for their representatives to deliver real change, the aspiration he wrote about in his coming-out letter back in the 1990s.
