Padraigin Drinan — background information

Death threat solicitor walks down Rosemary's solitary path
By Anne Cadwallader
Ireland on Sunday, October 8, 2000
Her name is top of a death list on a hate-filled loyalist website. Her Belfast home is newly-fortified with bullet-proof windows. In 1973, she appeared on behalf of the families of the Bloody Sunday dead at the now discredited Widgery Tribunal. She was once Gerry Fitt's right-hand woman. She was a close friend of Dominic McGlinchey.

As long ago as 1969, her collarbone was fractured when an infuriated Paisley follower hit her with his blackthorn stick. Yet it is as solicitor for the Garvaghy Road residents coalition that Padraigin Drinan has finally become known to a wider public. Barely 5 ft in her stockinged feet, gentle-faced and softly-spoken, Drinan hardly looks like a front-line warrior in the battle for human rights in the North. She also appears a most unlikely target for loyalist paramilitaries. But she is both a fighter and a potential victim. After much campaigning, both in Ireland and in the USA, the RUC was finally forced to add her name to the list of those on their "key persons protection scheme."

The workmen moved into her house and in went the grenade-proof doors and closed-circuit television. The threat to her life has hardly eased with her recent action in co-ordinating six ground-breaking cases at the European Court of Human Rights against the British government for allegedly failing to protect its citizens from racial harassment. The act implementing the Good Friday agreement failed to enshrine the "right to live free from sectarian harassment" into law. London says this part of the agreement is merely "aspirational."

Drinan says it's discrimination. People are, worryingly, beginning to draw parallels between Drinan and the murdered solicitor, Rosemary Nelson, while hoping, of course, that she doesn't suffer the same fate as the latter (who was assassinated by loyalists in a March 1998 car bombing). At a superficial level, there are wide differences between the two women. Nelson was always immaculately dressed. Her office was neat as a new pin. On Drinan's list of priorities, a well-turned heel does not appear high. Her office and home stand little chance of featuring in a glossy magazine. But at a deeper level, there are profound similarities. Drinan is, as Nelson was, an incurable workaholic with a boundless commitment for using the law to vindicate individual rights. Because of their belief that racism and sectarianism are two sides of the same coin, a burning anger at injustice and an enduring belief in non-violence to achieve change, both women's work will live on in the public's memory. The two even knew each other. They were both involved in acting as legal advisors to residents groups (Drinan for the Lower Ormeau, Nelson for the Garvaghy Road. Since Nelson's murder, Drinan works for both). Like Nelson, Drinan also specialises in defending women's and traveller's rights, along with cases of alleged racial discrimination.

"We would chat and swap stories on the phone all the time and meet about once a month, over the last two years of her life, to compare notes. It was great to be with someone who was interested in the same areas of law as I am and I still miss her greatly," says Drinan. Drinan was born in west Belfast 53 years ago. Her mother ran a bar where the Divis tower now stands, at the town-centre end of the Falls Road. Her father, born in Cork, taught Irish at St. Malachy's college.

"Father spoke no English at home, mother spoke no Irish. It was a bit difficult," she laughs. Her primary school's catchment area included Ballymurphy so, despite her middle-class background, Drinan learned at an early age about poverty. While at St. Dominic's, she became involved in the Republican Labour party and worked voluntarily for Gerry Fitt at Stormont. After St. Dominic's, she did "A" levels at Belfast tech and law at Queens. There she joined People's democracy and became embroiled in the civil rights movement. Her collarbone was broken at Burntollet, when DUP members, ably assisted by B Specials, attacked marchers on their way to Derry.

"I can still remember the face of the man who hit me. I thought if I stood my ground and didn't run away, he wouldn't hit me. I was wrong, he just lifted his walking stick high above his head, and brought it down on me. It still aches a bit.

"It was an exciting time to be young. I got hit regularly but you didn't feel pain because you were so hyped up at what was happening around you." When other friends became involved in the resurgent IRA, Drinan did not enlist. Why? "I genuinely believed in civil rights and that if you had right on your side, you would win in the end." On her first day out of college, she applied to work with Christopher Napier, a practising solicitor she met at a civil rights demonstration.

"For the first year I did nothing but work on internment cases to get people freed. That set the tone for my life's work which has always been rights-based. I was a witness for the Irish government in its case to the European Court of Human Rights over the ill-treatment of detainees.

"I also represented the families of the Bloody Sunday victims at the Widgery tribunal in Coleraine. With hindsight, of course, you could say we should never have taken part in it but, at the time, people really wanted the story to come out in public.

"We worked 20 hours a day, every day, for six weeks straight. It was dreadful when he brought in his verdict, but we had almost expected it from what he was saying during the course of the tribunal.

"I then took a case for the Equal Opportunities Commission against a Belfast bar that refused to serve women. We won that case. I also acted for Noreen Winchester, a woman convicted of murdering her abusive father. We overturned the conviction and from that sprang Belfast Women's Aid and the Rape Crisis Centre." Her friendship with Dominic McGlinchey grew after she represented him in an appeal against a murder conviction.

"He was a terrific person, the media portrait just isn't him. He was persuasive, single-minded, intelligent." Drinan is still close to Declan and Dominic, the two orphaned sons of Dominic and Mary McGlinchey. She never married and, being childless, the two McGlinchey boys are close to her heart. She also had a long-standing relationship with a man, dating back to her student days but, two years ago, they parted because of a political disagreement. She doesn't cook, loves Irish music, rarely goes to the movies, reads voraciously when she gets the chance, and has recently discovered the internet, with which she is fascinated. Now at the peak of her professional career, with her enthusiasm for the law and its potential to increase the sum of justice and human happiness undimmed, Padraigin Drinan is likely to remain in the difficult and dangerous position of legal vanguard in the North.

 

Northern parades commission selection questioned
(by Anne Cadwallader, Ireland on Sunday)
The British government has finally admitted that contentious Orange parades are a sectarian issue. A sworn statement, prepared for a court hearing this week by the Office, includes the words "marching is a sectarian issue."

Previously, the NIO had insisted that marching was a "cultural" issue, or one of identify, denying any suggestion that Orange, Black or Apprentice Boys marches have any sectarian undertones. The NIO will be accused of gender as well as political discrimination on Tuesday when the make-up of the new Parades Commission is subjected to a judicial review in Belfast High Court. Of the Commission's seven members, none is a woman and only one could be categorised as "nationalist."

Another is Catholic but the only political party he has been a member of is the Alliance Party. In a replying affidavit sent to a lawyer acting for the Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition (GRRC), a statement on behalf of the British government says there was no "suitable female candidate of whose existence we were aware of whose established merit for the post was known to us." It goes on to say "A female candidate who did not meet the merit threshold could not be appointed as this would be unlawful", but this is being challenged by a member of the Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition (GRRC).

The lawyer, Padraigin Drinan, says she can think of at least ten women, immediately, who might have made excellent members of the Parades Commission and wonders why the NIO did not approach them. Although all political parties should have received an invitation to nominate members, neither the SDLP nor Sinn Féin said they received a copy, despite searches through their offices to find any record. The Women's Coalition did receive an invitation, but replied saying they could not nominate as the Commission's new terms of reference had not been decided and without an idea of the job commissioners were expected to do, it was unreasonable to expect nominations.

It's understood that when nominations closed, the NIO decided to "trawl" or "headhunt" for applicants, but even then were unable to find any women deemed suitable for membership of the Commission, either Protestant or Catholic. The judicial review is being taken by Evelyn White, a grandmother who lives in the Garvaghy Road area, and alleges that the make-up of the Commission fails to live up to its statutory obligation to be representative of the community as a whole.

An affidavit has been lodged by Monica McWilliams of the Women's Coalition supporting White's case for reasons of gender discrimination. The Human Rights Commission is also supporting her case.

A responding affidavit lodged by an NIO representative states that the marching issue is a "sectarian" one and is not gender-related. Drinan claims the rules on selecting people for public office have been breached.

"These rules, the so-called 'Nolan Principles', should govern precisely how advertisements, short-lists, interviewing and appointments are carried out onto public bodies", she said. "They have been totally ignored by the Office in their headhunting of people they deem suitable."

In its affidavit, the NIO says the absence of female members on the Commission is "regrettable" but that the Secretary of State compiled with the law "bearing in mind that marching is a sectarian and not a gender issue."

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