Kate Fearon

President of Queens SU (’93-’94) / Women’s Rights Officer USI (‘94-‘95) / Member of Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition

‘In those days it was harder to see the beauty…’

Catherine ‘Kate’ Fearon grew up in rural Armagh, a militarized zone during the Troubles. ‘Every day there were multiple helicopter flights landing in the fields in front of our house, depositing or picking up soldiers.’ Living where she did, ‘learning to navigate checkpoints’ became part of growing up; ‘whatever you said, you had to say nothing, but use sufficient words to make it seem like you were saying something, or else you’d just end up stopped for ages.’ Even as a child, there was a constant ‘us and them’ mentality. It wasn’t until Kate went to college at 18, that she met anyone who was Protestant.

Kate attended Queens University Belfast in 1988 to study English literature and Russian Studies. As well as writing for the school newspaper, she became involved with the Students Union and spent a year as the Clubs and Services Officer at which point, she also became involved in ‘making decisions about what issues to highlight and what campaigns to run.’ Coming from a working-class background and being the first generation in her family to attend university, issues surrounding access to education were very important to her, so one of her many campaigns was against the abolition of grants. Inclusivity was an important to Kate who organised ‘what may have been’ the first pride parade in Belfast during her time in the SU. ‘There were about fifteen, maybe twenty of us’ who marched from Botanic Avenue to what used to be the Art College. ‘There were more police and Free Presbyterian protestors than there were of us,’ she recalled, ‘but we did it.’ Fair employment rights and better representation of Catholics and women on the University Senate also took up much of Kate’s attention and helped motivate her towards running for ‘one of the most difficult but rewarding jobs’ she’s ever done; President of the Queens Uni SU. The biggest challenge she faced was ‘the division in the student body.’ While the University had a reputation for being pro-unionist, the majority of the student population had a pro-nationalist, ‘if not republican,’ reputation. Kate set out to at least challenge this.

The context in which Kate was working, however, made it difficult to represent all students. While she came from a republican area, she was ‘afraid of [the IRA], the police and army.’

The events of spring 1988, the year I went to college - the killings on Gibraltar, the Stone murders and the corporals killings continued to cast a long shadow. In February 1992, we had the Sean Graham bookies massacre on the Ormeau Road. Then in October 1992 the Sheena Campbell murder - she was a student at the time - in the York Hotel on Botanic Avenue. These were almost literally on the University doorstep. There was a rise in sectarian killings all round. The atmosphere was palpably tense. People were scared. We organised marches for peace and a rally in the Student Union building.

Kate was responsible for introducing community relations exercises into their Student Council practice. It ‘interrupted the cycle of blame and recrimination somewhat’ however, a ‘bigger structural change was needed’ in the long term and this would not come until the peace talks.

In 1994, Kate became the Women’s Rights Officer within the Union of Students Ireland (USI) and campaigned heavily on reproductive rights, consent and safer sex. At this time, USI was still fighting the SPUC vs Grogan case (Society for the Protection of Unborn Children against Stephen Grogan and fourteen other officers of students unions in connection with the distribution of abortion information in student guidebooks) and so there was a lot of fundraising and campaigning around that case. With others, she took part in a one-day action on abortion information and ‘got the morning ferry to Holyhead, picked up some reproductive rights literature, got the afternoon ferry back again, bringing the information back with us, and distributed it in Dublin.’ This was completely illegal at the time. More locally, she organised workshops on consent and safe sex and because HIV/AIDS was still relatively new in Ireland, she worked on bringing in new language to address campaigning on sexual health matters.

In 1995, Kate became the Deputy Director of the Democratic Dialogue Think Tank in Northern Ireland which was a social research think tank and a new concept at the time. She ‘commissioned and edited’ reports on gender and politics, and on young people and politics. It was in this role that she first met Mo Mowlam, shadow Secretary of State at the time, who came to their office ‘to discuss ideas about what she should do if Labour won the election.’

At a meeting on 17 April 1996 which was attended by representatives of up to 200 women’s groups, it was decided to lobby the government to allow a women’s network to be included in the upcoming peace talks. The government agreed to allow it, and the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition (NIWC) was formed. They managed to secure two seats for the All-Party Talks which began on 10 June 1996 and the only women at the table were the two elected to represent the NIWC – Monica McWilliams and Pearl Sagar. As a member of the NIWC, Kate supported the two elected delegates ‘on everything from drafting speeches to dealing with the media, to running policy consultations with NIWC members outside the talks, to taking minutes at meetings, to organising the logo for the NIWC.’

A peace agreement between the British and Irish governments, and most of the political parties in Northern Ireland, came to pass in April 1998 in what is known as the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement. Kate maintained that it was not so much the signing of the agreement, but the result of the following referendum that was ‘the main thing’ for her. She had helped to organise the drive for a ‘Yes’ vote and it had been a tough campaign; ‘questions of the early release of prisoners and the rights of victims came up all the time. And you had to look people in the eye and tell them it would be worth it, if they voted yes, that you believed in it so much that they should too.’ It was the first time that Kate had voted and been on the winning side and while she was proud of what they’d achieved, and the opportunity it offered, ‘I also knew that we in the NIWC would get squeezed out electorally.’

‘When negotiating: always make the pie bigger before dividing it.’

After serving in the inaugural Northern Ireland Assembly, where she drafted the first ever Private Members’ Bill (on a Children’s Commissioner for Northern Ireland) Kate worked internationally. With the National Democratic Institute in Bosnia and Herzegovina, she worked on supporting political parties on electoral campaigns and policy formulation. Working then for the Office of the High Representative she helped to implement another peace agreement – the Dayton Accords, reached in 1995 by the presidents of Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia which ended the war in Bosnia. While there is no ‘‘one size fits all’ solution to conflict resolution’ Kate believes that ‘there are certain dynamics that are common – a need for acknowledgement about past wrongs, a need for a fair chance to participate politically and a level playing field on which to do it.’ Following this, she worked on implementing another peace agreement (the Ahtisaari Plan) in Kosovo, and later for the EU Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) Mission there, EULEX Kosovo. Kate went on to work in Afghanistan and Sudan, and currently works for the EU Monitoring Mission in Georgia.

‘Women might be good at crafting and nurturing peace, but I don’t think that ‘holding the peace’ should be women’s responsibility.’

Kate finds it a pity that the current parties in power have ‘squandered the opportunities we campaigned so hard for and deliberated upon with great creativity and care and integrity.’ She believes that if women can ‘mitigate the current situation’ in Northern Ireland, then they should act to do so, however, she is very clear in where the responsibility lies: ‘with the parties whom the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement gives a lifetime golden ticket of power to.’ It is with them that the responsibility of holding the peace should lie.

Herstory by Katelyn Hanna

Sources:

Thank you to Kate Fearon for answering my questions and outlining the role she played in the NI Peace process.

European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo online at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Rule_of_Law_Mission_in_Kosovo [accessed 30 Sep 2019].