Gregory Campbell interview

Sport, languages, museums and libraries fall within the varied Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure portfolio. Peter Cheney and Ryan Jennings discuss the key issues with Minister Gregory Campbell.

While most ministerial positions are “very challenging”, Culture, Arts and Leisure stands out in particular, according to Gregory Campbell. Despite its position as one of Stormont’s smaller departments, DCAL has a high profile due to some of the political hot topics within its brief.

Debates over an Irish Language Act and the Maze stadium have made the most headlines in this portfolio, but it also covers sport and languages in their widest sense, libraries, the arts, museums, architecture, archives and angling.

The DUP politician was appointed Minister in June 2008 and finds the role an enjoyable but sometimes tough one.

“It’s a very exciting time but that doesn’t make the decisions any less difficult, and many of them are quite difficult,” he remarks, before adding: “It’s quite a challenge and I’m up for a challenge”.

DCAL’s remit is “completely different” from his previous ministerial brief – as Regional Development Minister from 2000 to 2001 – which focused on public transport, water and roads. Comparing the two jobs, he says: “It does help broaden a person’s outlook whenever you’re looking on the one hand at a particular type of function and then you come in a second time and look at something completely different.”

Asked to outline his priorities as Minister, he turns firstly to sport, explaining that with the decision made on the Maze, investment in other stadia can be rolled out more speedily.

“When I came in, the uncertainty about the multi-sports stadium was hanging like a sword of Damocles over everybody’s head and it was a case of ‘is there going to be or is there not going to be a multisports stadium?’ The bullet had to bitten and the nettle had to be grasped, and it now has been,” he states.

“In my view, whatever the criticism there is – and I’m happy to take it all – we’ve now moved beyond that, which I think is good.”

Campbell maintains that even if he had approved the Maze Stadium, no building work would have taken place on-site for the next 12 to 18 months due to the planning process and other final preparations that would have been necessary. Instead, he plans to deploy some of the money earmarked for the Maze to improve the quality and safety of existing grounds, and hopes to see progress there “in the next few months”.

The governing bodies for Gaelic games, soccer and rugby have, meanwhile, been asked to draw up a strategic vision for the future of each sport “either individually or collectively over the next 10 to 15 years.”

“Once they come back with that, I would want to hit the ground running to get the long-term strategic outlook for each of the three sports revised and implemented as quickly as possible,” he continues. “Now that’s not going to be done in 12 months – that’s going to take three, four, maybe five years – but if we have the building blocks in place, I think we can then start to see action very quickly on the ground.”

On the concept of a multi-sports stadium, he says that any progress depends “very much” on the views of the sports involved: “I’m reluctant to raise false hope or dash false hope that might be out there”.

Whether the sports see their future with or without one or both of the other sports is a matter for the governing bodies but Campbell adds: “I don’t detect, at this stage, a multi-sport stadium á la the Maze.”

Balancing cultures

The Irish Language Act was another area where there was some uncertainty when he took up post. His predecessor, Edwin Poots, had ruled out the idea in October 2007 and its supporters again lobbied the new Minister for an Act.

“When I came in, some people in the political world thought that I might be open to reviewing that decision so I hit that on the head. And now we have to get into what is going to be a minorityindigenous languages strategy and how that is best exemplified.”

At the time of the interview, the department was working in the strategy’s final draft. While giving away no details, Campbell emphasised that it would be a strategy for “languages” – rather than one language – and, as expected, it would be “constrained within existing budgets”.

His firm view is that the “vast bulk of the public” are not interested in the issue “but those who are, are very vocal about it”. The Minister does, though, have a goal for how he wants to see languages eventually develop in the province.

“I want to try and reach an area of ground whereby, within the existing resources that are available to people, people will find that there is no antagonism in the development of their culture, there isn’t any opposition created because of the way in which they exercise their culture.”

Campbell accepts that his job is essentially ‘Minister for Cultures’ as Northern Ireland has at least two competing cultures which seek government support and funding. He admits that dealing with the resulting conflicts is “quite difficult” as a “zero-sum game culture” exists in the province with an attitude that can be summed up as “they’ve got something so we have to get something”.

He expects Northern Ireland to gradually move out of that scenario, with greater political stability, to a “nobody wins unless everybody wins scenario – which is fine until you find that you haven’t got the resources to give everybody x number of millions”.

The Minister wants people to see that although people in another community receive something which they do not receive, that does not mean that they are “deprived”. The Minister adds: “We have to move into a position where everybody sees that a gain for one is a gain for others not just a gain for them as opposed to us, which is the way it has been perceived in the past.”

Arts and tourism

Separately, in the arts, he was looking forward to the re-opening of the Ulster Hall, the Lyric Theatre and the Ulster Museum. Completing these three projects would send out the message that Northern Ireland is “open for business” as well as bringing the public back through their doors.

Asked how hard it is to put the arts on the government agenda, he recalled an Assembly question in which one MLA enquired about the number of jobs to be created by a certain arts project. Such projects, he contends, are not “designed specifically to create employment” yet do have wider benefits when the full picture is considered.

“Obviously if you have either a museum or an arts project, it’s there for that specific design and objective. Whatever jobs they create are almost a by-product but sometimes people don’t understand that,” Campbell comments.

Pointing to how these facilities can help Northern Ireland provide a “fantastic option” for visitors, he continues: “Visitors will never come here for a ‘sunshine and spade’ holiday. They will come here because they’re interested in our history, in our culture, in much of what we have on offer in terms of a short-stay holiday. Now, if we can provide the product that will bring them here for two, three or four days then it will be ‘win-win’ because locals will benefit and also it will bring visitors.”

Sporting potential

Sport is a running theme throughout the conversation and he is keen to see talent encouraged and developed from the grassroots up.

“Whether people are playing football or Gaelic or rugby, we want to have the provision there that allows particularly young people to avail of that in a way that will bring out the excellence in 10 or 15 years’ time,” he says.

“I was speaking to a group of students last week and I made this point: I don’t know of any other country of a population of 1.7 million that can boast three of the best golfers in the world at any one time – but Northern Ireland can. Now, we can do that in a whole range of sporting endeavour if we’ve got the resources at a lower level – at a grassroots level – so that we get the best tennis players, we get the best golfers, we get the best football players, the best Gaelic players.”

Training and education are key to this and he wants to see promising young sportspeople “transfer” in a “seamless way” from “potentially quite good to excellence”.

The Minister is adamant that Northern Ireland should be as centrally involved in the 2012 Olympics as possible and enjoy a legacy thereafter, as the draft Sports Strategy suggests.

“I think we tend to focus on the stars, and that’s important, but it’s not just about them. Yes, [Paralympian] Jason Smyth won double gold but he also beat world records and his own personal bests. Northern Ireland won’t always provide someone who can run the 100 metres quicker than the Jamaicans but if we can get people to improve on and create personal bests, that means they’re doing as well as they possibly can.”

The key, he says, is to have a generation of young people from Northern Ireland who have made significant inroads in achievement. If the province can create a significant interest in sporting excellence over the next three years, its potential will hopefully blossom in 2012 or beyond then, in the 2016 or indeed 2020 Olympics.

Using the much-used example of a local Olympic medal winner, Campbell states: “If we can have two or three Mary Peters mark two or three; that will be the enduring legacy.”

Mandates

Considering his triple mandate as a councillor for Derry City and MLA and MP for East Londonderry, by his own admission he needs a “very efficient diary secretary”.

“You have to make sure you juggle the responsibilities appropriately. If I find that I was getting into extreme difficulty in attending any of them, then I would have to review it [his position], but I don’t see that at the moment.”

He is sure that this approach also has its benefits as, for example, he is able to question relevant Ministers in the Commons directly on matters which relate to his brief as a Minister. The UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) is DCAL’s main ‘link’ department in Whitehall.

“Just last week in DCMS Questions in the Commons I was able to question the relevant Minister [on the Olympics] from the perspective of having fairly intimate knowledge of how Northern Ireland was going … It allows me the access that a Minister who is not an MP would find more difficult to get, so it is a help in that sense [as I have] more direct access and more frequent access.”

Turning from the east-west angle, he also sees “mutual advantages” in north-south co-operation, especially in waterways. “Looking at it pragmatically, there are obvious benefits … If you get a significant number of visitors coming to use waterways in the Republic, if we didn’t have good co-operation, what percentage of those visitors would come to our waterways?”

To make co-ordination as effective as possible Campbell says a balance needs to be found between curtailing bureaucratic expenditure while maximising the return for people coming here.

At present, the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment takes the lead on tourism policy although many of DCAL’s activities are tourism-related. It was put to the Minister that DCAL would be a more appropriate lead department, given the close links between culture and tourism.

The important thing for Northern Ireland, he replies, is to look at the whole tourism package rather than who sells it. He alludes to “all our excellent infrastructure and all our natural wonders” such as the Causeway Coast.

“It doesn’t matter to me where that product is positioned. What matters to me is that that product reaches the maximum number of people,” he says, citing the US investment conference as a “fantastic stage” on which Northern Ireland was promoted. “Who it is doing the selling I think is of secondary importance, as long as they’re getting the message out there.”

Campbell also highlights the importance of getting people to pass the message on as many visitors turn into “great ambassadors” for the province when they return home: “They always speak very highly of how they were treated when they were. So if you can get 100,000 converts, because they’ve been here, and go home and tell five people, there’s half a million visitors for the next year.”

Profile: Gregory Campbell

Gregory Campbell was first elected as a councillor to the then Londonderry City Council (now Derry City Council) in 1981; he sits for the Waterside area. From 1982 to 1986, he was an Assembly Member for the Londonderry constituency. He then returned to working in the Civil Service before becoming selfemployed and setting up a publishing company, Causeway Press, in 1994.

Campbell also contested the 1983, 1987 and 1992 Westminster elections in Foyle, coming second each time. As a Northern Ireland Forum Member between 1996 and 1998, he was one of the DUP’s ‘top-up’ candidates, representing the province as a whole.

In the 1997 Westminster election, he ran in East Londonderry and topped the poll in that constituency’s Assembly election in the following year. He has been MP for East Londonderry since 2001 and is one of four Campbells in the House of Commons.

“According to my CV I like music, football and reading, which is about right seeing as I wrote it,” Campbell quips. He’s wary that most politicians say they read great political biographies, though he likes nothing more than escapism, often in the form of a John Grisham novel. A Londonderry man, he states quietly that “his team” is Drumahoe club Institute. He is “a great spectator of sport, I love football, quite apart from my ministerial responsibilities” and “for his sins”, he admits he is a new country music man. Nothing gives him the sense of freedom that walking does. He is married with three daughters and one son.