In this excellent post by Jim Fitzpatrick of the Politics Show Jim quotes Sir Allen McClay. Sir Allen was, without question, one of Northern Ireland’s most successful businessmen – and, sadly, died last week. His passing was very sad news for Northern Ireland.
Fitzpatrick refers to a factory opening. McClay had been reluctant to have David Trimble attend. At the time, Trimble was the local MP. According to the article Trimble was only allowed to attend after McClay had been persuaded to do so by the Head of the Civil Service. But with the “VIPs” duly assembled, McClay laid into the politicians:
“There’s been much talk recently about the need for decommissioning of weapons – what about the decommissioning of jobs and factories that we’ve seen throughout this country?
“That’s the decommissioning I’d like our politicians to focus on,” he said in so many words, as David Trimble went his particular colour of purple, and [Peter] Mandelson and a host of government officials went an unhealthy shade of white.
Nothing much has changed since McClay uttered those words. People in business here succeed despite politicians often – rather than because of them. Even young Kirk McCambley must be regretting accepting the help of a politician in setting up his venture.
Inspired by Sir Allen’s words I thought I’d have a look at the backgrounds of our MPs to try to determine what, if any, business experience they had. I started compiling a little table. The table made for very uninteresting reading. The only MP who has had any business experience, as far as I can gather from the MPs’ Wikipedia entries, is David Simpson. He worked for a meat company in the past.
However none of our MPs has established a business or had to meet monthly pay-roll as a result of their own endeavours (although most, of course, now employ staff paid-for by the public purse).
Practical, hard-working, common-sense business people like Allen McClay have done more for this place than any politicians. Against all the odds they have prospered, invested and reinvested.
One of the things that impressed me most about Owen Paterson, Shadow Secretary of State, was that he made the effort to go out and meet many of Northern Ireland’s business people. I joined him at some of these meetings. As a former businessman himself he could empathize. Whether our local “politicians” could hope to understand the challenges faced by local business people when they have no overt experience in business – and often distrust the very concept of capitalism – is highly unlikely.
With the exception of several of the Conservative candidates I’m not sure our next raft of MPs will be much better.
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