Last week the young people behind the Our Future Our Choice NI campaign were to throw their weight behind a group of candidates drawn from a range of Remain supporting politicians at a public event.
These included candidates from the SDLP, UUP, Alliance and Sinn Féin.
Our Future Our Choice (OFOC) also supported the Green Party but with the latter abstaining from many of the Westminster contests in Northern Ireland, the young people concentrated their efforts on those seats where they believed their contemporaries might make a difference to the outcome.
Although the press were notified the event did not take place.
Bizarrely the reason behind the non-event was because certain candidates/political parties got cold feet, although not about the endorsement from Our Future Our Choice. Short-sighted does not begin to describe it.
Nevertheless it does not invalidate the efforts of OFOC. They have a right to endorse whomever they like and to invite other young people from across the political spectrum to join them in voting tactically.
These young people are not politically aligned but if this place is ever to change, someday they should be.
Those involved in Our Future Our Choice come from a wide and diverse range of backgrounds.
They have spent two years of their lives trying to convince politicians at Westminster that there should be a second referendum.
Statistics show that young people across the UK but particularly in Northern Ireland are overwhelmingly pro-EU. They are rightly outraged that they are being pulled out of the European Union by older voters.
Like the amazing climate change campaigner, Greta Thunberg, these young adults know that ‘our house’ is also ‘on fire’. Thankfully like many of their contemporaries they are not tribal, short-sighted, blinkered or ambitious for themselves. Neither are they slavishly following the latest fleeting trend. They are bold, brave and brash. Pioneers in politics.
Their choices make sense and this has infuriated some politicos - even the so called ‘moderates’.
Even if some experienced commentators claim not to know Our Future Our Choice, many young people do know who they are. Only a month ago they filled the Ulster Hall and brought together a cross party platform in support of their campaign. (This writer was like Gandalf the Grey and chaired the business section)
The constituencies in which they have taken an interest are also those that have a higher concentration of young people who support the campaign for a second referendum. They also contain those politicians who have been the most supportive of their objectives from the start.
So unsurprisingly they opt for the most vocal and prominent remainers such as the SDLP’s Claire Hanna over former UUP-Conservative, now Alliance, Paula Bradshaw; for Alliance’s Stephen Farry over the UUP’s Alan Chambers in North Down; UUP’s former MP Danny Kinahan in South Antrim; Sinn’s Féin’s John Finucane in North Belfast; Naomi Long as the front runner against two leave candidates and Colum Eastwood of the SDLP over Sinn Féin’s Elisha McCallion in Foyle.
There is joy and pain in equal measure for all parties. But this is not part of any pact, it’s just the judgment of a group of young people who have not been sitting idly by for three years whilst Brexit burns the house down.
The economics of leaving the EU have never stacked up. Xenophobia, racial fear, ignorance, imperialism, nostalgia and regressive nationalism took hold and rooted itself particularly amongst the English electorate. In Northern Ireland the debate got tainted by orange and green prejudices and it was stoked at times by unashamed sectarianism. This sectarianism and those who espoused it should have been taken out by the roots.
Now there is a chance to break from the past and create new traditions. The future of our young people is at stake and we should support them.
