WIP

10 Questions with... Senator David Norris. Interview by Séamus McManus

1. What were you doing at my age?

   Twenty-two, well let's see, I was agonising about being a fairy, that's what I was doing! Twenty-two yes, I was still in Trinity College, I had just got a Foundation Scholarship and I was thrilled with it. I was dealing with a fairly catastrophic family situation, and coming to terms with the fact that the fellow I was in love with was showing signs of straying! He eventually went off and married an air hostess from Aer Lingus and went to live in Canada! At that age I was absolutely agonised, and as a result I interpreted literature, in a very raw and passionate way. I was responding to things in literature which had a parallel with my own life, and that propelled me right up to the top of the class, it was amazing really.

2. How did you get to where you are today?

   I don't know! I just kept on I suppose - not that much was planned. I would plan particular aspects of my life, like for example starting various organisations - the gay movement, the North Great George's St. Preservation Society, the James Joyce centre, these sorts of things. But there was no master-plan for my life, like the way some writers start knowing the end and write backwards from there. It was really, in a way, nest-building. I was a happy child, and I wanted to regain that happiness from a period of chaos. That meant constructing a nest around me, which I did eventually.

3. You founded the Campaign for Homosexual Law Reform and were instrumental in the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Ireland. What do you perceive as the biggest changes in Gay Ireland since 1993?

    

   Well I'm probably not the best person to ask because I'm quite out of touch with it, but I think the commercialisation of the whole gay scene would be one thing, which has its positive and its negative aspects. Also of course the much more widespread acceptance - for example the fact that I'm no longer “the only gay in the village”, even in Leinster House. A very handsome, articulate young man sits directly in front of me in the Senate: Senator Dominic Hannigan from the Labour Party is also openly gay. So, we have two live fairies in the Senate, and none in the Dáil, as far as we know...

4. Who was the most influential person in your life and why?

    

   Very difficult to say, there were different people at different times, and for different reasons. My mother and my grandmother were formative influences, and certainly some of my teachers. But I suppose politically, one of the most influential people was the late Noel Browne, Minister for Health in the coalition government of 1948-1951. He was the man who single-handedly wiped out TB in Ireland. He brought the government down with his provision for supporting nursing mothers, the Mother and Child scheme - which the Catholic Church attacked because they thought it was creeping socialism. They preferred people to lurk in poverty rather than allow the State to have any interest in their affairs. The Church thought they were the only ones who had a right to interfere in people's private lives.

   But Noel was wonderful, I adored him. There was no overlap in our time in office, but I did know him when he was in the Dáil. As far back as the early 70's I got Noel to put down a question about changing the criminal law on homosexuality and he was laughed out of it! There was uproar! Laughter and silly comments made by the Minister for Justice and others. So as I said, attitudes have changed hugely.

5. You have what could be called a non-traditional Irish background: You were born abroad in the former Belgian Congo, and you are a member of the non-majority Church of Ireland faith. What was your reaction to the recent killings in Northern Ireland of two British army soldiers and a PSNI officer?

    

   I think it's absolutely contemptible, utterly disgusting. These people have a breath-taking arrogance. First of all, I think it's terribly arrogant for someone to take another person's life. Although I'm a believer and a regular church-goer, there's always a doubt: This could be the only chance you have to experience anything, and how dare anyone take that away. That's why I'm a pacifist, against war and other conflict. But secondly, these people who elect themselves as representatives to commit these murders and atrocities on behalf of the Irish people. Well they do not have my consent. If I may say, I think my “mongrel” background was extremely helpful, in the following way: My father, who was English, died when I was 6. I only saw him three times because he was back in central Africa working. I was brought up by my Irish relations, who were from an old Gaelic family. They managed to hold onto a huge amount of land until the famine. They were very pro-British: I was brought back from boarding school by my mother because they didn't relay the broadcast of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. I was told on the authority of my mother (whom I implicitly trusted) that the British empire was the greatest thing that had ever happened. I was told that it spread civilisation all over the planet and that everyone ought to be extremely grateful to have been colonised! Any attempt to shake off the yoke was an act of extraordinary ingratitude which would be punished.

   So then when I went to school in Ireland and started to find out about the penal laws, and evictions... it was so unjust and so wrong, it was horrible! It shakes you to your very foundations, but it's a very good thing to be shaken! You realise that you can't take anything for granted, you've got to explore things and test ideas for yourself. A lot of people naturally enough take things for granted, I don't, I test things and I think that's a good thing. That was certainly an advantage growing up.

6. Tomorrow marks the first 100 days of Barack Obama's time in the White House. If you were elected U.S. President, what would be your first action in office?

   Very difficult question. I know what I'd do - I'd bring George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld before a war crimes trial. The Iraq situation has to be cleaned out. What went on there were war crimes. They deliberately tore up the Geneva Conventions. They instituted torture, and they lied, and lied, and lied. The whole thing was in the interests of greed, money and capitalism. Exactly what a decent Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower said in 1961: "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." This "acquisition of unwarranted influence" is exactly what Bush facilitated. I'd indict the whole lot of them, and sign them over to the International Court of Justice.

7. What is your biggest regret?

    

   [At this point Senator Norris begins a rendition of Edith Piaf's "Non, je ne regrette rien"]

   I don't think I have regrets, really, because I never look back! I'm sure I've done and said dreadful things, and if I were to look back on them I'd probably shudder. I suppose the only regret I have is being right so bloody often, and being completely impotent. To be stuck on the back-benches of the Irish Senate, and know what they were walking themselves into in Iraq - I said it repeatedly. I rang friends in America who had contacts with Bush, and begged them, begged them to do or say something - that was very frustrating. I rang Bertie Ahern on his mobile phone about it, I could see what was going to happen, I knew it!

   When the American Vice-Ambassador had me for lunch I was introduced to their expert on Iraq. I said to him, "When was the last time you were in Baghdad?" He had never been in Iraq. "I suppose you keep in touch with the newspapers then?" He didn't read or speak Arabic. Well that's a lot of use, no wonder they walked into it! The whole thing was dreadful, it was all done on a lie. That's my regret then, being right but not being able to do more about it.

8. What do you value most in life?

    

   I value the beauty of life, and human relationships. Love, friendship, affection - these are the things that really enrich you and bring you alive. I've been in love about three or four times in my life, it's the most exhilarating, wonderful experience possible. It heightens your senses, it's better than three joints all rolled in together - it's the best chemical high on Earth. Your body is full of endorphins released by the brain - it changes how you see colours, shapes, even the air tastes different. I think that's wonderful, I think that's the greatest experience you can have.

   And you can also experience it in gentler forms of friendship and affection too - affection and respect for animals, plants, the birds and so on. I have a house in Cyprus. I love it in the Spring, I go around Easter usually. There are 60 different kinds of wild orchids growing there, it's wonderful to see that - but less and less so now unfortunately. Even in the wilds of the Troodos mountains where I live they're using chemical sprays, and it's such a pity. Also, up the road from me there are two Bonnelli's eagles, beautiful birds that hunt majestically. These sorts of things, that's what it's worth being alive for.

9. So what do you do to relax after a long day in Leinster House?

    

   In Leinster House? I don't relax here, I work right around the clock basically! Even my reading in bed is work-related. I've recently decided to take the odd weekend off, because people are utterly voracious. They devour politicians, it's unspeakable! They're appalling, you know. I need some time to myself, but I get it in quite large swathes. Now at 65 I've decided to take Sundays off, and I will not, I will not work on Sundays if I can possibly avoid it. I go to church on Sunday mornings at St. Patrick's Cathedral, and that is absolutely immutable. I don't care if they want me to address the nation on the Nine O' Clock News, they can go to Hell, because I won't do it! So I work myself to a standstill, and then I buzz off to Cyprus, and I'm more or less incommunicado there, which is wonderful.

10. What advice would you give to a young university graduate from Ireland?

     

    Follow your instincts, and do what you want. If your parents happen to be still alive, ignore them, because they'll probably give you bad advice. I've just come from interviewing the recently retired senior keeper of Dublin Zoo, Gerry Creighton. His whole family for generations had been employed in Guinness' Brewery, and it broke his father's heart that Gerry wouldn't go into the brewery too. But he insisted, because he had this passionate love for animals, and at 14 he got himself a job looking after the ponies in the zoo. Then he went on to lions, elephants and so on, and he's had the most wonderfully rich, happy and fulfilling life.

    I'm not the best person to ask - I seem to have just floated through things. But play to your strengths. Some people have a natural gift for teaching, if you have that, follow it! If you're a musician, follow it. If you want to go into the theatre, follow it. If you want to go into politics, follow it, it's the best game in town, really interesting. It can be rather irritating and you can find really bad behaviour sometimes, but occasionally, despite what I've said about the Iraq war, and about the dreadful situation in Palestine, you can have a little impact. And in other areas you can have a larger impact, even if it's only that people pick up on your ideas and you don't get any credit for them, what about it? As long as the job gets done, great! So follow your instincts, and play to your strengths, that's my advice.