Belfast's youngest councillor has opened up on getting involved in politics and how he is "giving back to the community that raised me".
Sinn Féin representative Caoimhín McCann has told how he believes in class politics and has "more in common" with loyalist Joel Keys than a billionaire in the Republic of Ireland.
The 22-year-old was co-opted onto the council on March 1 this year, replacing Stephen Magennis in the Collin district electoral area.
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Councillor McCann, who is also the youngest Sinn Féin councillor on the island, has offered his thoughts on changes here, and the “new breed” of politics in Belfast and beyond.
Councillor McCann, a Poleglass man, said he was “very much giving back to the community that raised me.” He said: “I joined just to give a hand, just to make my community better. Anytime I walked out the front door and saw someone doing something, or delivering something in the constituency, it was always Sinn Féin.
“I don’t come from a particularly republican family, but I have republican thoughts, and it is something I came to just through an interest in history and politics.”
He said: “It wouldn’t matter to me if I was being paid to sit in an office with a wage helping out constituents or being a face on a poster as a public rep, or if I was just in my local area dropping off leaflets in my local area for the MP or the MLA.
“I was happy, and still am happy, just to play my part and put my shoulder to the wheel wherever I am asked to do it. But it is nice to get the chance to be a political rep at such a young age, it’s a nice compliment in a way, but it was something that just kind of fell in the local constituency, and someone nominated me. But never an ambition as such. It goes back to the republican saying, that everyone has their part to play, no part is too big or too small.”
Councillor McCann is also the National Chairperson of Sinn Féin's youth organisation, Ógra Shinn Féin - a position he has held since he was 19, after joining when he was 16 years old.
He said politics in Belfast is “very much in your face,” and cites the Belfast City Hall union flag protests in 2012/13 as one of the early moments that forged his political activism, and later the death of Martin McGuiness in 2017.
He said: “Political tension and political issues are something that you are always going to have to face up to, growing up in a divided city and a post-conflict society.”
Caoimhín went to Rathmore Grammar, which he describes as “a fairly middle class school for a boy from West Belfast.” He said: “It isn’t a traditional hotbed of republicanism, people up there would generally have been SDLP or Alliance - I might have been the only Sinn Féiner in my year. At least the only one who was active at that particular time.” He later studied languages at University, including Spanish and Irish.
He said: “My friends - who are from across Dunmurry and the Collin area, as well as across the city - they love it. At the start they thought it was a wee bit mad - they would say 'We’re all out on the beer, and you’re running about with Danny Baker cleaning up the street'.
“And I’m obviously a wee bit more mindful not to do the traditional silly stuff on nights out, like drinking yourself into a coma and making an eejit of yourself. The question I always got for years from them, even if I hadn’t seen them in a while, was 'When are we going to see your face on the lamp-posts?'"
He says he sees class consciousness as a way of bringing commonality across the divide in Belfast. He said: “Class is vitally important. It’s one of the greatest dividing lines across the world. If you didn’t recognise that, in my view you wouldn’t be politically astute.
“I’ve grown up in working class west Belfast - I’ve more in common with Joel Keys from a working class loyalist estate in Belvoir than an Irish billionaire, who spends half his time in Ireland and the other half in a tax haven. I have more in common with working class loyalist people than a billionaire from down south.”
He said that conviction “formulates what a united Ireland should be” and that it should be “a place where workers and families are making decisions and not landlords and brown envelopes.” He added: “That means communities in the Shankill and over in east Belfast are going to feel and reap the same benefits as in the Collin or the Falls Road.”
Councillor McCann said the emergence of young political voices is “rewarding and inspiring.” He said: “Seeing someone who is quiet at the start, coming into themselves and becoming so determined to deliver for people and their community is class to see.
“Young people are going to be the drivers of change, and big change. If you look at Repeal in the south, and Marriage Equality on both sides of the border, that was predominantly run and directed by young people. It was the youthfulness of those campaigns that got young people out on the ground.
“So yes it is important to see more young faces in politics, and more reps, but we need to get more young people engaged politically across the board.”
He added: “I think young people recognise there is a big change that is going to happen on this island. We’ve seen a big change happen in Britain through Brexit, and that has had knock-on effects here. It is young people who are going to drive the change.”
He said as a young person the key issues for him were the environment, youth services in the city, and mental health. “That’s what young people, when we are talking to them, tell us about,” he said. “In terms of my local area, we have the new West Wellbeing Centre at Dairyfarm Shopping Centre, which offers free counselling services for young men and women in the area.
“Me and the guy that runs it have agreed on a joint project to get rid of some graffiti in the area and put that positive message area to support young people in the community.
“There is a massive generational change from people at my parent’s age compared to people my age. So more young people now would lift the phone or send a text and say “I'm not feeling it here, can we go out and have a chat” - there is a massive shift.
“And it might save lives. The Collin area has tragically had to deal with quite a lot of deaths of young men, so we feel it on a local level, and we understand it.”
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