A threat to the establishment agenda

A GLIB portrayal of anti-Nice campaigner Justin Barrett would go something like this: unhinged, radical, anarchic right-wing, anti-abortion campaigner with a militant past.

That’s the kind of image the Yes campaign are trying to pedal of the 31-year-old No to Nice alliance leader. And there are certainly grounds for some of the description. But it misses out on one central point.

Barrett is a threat to the Yes campaign. He has already been a potent force in defeating two Government-backed referendums in the last 15 months, the abortion referendum and the Nice treaty. And having roused his political machine again, he’s hoping to make it third time lucky.

His claims the current controversy over alleged links with a neo-Nazi outfit are part of a smear campaign against him by the Yes campaign certainly carry some weight. But then again, few who are aware of Barrett’s history would be surprised if he popped up at a rally of right-wing extremists.

Barrett has been a leading light in Youth Defence, a militant anti-abortion group which stormed the Fianna Fail Árd Fheis in 1999 and has been involved in several scrapes with the gardaí over heavy-handed protests.

Its brand of direct action, pickets and aggressive campaigning in the 1990s made it an enemy of many senior politicians who had their homes picketed by the group over demands for an abortion referendum.

Barrett himself was found guilty of obstructing a garda at a Youth Defence rally in April 1999 and was fined £100. He got the probation act on appeal and still protests his innocence.

Barrett was born in Cork City in 1971, fostered when he was two and adopted at the age of five by a family in Borrisokane, Co Tipperary.

While Barrett was his mother’s family name and the one on his birth certificate, his adoptive name was Slevin, so for many years he was known as Justin Barrett Slevin. He eventually dropped Slevin and opted for Barrett.

He attended Borrisokane vocational school and Athlone Technical College, where he took a diploma in business studies. He went on to study accountancy but never completed the course.

He was still living in Borrisokane when he was approached to join Young Fine Gael. Barrett was PRO of his local Fine Gael branch and knew the party’s local TD, Michael Lowry.

“To my shame I was a member of Young Fine Gael at one time,” he said in a recent interview. “But that’s a long time ago... I personally never had any liking for him [Lowry]. I had a sense even back then as a party member that he didn’t really believe in anything. But then that’s a sense that I get off most TDs.”

He found something he really believed in when he came across the Youth Defence in the early 1990s, a group which attracted him because of their “genuine sincerity”.

The group’s links with right-wing extremists were highlighted in this newspaper in 1999 when it reported Youth Defence invited a militant anti-abortion campaigner with a criminal past to speak at one of its conferences.

One of Barrett’s role models was Ralph Reed, an American Christian right-winger, who he met in 1994. Reed apparently told him that while demonstrations were a legitimate way to get your views across, it was results at the ballot box which could really advance your agenda.

Barrett seems to have taken this message to heart. Under his stewardship, Youth Defence’s repackaging into the slicker Mother and Child Campaign has been remarkable and has generated significant funds which it has used to run highly effective campaigns.

Barrett’s group is opposed to Nice for many reasons, one of which is the fear that ratification of the treaty could ultimately pave the way for abortion in Ireland.

The initial No to Nice campaign was established in Youth Defence’s headquarters on Dublin’s Capel Street where it mobilised huge numbers of volunteers and led a slick and campaign with effective red and black posters which screamed: “You will lose power, money, freedom.”

In the abortion referendum held earlier this year, the Mother and Child Campaign used many of the same tactics. There was a major volunteer effort on the ground and a huge poster campaign bearing the image of a mother and child, in contrast to political parties’ largely bland and abstract posters.

On both occasions the Mother and Child Campaign and the No to Nice campaign were regarded by mainstream political parties as minor movements which didn’t pose a real threat. And on both occasions they were wrong.

This time Barrett’s political opponents have paid him the ultimate tribute by stealing many of his campaigning techniques. Any smears over his alleged links to right-wing groups only serve to illustrate how dangerous the establishment feel he is.

Just how damaging these disclosures will be remain to be seen. But one thing is sure. Even if Barrett and the No to Nice’s 100,000 campaign is unsuccessful, he won’t be going away.

“Our job is to persuade people that out view of Irish society is an attractive vision for the future,” he said in a recent interview. “I think most people in Youth Defence realise that they are in this for longer than the abortion referendum. They are in this for life.”