The hardline unionist that May’s Tories are trying to do a deal with
BRITAIN: Moments after her school bus was blown up by the IRA, Arlene Foster displayed the instincts of a leader at the age of 16.
‘‘Everybody started to scream and I stood up and said, ‘Don’t panic, don’t panic’, and then I says, ‘Gillian, come on, get off’, and she says, ‘I can’t, I can’t’, and that was when I realised her arm was so badly injured,’’ she said shortly after the atrocity.
Arlene Kelly, as she then was, tried to pull the maimed pupil to the emergency exit, calling to the seriously injured driver: ‘‘She’s dying. She’s dying.’’
He rushed down and gave the student the kiss of life. The IRA targeted the bus carrying a dozen children in Lisnaskea, Co Fermanagh, because the driver was a part-time member of the Ulster Defence Regiment.
This was not the first time she had experienced the horror of the Troubles. As an 8-year-old Arlene Kelly lived on the family farm in Roslea, Co Fermanagh.
Her father, John, a part-time policeman in the Royal Ulster Constabulary, was shot one night as he stepped out of the front door. He set off emergency flares and the police arrived promptly. She recalls the family lying with their bleeding father on the bedroom floor with terrorists outside in the darkness. John Kelly survived to walk her up the aisle on her wedding day.
Her greatest regret was not getting to say goodbye to him. She had landed in London at a tourism event a few years ago when she received the call that he had died.
Arlene Isabel Kelly was born in Enniskillen on July 3, 1970. After her father was shot, the family moved and she went to the Collegiate Grammar School for girls in Enniskillen.
She knew victims of the IRA bombing at the town’s cenotaph when 11 people were murdered on Remembrance Day in 1987.
She chaired the Ulster Unionist Association at Queen’s University Belfast and attracted attention by resisting a proposal to give the Irish republic joint authority over Northern Ireland.
As a solicitor in Lisnaskea she took the chair of the maledominated Young Unionist Council. She was then described as prochoice on abortion in a profile by The Irish Times. She was a Guide leader and said she enjoyed eating out: ‘‘I love a good steak.’’
Although her mother, Georgina, was a housewife, the newlywed Arlene Foster said: ‘‘I’m not a feminist but I believe that women should be free to work if they want. I’d be awfully bored staying at home.’’
Rodney Edwards of The Impartial Reporter, her local newspaper in Enniskillen, said: ‘‘She was once asked at an Ulster Unionist Party meeting what she was doing and she said, ‘Well, I am not here to make the tea’.’’
She led a campaign called Fear (Fear Encouraged Abandoning Roots) that urged Protestants to return to the border country that they had fled because of the IRA’s campaign of intimidation.
She was elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly for the moderate Ulster Unionists but defected to the hardline Democratic Unionist Party, led by its founder, Ian Paisley. She feared her party was making too many concessions to nationalists.
She is a member of the Church of Ireland rather than the late Paisley’s stricter Free Presbyterian faction. Her husband, Brian, has served as a detective and the couple have three children.
‘‘I’ve always found Arlene Foster warm, genuine and funny,’’ Edwards said. ‘‘When she’s not working she enjoys walking with her husband or helping her son with his chickens.
’’Often, you’ll spot her on television at an event and a couple of hours later she’ll be doing the weekly shopping on her way home.’’
On the other hand, he said: ‘‘She dislikes criticism and if she doesn’t like your question you’ll soon know about it.’’
She was talent-spotted by Peter Robinson, the former first minister, and succeeded him last year aged 45. The assembly was brought down by a scandal over the £500 million botched ‘‘cash for ash’’ scheme to encourage businesses to use renewable heating, introduced when she was minister for enterprise, trade and investment.
She refused to stand down during an investigation, insisting she had done nothing wrong.
When her power-sharing deputy, Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness, died she paid a respectful rather than gushing tribute, praising his contribution to public life but acknowledging ‘‘a mixed legacy in terms of his involvement with the IRA’’. She upset some nationalists with blunt comments in opposition to a proposal to give special status to the Irish language.
‘‘Since there were more people in Northern Ireland who spoke Polish than Irish, perhaps there should be a Polish Language Act as well,’’ she said.
Although tough on terrorism she has avoided the language of bitterness and sectarian hatred and has earned respect across the religious divide.
‘‘She has many Catholic friends and supporters, many of whom vote for her,’’ Edwards said.
At McGuinness’ funeral she quietly entered the church with her head down as if hoping not to be noticed. She was received with a spontaneous round of applause, the hard men among the mourners standing as she took her place. The Roman Catholic clergy began clapping too. – The Times