Union Hall man seeking UK seat for Green Party

UNION Hall’s Michael Kearney is standing for election for the Green Party in York Outer in the UK’s general election.

The perceived wisdom is that the Labour Party – ably assisted by Macroom man Morgan McSweeney, who is the director of campaigns for the British Labour Party – is on course for a landslide victory after people go to the polls on July 4th.

But Michael Kearney – who was born in London and returned, at the age of nine, to Union Hall with his Irish dad, Jim, and mother, Carol – is working on building the Green Party’s profile in York Outer.

The 34-year-old, who attended Union Hall NS and Mount Saint Michael’s in Rosscarbery, recalls the move to West Cork providing him and his sister with an immense amount of freedom and safety – the kind you couldn’t get in London.

After secondary school, Michael took inspiration from his mother, who had served as a sergeant in Britain’s Ministry of Defence, and studied criminology and sociology at the University of York.

However, he said 10 years of a Conservative government resulted in 20,000 police officers being made redundant.

Michael, who re-trained as a primary teacher, believes: ‘We can learn a lot of lessons from the Irish education system, which values children more as individuals than it does over here in the UK.’

In recent years, Michael has also worked as the leader of the National Education Union in York, representing thousands of educators across the city.

He joined the Labour Party in 2017, but became disillusioned with it because he said it has abandoned its left-leaning policies. In 2019, he joined the UK’s Green Party, which, unlike Ireland’s, is growing in popularity.

Michael believes the Green Party is the only party with a manifesto to deal with the issues facing the UK.

Although he is aware that the Green Party is facing an uphill battle in this election, the candidate believes his constituency has the perfect demographic for a Green vote.

‘Growing up in West Cork, I never thought that I would be doing what I am doing,’ Michael admitted.

‘As a teacher myself, I would like to say to all the young people in West Cork that there are so many opportunities open to them. You never know where life is going to take you.’