Edwin Poots: Social media trolls were ‘abusive and nasty’

DAERA Minister Edwin Poots has hit out at social media trolls after revealing that both he and his family were on the receiving end of online abuse.

During his stint in the Department of Health, a role he held just prior to his latest appointment, Mr Poots says that he faced comments that were “absolutely vile, nasty commentary, and mostly unrepeatable because of the nature of it.”

He said: “I cope quite well with criticism, but some of it is just pure nasty, especially most of what you face on social media, when there are abusive things said about you and your family.”

“I got that particularly when I was minister for health; it involved wishing really bad things to members of your family, something which is a wholly unacceptable trend as a result of social media.”

Mr Poots was speaking as part of a wide ranging interview with the News Letter about his new role at the helm of the Department of Agriculture.

He was at the Department for Health for three years; prior to that he was minister for the now defunct departments of the Environment and Culture, Arts and Leisure, and he has chaired the Environment Committee, served on Lisburn City Council, and been the city’s deputy mayor.

The father-of-four has been in politics since the late 90s, following in the footsteps of his father, Charles Poots, who served both at local Council and Assembly level.

But both men have strong rural roots; Edwin’s father started his family’s farm up when he was in his early 20s, achieved via, as Edwin says, “blood, sweat and tears”.

He adds: “I saw it all. You borrowed money,you worked hard and you paid that off, another opportunity came up, you borrowed more, and paid that off, and so it went on.

“So living with those responsibilities meant that there wasn’t a lot of money about for us as a lot of it was spent on actually building up the farm.”

The young Edwin wasn’t one to shy away from hard work either; from the age of four he was helping his parents with the milking, feeding, and collecting the hens’ eggs.

“Our farm was what you would call a medium size farm, there was a lot of work to do, it was labour intensive and there were quite a lot of animals that needed care, and my mother had a lot of ill health and dad was out at the cattle marts a lot, as he would have bought and sold calves.”

Edwin did his bit to help out, but it wasn’t a case of all work and no play.

His childhood, like that of many who grew up in rural Ulster, was idyllic, and “very enjoyable”.

He recounts: “I remember going down the fields and taking a couple of collie dogs and a fox terrier with me and pretending to hunt, climbing trees and all of that, I just loved getting out into the fields and being with the animals.

“I come from generations of people who have farmed, and I think most people in Northern Ireland, if they look back far enough three or four generations, there will be farming there somewhere.”

It was 1974 when Edwin had his very first taste of the world of politics - coincidentally, in the very building we are sitting in now.

“I remember standing here in 1974 at the end of the workers’ strike, and I was fascinated by this big building,” he says.

“There were tens of thousands of people there that day, and it was just an amazing scene to watch.

“I always had a big interest in politics, and would have canvassed for my dad from a young age, and read newspapers.

“I read books about politics and other countries like the Middle East, and what went on there.

“So in terms of education, I probably got as much out of my own reading as I did from my time at school.”

Still, he never set out with the intention of going into politics full time.

“I didn’t set out to be an Assembly member; I didn’t even anticipate that there was going to be an Assembly, and I was quite happy just being a part time politician and a full time farmer. But it just happened.”

Aside from the obviously more sedentary nature of politics as a career compared to farming, Edwin says the “constant communication” is also a huge contrast.

“When I started farming in 1982, we would have had a lot of people call with us to sell cattle meal and all sorts of stuff,” he recalls.

“There would have been someone calling every day, so you had regular contact with people.

“By the time I was finished and was farming on my own, and getting help just when it was needed, I never saw anybody; farming can be very isolated and lonely, and politics is sort of the opposite of that, so I can really understand the problems that many farmers face in having that loneliness and isolation.

“They’ve maybe just got up that morning and have lost a calf, or had to get the vet out, or whatever, they have just hit a problem which they hadn’t anticipated the night before, and they have to deal with it.

“Or perhaps they’re waiting to sell animals who are struck down with TB.

“These are all the sorts of problems that I know farmers are facing day by day, and the mental stress that is placed on them is huge.”

But politics, he says, is not without its challenges either.

“You have a certain level of people looking in at what you are doing all the time, and that can be quite tough, because people are judging you without knowing the full facts.

“They are judging decisions that were taken without knowing the facts that were actually put before you before you made that decision.”

And indeed the decisions that lie ahead for the minister are plentiful; as the rest of 2020 stretches before him, what are the major issues he believes need tackled?

Aside from the slurry ban and bovine TB, Edwin is keen to encourage more young people to farm - even though he knows that could be a challenge.

“It’s not always an attractive option,” he says. “You can earn a thousand pounds a week on a building site, or you can stay at home on the farm and your dad gives you £150 at the end of the week, because that is actually all he can afford to give you.”

One thing is for certain however - no matter how insurmountable the challenges may be, Edwin Poots is ready and willing to tackle them and make a difference.

“This portfolio excited me; obviously I don’t know every farmer in Northern Ireland, but I know plenty of people who are involved in farming, and I can easily relate to farmers and the issues they are talking about.”

He smiles as he recalls his reaction when he found out he had been selected as DAERA minister.

“I had found out that Robin Swann, who is also a farmer, was the UUP’s choice for this post, and I thought I would get health which I had previously been in.

“Then when DAERA came up it was a bit of a relief to be honest. Health has been such a challenging portfolio, and I am very supportive of Robin, and what he has to do, and if I can help him in any way I would be very happy to do that.”

The minister has also spoken of his happy time at Greenmount Agricultural College, which he attended after leaving Wallace High School.

Indeed, he says he knews from when he was just 12 or 13 years of age that farming was the career he wanted to pursue.

He recounts amusing memories of his time at Legacurry Primary School, when he used to stand up in the classroom any time that he heard a tractor coming past, and identified the driver, simply by listening to the sound of it.

“The teacher used to say to me, ‘Edwin, if the Eleven Plus was about tractors coming down the road you would pass no problem, but it’s not, so you need to concentrate on your work.’

“And somehow I managed to pass it - I had no particular interest - and I got into Wallace (High School).

“I didn’t particularly like all of the school work that was involved, and I chose to go into farming when I was about 12 or 13.

“Then I went to Greenmount and had a very enjoyable time there. It made a man out of me in many ways, in terms of being able to be more independent and so on.

“The whole experience was really character building.”

Even though the Antrim campus wasn’t terribly far from the young Edwin’s home near Hillsborough, he chose, like many of the would be farmers, to board.

But whilst he threw himself into student life there, and enjoyed the fun with his fellow agricultural students, the minister, who is a committed Christian, didn’t succumb to all aspects of stereotypical student life.

“I avoided the pitfalls of a lot of the pubs, which some would have tended to do,” he says.

“I was pretty strong about not going down that route. As a 16-year-old away from home, you could have been drawn into a lot of things that you shouldn’t have been, and I didn’t want to do that.

“But I got to meet a bunch of really good lads and we had great craic and fun, getting up to all sorts of silly things.”