ALLIANCE Councillor Micky Murray is will be defending his seat for the first time in the Balmoral DEA this week.

Micky was co-opted to the seat after former Lord Mayor Kate Nicholl was elected as an MLA for South Belfast in May 2022.

Although now defending his seat, Micky previously ran for council before in 2019 but narrowly missed out on being elected. He said being in council was a steep learning curve but it had given him a lot of great opportunities.

“The last ten months have been a learning curve, I’ve worked in politics for a long time. I’ve managed Paula Bradshaw’s office since 2016 and you always think you know what’s going on but being inside council is so different. However I’ve had a lot of good opportunities, I’ve been chair of the People and Communities committee and chair of the Belfast wide Police and Community Safety Partnership and I’ve been involved in a lot of community work with community organisations.”

Asked about the recent abuse candidates have been receiving with a number of candidates reporting damage to their posters and Micky’s colleague Michael Long being assaulted, Micky said his campaign so far had thankfully been free from intimidation.

“On the doors some people have said they wouldn’t vote for Alliance but most people have been very friendly and a lot of people respect you’re coming to the door. Thankfully I haven’t had any malice directed at my own campaign.”

Micky said his work with the LGBTQ+ community had been a great driver for his politics and said it was important the council had voices from the LGBTQ+ community to represent them at a local level. He also said he was proud to have worked on campaigns for marriage equality and the ongoing work to ban conversion therapy.

“The reason I got into politics was LGBTQ+ activism and I’ve always been involved in campaigns for marriage equality and banning conversion therapy. I’ve been campaigning against conversion therapy for over a decade and it’s been good to see it go from being a grassroots campaign to being one of the top issues on the Assembly’s agenda and getting them to commit to banning conversion therapy. I sit with a working group with the Department of Communities and we’re currently looking at legislation to move this forward.

“I think it’s important to have more LGBTQ+ people in council and we make up a significant amount of the population here and it’s important in politics, especially local politics to reflect the whole community.”

The Alliance Party emerged strongly from last year’s Assembly elections and took a sizeable chunk out of votes which traditionally would have gone to both Nationalist and Unionist parties. Micky said in South Belfast it had been Alliance’s community work which was at the centre of their approach.

“The Alliance vote across the country has increased especially since Naomi became leader. She’s attracted a lot of voters from a lot of different parties. In South Belfast we’re very community driven and that comes from my own background and Paula Bradshaw’s background. 

“Community work and delivering for people is key to how we deliver as a team and a lot of people have said ‘I wouldn’t traditionally be an Alliance voter but you did XYZ and for me’ and we’ve had people saying they elected all their elected representatives and we were the only ones to get back and we take a lot of pride in that.”