INSTIGATING CHANGE AND INTEGRATION

Baroness May Blood

When you pick up a memoir with a title as directive as ‘Watch My Lips, I’m Speaking’, you instinctively know it’s about someone who is an achiever. Dympna O’Callaghan meets the author, Baroness May Blood

When Baroness May Blood walks into a room, you feel her presence. Here is a lady who believes in herself and in others and for whom the words, ‘can’t do’ don’t resonate. Her life has been about helping people achieve their unachievable; she has transformed the lives of many across the divides in her native Belfast and reached out to countless others throughout Northern Ireland. She is an influencer and an achiever of the highest order. She is a true social entrepreneur. For her, community is everything.

May Blood was one of seven children born into a poor family who lived in a small house in a West Belfast community with no voice. She left school at 14 with ‘no papers’ as she puts it but with a sense of community she had direction in life. While her father wanted her to study languages, believing them to be the future of the world, the young May wanted to be a teacher. She wanted power, to be in control and to make a difference.

“Unknowingly at the time, I was an entrepreneur. I was born nosy. I loved knowing what people were doing; what made them think and then finding out how I could make a difference,” says Blood.

ACTIVE TRADE UNIONIST

It was not long before these traits were put into action. She left school on a Friday in 1952 and took up her position in the warehouse of her local Blackstaff Linen Mill on the Monday. She had entered a new world; she became an adult overnight. By the time the mill closed in 1990, her influence was legendary. As an active trade unionist, she had fought for and got, better working conditions, better wages and greater recognition for women who formed the majority of the workforce. She was a powerhouse.

“I just did not take no for an answer. It wasn’t a word I contemplated and still don’t. If you’re entitled to something, you have to fight for it, not prove you’re worth it. I don’t believe in inequality. No-one can make you equal, you have to feel it, and I felt and knew that women were as equal as men in the working conditions of that time.” While fighting for change within the mill, Blood simultaneously sought to improve the living conditions within her own community, initially as a part-time volunteer, and on a full-time basis when the mill closed in 1990.

NEW HEIGHTS

The closure of the mill had a powerful effect on Blood. “Up to then I had a purpose in life; I was getting things done. Suddenly I was unemployable. That was a shock to the system, I can tell you,” she adds.

Too old, at 52, to retrain; too old for the system; no industrial experience, words hurled at Blood when she went looking for work. Words received with antipathy. Little did the ‘system’ know that words of this nature would propel Blood to new heights!

She was like a rebel with a cause. She did not want anyone else to be made feel the way she did, worthless and useless. If she had no ‘piece of paper’, no education, then she would work with others to manage their education. “Being told you are useless induces negativity. If you have no work, no wage, you have no value. It’s not a nice place to be,” adds Blood.

INSTIGATING CHANGE

For the next four years, Blood immersed herself in working full-time within her community training long-term unemployed men to make wooden furniture. Such was her impact that she was asked to manage the project and took delight in seeing people develop their dormant skills.

“This was a great programme,” says Blood. “It turned idleness into productivity and hatred to tolerance. It was cross community; some of these men had never met a Catholic before. It was an eye-opener. It showed that if you give people a challenge and the wherewithal to achieve it; they will deliver. It’s the same at all levels of society and business.”

When Blood moved on to become a fully-paid employee of the Greater Shankill Partnership, earning pay that she would never have imagined she could earn in a lifetime, she moved up a new gear.

With funding from Europe she and a team of very committed people transformed the community, setting up Early Years centres; working with young people, developing parenting skills and fathering programmes, and more importantly, helping communities to be self-sustaining.

AMBASSADOR TO WOMEN

While intending to retire at 60, Blood now knows that this was never meant to be. She’s now staring 70 in the face! “I did hand in my resignation but when I got a call from a senior civil servant telling me I was being offered a Life Peerage, I did a u-turn. I hesitated at first; this was new territory for me. I was going into totally unknown work. I took three days to think about it and thought all my life I’ve been trying to promote women in the system. Women were not on Boards and there were few female politicians. I felt it would be wrong to turn down something that had never before been offered to a woman in Northern Ireland, so I told myself – Go for it.”

And go for it she did, using this new platform to raise the profile of Northern Ireland. Blood likens her entreé into this world to starting a business. She was suddenly in London, alone, lonely, with no job of work, no office. She had to make her new life; find a niche and works towards its attainment. In her first debate she addressed ‘changing work practices and how they affect women with families’. She leant how to write speeches with cause and impact. She learnt that to have a voice, you have to belong to a larger group; she aligned herself to the Labour Party. Now that she is ensconced, she is a force to be reckoned with; a polite but resourceful force. Once again she is making a difference.

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER

For someone who left school without qualifications, May Blood is leaving no stone unturned to ensure that this does not happen to future generations. She is now an active fund raiser for the Integrated Education Fund in Northern Ireland. With a fundraising target is £1.5 million per annum and 100 schools built by 2010, she is constantly undertaking speaking engagements, running golf events, days at the races and continually looking for new ways to aid a cause close to her heart. “Knowledge is power,” says Blood. “My life is about serving the community; I have learned a lot in life through working with my local community and firmly believe that if you give to the community, you always get back. It’s a life I enjoy.

Published in the December 2007 / January 2008 Issue of Irish Entrepreneur