Hong Kong lady became first Chinese in European Parliament

Mark O'Neill December 18, 2024 22:07

She was born in North Point in 1950 to a family that had moved from the mainland to Hong Kong two years before. In 1974, she emigrated to Northern Ireland and became the first ethnic Chinese elected to the European Parliament, in 2014.

The remarkable life of Anna Lo (盧曼華) came to an end on November 8 when she died in Belfast City Hospital from complications from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

“Anna will forever be remembered as a ground-breaker in local politics,” said Naomi Long, leader of the Alliance Party which she joined. “Her service to the Chinese community, to good relations and to the city of Belfast, much of which went unseen by most, was transformational.”

Lo attended the Shau Kei Wan East government secondary school. She fell in love with and marred David Watson, a journalist with the Belfast Telegraph who was working for two years with the South China Morning Post. In 1974, they moved to Belfast, where he resumed work at his newspaper.
It was the middle of the Troubles, which had broken out in 1969. They would last until 1998 and take the lives of 3,500 people, with 47,500 injured.

The young Hong Kong lady had arrived in the most dangerous city in western Europe. She had to learn the myriad rules of where to go and not to go, what to say and to whom, and all of this through the thick Northern Irish accent.

She went to Ulster University and graduated in social work, the first ethnic minority graduate from Northern Ireland. She worked for the BBC and as an interpreter for the Royal Ulster Constabulary. The Chinese community, mostly from Hong Kong, was small, several hundred. Most worked in restaurants and the food industry. They continued to operate despite the risk of bombs and demands for protection money from paramilitaries.

Chinese kept a low profile. They avoided a public life divided by bitter rivalries between the Protestant and Catholic communities.

Lo took her first steps into public life as the director of the Chinese Welfare Association in Belfast and as a founding commissioner of the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland. In the 2000 New Year Honours, she was awarded an MBE for services to Ethnic Minorities.

She joined the Alliance Party, set up in 1970 as a non-sectarian alternative to the main Protestant and Catholic parties. In 2007, she was elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly for Belfast South.
After her victory, she said: “many immigrants have been here for 30-40 years. This is the first time they have voted because they have a candidate worth voting for. As a migrant coming from abroad, it is extremely difficult to understand the politics of Northern Ireland. It is even more difficult to join the Protestant or Catholic communities and to earn their votes. I am very happy that I can speak for the Chinese community.”

After being re-elected in 2011, she was appointed Chair of the Assembly’s Environment Committee.
In 2014, she was elected as the Alliance’s candidate for the Northern Ireland constituency in the 2014 European Parliament election and won the seat with a record number of votes for her party. She was the first ethnic Chinese to be elected to a parliament in Western Europe.

But she was the object of racial abuse by members of the Protestant community. As a result, she decided not to run for re-election for the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2016. Such was the hostility of many residents that, on police advice, she took a police alarm when she held meetings with local people. On one occasion, after leaving a meeting, she found two young men tampering with her car. She chased them away with angry words.

In a statement after her passing, Alliance Party leader Naomi Long said that Lo had a number of causes close to her heart, including protection of the environment and human rights, and was a strong voice on women’s rights and equality. “She was brave in confronting the appalling racism she faced during her political career.”

Former Alliance leader David Ford said that Lo’s election in 2007 was a statement that Northern Ireland was a different society, a changing society and Anna was prepared to be part of demonstrating that herself. “She punched that glass ceiling that was keeping the Assembly, up to that stage, totally white and predominantly male. She was a formidable politician who, despite her small stature. intellectually punched well above her weight.”

The children of many of her Chinese constituents have become lawyers, doctors, architects and other professionals, fulfilling the dream of their parents that their children would have a better life than they did. Anna Lo played no small part in this accomplishment.

Mark O'Neill

A Hong Kong-based writer, teacher and speaker.