Steven Linares

 

Twelve years as a primary school teacher and a further seven as the Opposition spokesman on education haven't dented or dimmed Steven Linares' enthusiasm for his profession...and for the development of the children who are at the core of Gibraltar's educational system. For, though from an early age Linares has been what he describes as "a political animal", his yen to teach and make a difference was fostered in his own, not always happy,  early schooldays at the preparatory school in Linewall Road where he "had a bad time with the teachers."

There he learned to differentiate between what was good and bad in teaching, and this experience has tempered his approach and understanding of the needs of local school children and has helped him point the way forward in shaping the policies of the GSLP/Liberal opposition.

"Even at school, I had begun to develop a social conscience," he says thoughtfully when we meet outside the Watergardens headquarters of the GSLP - temporarily the election command centre for the Alliance ...which Linares was active in forming. "I suppose my father was sort of the Cinderella of our family, working for my uncle and like the rest of the employees getting what at times seemed a raw deal. Hardly a day went by when my father didn't come home and say something about the way in which he and the other employees were treated.

FATHER'S STRUGGLES 

"He, in fact, ran the shop and made the money...while my uncle spent it," he says with a rueful smile. "My father struggled to provide me with a good education, sending me initially to Loreto and the Christian Brothers Preparatory  - both private schools - and he wanted me to go off to boarding school as my cousins had done.  "I still recall being present when he asked to borrow money from my uncle to send me off to boarding school; but my uncle refused and said that there were ‘perfectly good schools in Gibraltar.

"They were good enough for me and my brother - but not for my cousins." He shrugs, and there's a sense of hurt in his words, but there is no bitterness.

In fact , in many ways he may have been fortunate to have finished his schooling in Gibraltar rather than in a UK boarding school, for Linares was one of the "guinea pig year" - the first intake of the new Bayside Comprehensive whose alumni include  the charismatic former Deputy Chief Minister Peter Montegriffo, Gilbert Licudi, who is a candidate for the GSLP in the forthcoming election, and Chronicle Editor Dominique Searle.

That  first year's intake produced a string of formidable politicised figures, VOX suggested - and wondered if there was any sort of political influence at work within the new buildings and the new school's staff.

CONTSRUCTION SITE

"I don't think so..." Linares pauses to consider and above us the large red and white Gibraltar flags emblazoned with the GSLP initials, stir in the draught of a passing double-decker. "No. If anything throughout our years at the school there was sense that we were learning in a construction site as new classrooms were added and youngsters from other schools were injected into the process.

"But academically  the school was very accommodating in the sense that teachers actively helped in preparation for the GCSE and A-level exams...and , unlike today, if you failed a single subject you were allowed to sit it again. There was no rigmarole of interviews to attend, and all that sort of thing."

However it as here, too, that his sense of social commitment - and, one suspects, a more open awareness of social ‘class' - emerged. "Teachers would ask me to help younger kids with their reading, or other subjects where I could help and in which they were struggling," he recalls.

This, too, helped shape his future and long before he had written his final exams, the young Linares knew that he wanted to teach and work with children, but he failed to obtain  a Government scholarship grant , and he worked in several jobs - with Barclays Bank, Retco and other local firms before, after several years of applying he gained the grant to study, at the age of 23 he was able to register to study for his B,Ed (Hons) at Trinity and All Saints College at Leeds University.

He graduated in 1987 and taught for a year at St Joseph's Middle School, before switching to Bishop Fitzgerald Middle School for the next 12 years - until he was elected to the House of Assembly in the general election of 2000.

"I love teaching and, if truth be told still miss it." The green-flecked, faintly feline eyes sparkle and, under the untidy blonde Boris Johnson thatch, the suddenly mobile face replaces the earnest solemnity. "But I believed  - and still believe - that I could do more for our children and for education as an active political voice than by standing in front of a blackboard.,."

However it was as a teacher and member of the Gibraltar Teachers' Association (GTA) which he joined in 1989 that Linares' social commitment  blossomed and his political sense of right and wrong emerged to become effective.  Soon after his return from university, Linares joined the GSLP "helping out in the year they won the election for the first time.

SEEING EYE TO EYE

As a member of  GTA, there were many issues on which we saw eye to eye with the GSLP and I hoped to be able to negotiate things from the inside as it were," he explains.  After the Joe Bossano landslide victory in 1992 when the GSLP gained 78 per cent of the vote his relationship with the party became less easy. "I felt that they needed a two-tier approach - on the one hand looking after the party and on the other actually carrying out the process of government.

He left the party, concentrated on union matters, and joined the National Party - later to become the Liberal Party - "which was more in tune with my beliefs." His union activities burgeoned and (as Linares records in the Liberal Paarty's promotional blurb for the elecetion) he became vice president of the GTA in 1993, and its president two years later. In 1994 he was elected to the Gibraltar Trades Council and was chairman  of the Gibraltar Representative Organisation from 1993 to the end of 1995.

"It was the GRO and the prominent role which it played in the issues of 1995-96 that turned me into a true politician," he recalls. "Along with Jaime Netto and Joe Holliday, I was in the forefront of the moves. They then went their way - the two of them joining the GSD - while I joined the National Party which was in tune with my beliefs. Strangely, I can understand why Holliday opted to join the GSD - but I've never been able to grasp why Netto took that route."

DECLINE OF DEMOCRACY

 
In the 1996 election, which saw Caruana become Chief Minister and so led to the gradual decline of Gibraltar's democracy, Linares stood as one of the eight on the National Party slate - and lost his deposit.

"It was one of those Churchillian things," he quips. "I won the battle on the streets - and lost at the polls."

In the wake of the electoral defeat and as the national Party reshaped itself to become the Liberal Party, Linares' trades union credentials and earlier links with the GSLP placed him ideally to conduct the overtures which were to lead to the Bossano/Garcia alliance. He is modest about his contribution, but his colleagues agree that "Steven  was instrumental in getting the liberals closer to the GSLP."

"In fact, there were many policies on which we saw eye to eye and others where we were very close...we had a sort of steering committee which helped develop the process towards the Alliance."

And it was on the Alliance slate that Linares eventually was returned to the House of Assembly in 2000 to become the Opposition spokesman - or "Shadow Minister" - on education, training, youth and culture.

And it is to education that conversation again turns - punctuated by a string of well-wishers pausing for brief words in Llanito and English.

POLICIES FAIL

"We still haven't got Gibraltar's education policies right," he frowns. "We blow the trumpet for the academically able -the successes in GCSEs and A-levels. But that's only the top third of our school-goers. We are failing the other two-thirds...not doing so well with children who have special needs or require vocational training as far as these youngsters are concerned, the education system doesn't take them into consideration,"

It is an area where the Government should be taking the lead, for it is not the sole remit of the teacher, he believes. And, with divorce on the increase,  there is a growing need for help for children whose parents have separated.

"The real victim of any separation is usually the child and here it takes ages for the Social Services to provide input so that, too often it falls on the shoulders of the teacher to provide emotional help. Where are the trained counselors? And we have only one qualified educational psychologist to cope with our entire body of pupils. Totally inadequate."