In profile: New DUP deputy leader Paula Bradley

Paula Bradley is far removed from the DUP’s fundamentalist wing yet she is one of the most popular MLAs at Stormont both inside and outside the party. She is commonly described as outgoing, ordinary and sociable by Assembly colleagues.

he is certainly the DUP’s most liberal representative on social issues. When asked about same-sex marriage by this newspaper in 2017, she predicted that it would be legalised in the next decade due to “changing attitudes”.

She voiced her disapproval of Gregory Campbell’s ‘curry my yoghurt’ mockery of the Irish language in 2015. Neither was she impressed when Sammy Wilson refused to wear a red ribbon in solidarity with those living with HIV/AIDS.

“I’m a member of the DUP who has worked and formed really good friendships with people of different religions and sexual orientations,” she said.

“I know those people for who they are and that has given me a broader outlook. I can see how some of the decisions we make affect people. I see faces when I make decisions.” Although she believes in God, she is not a practising Christian.

Bradley grew up in Mossley in Newtownabbey. Her mum was a social worker, her dad was a driver, and her brother Daniel is a hairdresser. She had a big extended family and summers were spent in her grandparents’ caravan in Ballyhalbert.

She has two adult children, Josh and Jess, with ex-husband Robert Bradley. They were divorced at 27. “It wasn’t amicable and we’re not in touch,” she candidly admitted in a wide ranging Belfast Telegraph interview in 2017.

“We were too young. I was 20 when I got married. If one of my children had come home at 20 and told me they were getting married, I’d have said ‘No way’.”

As a young mother, she got into debt, facing the repossession of her home after she separated from her husband. “He went back to England and I was left with a mortgage and two children. Financially, it was really, really hard,” she said.

“They were coming the following day to evict me, then I told my parents. They went to the mortgage company, took out a loan and paid what I owed. The arrears had crept up, but I’d buried my head in the sand. I ignored the problem because I didn’t want to be seen as a failure as a mother.

“It was a traumatic period. I had two children, aged seven and five, who needed me and I was the one who was supposed to look after and protect them.”

On leaving school, she had worked in a canteen kitchen before joining the RUC as a part-time reserve when she was 22. Bradley was one of the few women in the force at the time. She says it was “an interesting job, but not the career I wanted.”

She secured a communications job in DUP headquarters in 2002. After that, she worked as a social care assistant for the Northern Trust from 2004-2011, but she remained politically active.

She was elected onto Newtownabbey Council in 2005 and became mayor in 2010. Nigel Dodds asked her to run for Stormont in 2011. Her son told her to “wise up” but she talked him round, and she was elected.

Bradley told this reporter last year that she had never experienced sexism at Stormont, and that her previous jobs in the police and health service had been much more challenging in that regard.

But she said social media abuse was widespread: “You’re called horrendous names. I’m not just a politician, I’m a mummy and a granny.

“I’ve been told ‘You should have been aborted at birth’ and ‘I hope your children die’. My kids read this stuff. When I put out a statement online, I’m fearful of what will come.”

Yes she said there was “a spirit of sisterhood” in Stormont: “Women from other parties will ring each other and support each other when something horrible happens.”

She has said she is frequently mistaken for Alliance MLA, Paula Bradshaw: “We both receive each other’s mail and emails. I quite like the idea because she’s younger and much slimmer than I am.”