The Election In Northern Ireland
by Seán McGouran The long-suffering people of Northern Ireland only had one election to deal with in mid-June 2004. The one to the Parliament of the European Union. The turn-out was nearly one third down on 1999. This was partly to do with the fact that Ian Paisley and John Hume were not standing and partly to the shredding of the electoral register in a vain attempt to stop Sinn Féin's electoral advance. Paisley always had a very large personal vote, but Hume was always the SDLP's 'ace in the hole'. The somewhat colourless SDLP candidate Martin Morgan's total was less than half, (45%) of Hume's vote. Morgan is not Hume, and the turnout in 1999 was particularly high, even by Ulster's 'vote early and vote often' standards—but this can only be described as a collapse of the 'moderate Nationalist' vote. The DUP's Jim Allister, who is even more colourless than Martin Morgan (one of the younger faces in his own party) and something of a 'yesterday's man', received 91% of Ian Paisley's 1999 vote. The UUP's hardly perennial Jim Nicholson, got 91,164 votes—a drop of more than twenty eight thousand on 1999—the percentage dropped by 4%, (from 20.64% to 16.60).
The 'big story' of the election was the fact that Sinn Féin won the 'Taig' seat (Northern Ireland, in terms of population, as a part of the UK's complement of European Parliament seats, is entitled to somewhere between a third and a half of a seat. The whole region ought to be an extension of a Euro-constituency in the north of England or the south of Scotland. This over-representation might seem big-hearted on the part of the UK authorities, but the three seats are designed to keep Northern Ireland out of any sort of participation in UK politics—even on the comparatively glancing level of the 'European' election. After all, NI voters might help to elect a member of a 'real' political party (one in contention for the ruling of the UK state). So the voters go out to elect persons with Orange or Green genes—they may be good, bad, indifferent representatives—but it is their genetic heritage that matters.
Despite all that, in 1999 there was an outburst of something like politics in the Euro-election in Northern Ireland. Tens of thousands of people (who seem to have stayed at home this time round) voted for the Progressive Unionist Party. Standing-in in the Catholic part of the electorate for the Workers' Party of Ireland—which did not put up a candidate of its own, the PUP was unambiguously 'Old Labour' in political orientation. It was clearly attracting people from the NILP to its ranks five years ago. There was also the UK Unionist / Robert McCartney Party (which was regarded by the UK Independence Party as something of a 'sister party'), and the Alliance Party of NI. The latter claimed that it was practically an extension of the LibDems, and all three got votes in five figures. The PUP (despite being in cahoots with the Stickies) managed to get 22,494 votes. Even Natural Law got a quite respectable 998 votes—this is not a joke, in Northern Ireland the NLP can appear comparatively rational.
This time Sinn Féin bucked the trend by increasing its vote by nearly twenty seven thousand (26, 898 to be precise). It had 20.32% of the vote in 1999 and 26.31% in June 2004. This rise can't really be a simple result of the SDLP's vote collapsing, though it can be explained to some extent by the fact that a huge proportion of the potential electorate (possibly as much as a full third) stayed at home. Sinn Féin's extra votes and greater percentage of the votes cast (over a quarter) are probably down to their own efforts.
A great many political activists in Northern Ireland (including some within the orbit of the Irish Political Review (alias Northern Star) worked for Éamonn McCann. He stood under the banner Socialist Environmental Alliance, despite which the Green Party (formerly so huffy about other people not allying with them) stood on its own ticket. The SEA got an unembarrassing 9,172 votes (1.67%) despite its Election Communication reading like an SWP handout. It was full of big notions and contained not one solid promise. Admittedly, neither did Sinn Féin's: it promised to 'Defend the Agreement', 'Combat Poverty', and other good things—on the other hand, Sinn Féin is a known quantity. So is the UUP, which issued an essay which claimed that "Jim Nicholson has a detailed agenda for the next 5 years in the European Parliament". But did not tell the reader what his "detailed agenda" consisted of. Nor was there any indication that one could learn more about this "detailed agenda" elsewhere, a website, for example.
The DUP issued a booklet, which featured a large number of photographs of Jim Allister (not a particularly exciting prospect—there was the traditional family photo with his wife and three children, much enhanced by an extremely handsome, eager-looking Labrador). The politics of the booklet was the usual DUP mixture of opposition to the EU while attempting to screw as much out of it as can be managed. "The recent addition of 10 states to the EU will adversely impact on Northern Ireland … [t]he effect will be to put your pound in eastern Europe's pocket…". This is just mean-minded: apart from anything else, Northern Ireland has been soused in cash from Europe—'money from America' wouldn't be in it.
The DUP will, apparently "…battle to maintain National Sovereignty and our National Currency" and "Oppose a Superstate" on the grounds that "the new constitution subverts the autonomy and supremacy of the nation state"—a curious criticism from a party which became quite unhinged when the campaign to get the parties of [the UK] State to do their duty by the people of Northern Ireland seemed to be going places at the turn of the 1980s.
If the DUP knows how the British State functions, it clearly disapprove of it. It loves its wee Orange Bantustan. In fact, it wants it back, under the slogan Devolution Now, meaning 'majority rule'.
The Green Party (which garnered a respectable 4,810 votes) issued a fairly good Communication, and bits of it were quite well argued, basically saying that 'Europe' was here to stay and there should be a positive attitude towards it. Unfortunately it also demanded: "Restore our democratic institutions now!", meaning the Assembly at Stormont, with its sectarian stitch-up. It also proposed an "All-Island Environmental Protection and Enforcement Agency", which is fantasy-island stuff. Dublin is not going to allow anybody from the North to interfere in how it processes its laws on anything. Particularly not the environment which is dictated by the big farmers and the EU.
Speaking of the big farmers, we come to the ne plus ultra of 'politics' in Northern Ireland, the Independent candidate John Gilliland, who campaigned on the slogan, "No Politics, Just Action". He was, apparently, the farmers' candidate, and his handout went 'big' on the fact that, though he was the "Youngest ever President of the Ulster Farmers' Union, he played a leading role in managing the Foot and Mouth Crisis". There was lots more in this vein, and he also thinks Northern Ireland can screw more out of the Union. There is a sub-heading in his Election Communication, Pro-European, but the text describes him as being "by no means uncritical" of the EU.
He was backed by "an impressive body of support … including the Alliance Party, the Workers' Party, the Hospital campaigner Dr Kieran Deeny, and local Labour, Liberals and Conservatives". Leaving aside the apolitical Dr. Deeny, this is a collection of people who have effectively given up on politics. Thirty years ago, Alliance and the Stickies saw themselves as the Tory and Socialist Parties of Northern Ireland. It was a fantasy, but if the Workers' Party-to-be, in particular, had been honest (with itself, apart from any other consideration), it might have had a substantial impact on politics. The WPI is a political sect which has spent thirty years fighting to escape the embrace of a mass movement. Presumably it did not back McCann for 'ideological' reasons.
Alliance has consistently played at being something other than what it is, a collection of middle class do-gooders, well out of their depth. Many of its younger members are also card-carrying LibDems, and that is what the Party has been about for most of its history. They think people in Northern Ireland should behave as if they were living somewhere else, preferably the Home Counties. Unfortunately, the people of Northern Ireland know that they are living in a disputed bit of a province, and act accordingly—they elected some Alliance people because they were decent and useful public representatives. Not because of their fantasy-politics.
The "local Labour" people mentioned as supporters in the Globe (the title of a section in Gilliland's election handout), do not include Cllr. Mark Langhammer, and it is noticeable that none of the Labour, Liberal or Conservative people supporting Mr Gilliland are named. So they may include the nocturnal and shy South Belfast Constituency Labour Party (properly constituted). (One of the founder members of SBCLP (properly constituted)—Jeffrey Dudgeon—was simultaneously helping to found the UK Unionist Party. Another founder member Erskine Holmes is a big noise in the NI Co-operative Society. When an innocent-minded member of the Social Democratic and Labour Party's Stranmillis / Malone branch suggested inviting the SBCLP (properly constituted) to come to debate with them, members positively foamed at the mouth and denounced Holmes as a notorious slum-landlord!)
The Liberals are probably Tommy Owens, the last Gladstonian Liberal in captivity—the Liberal 'refuseniks' who refused to join the LibDems are a very small political tendency even in the Liberal heartlands of Scotland, Wales and the West of England. And there is only Tommy in Northern Ireland. There may be some Conservatives left in Northern Ireland, they gloated in the late 1980s when they 'got in' to Thatcher's Party—but they got well and truly shafted by the Party,. And here they are, attempting to make themselves relevant by backing a proudly and consciously apolitical maverick.
If you wish to subscribe to the Irish Political Review, Labour & Trade Union Review, Church & State or Problems Of Capitalism & Socialism please go to our secure sales area. Postal delivery is free within the European Union.