DUP make bed, Croppies lie down
The DUP in local government in the North is increasingly dealing with nationalists, by offering a series of deals to the SDLP on local councils to stop Sinn Féin holding offices on the council. In Belfast the DUP, SDLP and Alliance Party put together a deal to elect the DUP's Wallace Browne as Lord Mayor, with an SDLP deputy, and an SDLP mayor to follow in two years.
The Ulster Unionist Party was then brought in. While all the DUP voted for the SDLP's Pat Convery as Deputy Mayor, only three of the seven UUP did so. The deal will give the mayoralty to the UUP and Alliance over the current council's four-year term, but will exclude Sinn Féin.
The deal put together in Belfast is a small-scale working out of the DUP's proposals for voluntary coalition, where they, SDLP, UUP and Alliance would establish an Executive to move ahead without Sinn Féin.
An SDLP spokesperson said the party opposed deals, as it believed in inclusivity: "At local council level we believe very strongly in power-sharing, that is sharing power between all parties on all sides," he said.
The spokesperson refused to say whether the party would discipline councillors who did such deals to cut out other nationalists.
"If that was the case we would look at it," he said. "That would have to be taken up by the disciplinary body of the party, depending on the situation."
A senior SDLP member said the DUP had made approaches to his party on councils all over the North to exclude Sinn Féin.
"They are promising absolutely everything," the SDLPer said. "They prefer their croppies without armalites. They don't mind plenty of Fenians about the place as long as they are SDLP. Some of our people are anxious to share power at any cost – they are spineless instead of standing up to the so-and-sos."
He said some of those involved knew they were acting contrary to party policy, and were working to create facts on the ground before they could be brought to book.
Another senior member said the approach was part of the selling of voluntary coalition: "They're saying, let's work together, let's screw the Shinners together," he said.
"We can't do to you what they want to do to you, destroy you, because we're not competing for the same votes."
He believed those in the SDLP who had become involved were playing a very dangerous game.
"Sinn Féin aren't seen to be cutting our throat – they're doing it at the ballot-box" he said. "The voters will be reminded."
Nationalist councillors date the DUP's softening from the start of the decade.
When Martin Morgan, who is on the SDLP's green wing, was Lord Mayor of Belfast a couple of years ago DUP councillors attended no functions he organised, and replied to no letters.
However, the DUP has increasingly worked the system. Deals are difficult in the councils, about half the total, that use the D'Hondt system of proportionality to share out posts.
When Sinn Féin's Ivan Barr was first elected chair of Strabane District Council in the 1980s, DUP councillors shouted him down.
Four years ago, he was again chair, along with a DUP deputy. "It worked fairly well on a business-like basis," Barr said. "I had no problems with him. There was no social chat. He sat on the podium with me."
The door is being opened to SDLP/DUP deals by a breakdown in trust between a significant section of the SDLP grass roots and Sinn Féin.
Off the record, many SDLP councillors are very hostile to Sinn Féin.
Partly this is fuelled by political events, such as the McCartney murder and the Northern Bank robbery (despite the police failure to bring charges against anybody with IRA connections), but also by the further electoral advance of Sinn Féin at the SDLP's expense.
The SDLP, particularly in Belfast, has also lost significant numbers of its more instinctively nationalist councillors.
Anton McCabe