The Provos at the ballot box
Vote Jon Hume for a better Londonderry", say the mocking slogans in Derry's Bogside. "SDLP = the Stoop Down Low Party" reads a wall-slogan near Free Derry corner. The SDLP denounce the Provisionals as fascists and mafia, embezzlers, thugs and kneecappers. Bishop Cathal Daly of Belfast says a vote for Sinn Fein could be seen as a vote for violence. Bishop Edward Daly of Derry calls on Catholics to examine their consciences before voting for candidates associated with violence.
It is going to be a rough election in the North and the real venom is between Sinn Fein and the SDLP. "We are out to replace the SDLP as the voice of the nationalist people in the North", says Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein Vice-President and candidate for West Belfast. For the SDLP this is the most crucial election in their history. They have been remarkably successful up to this in holding together the fissiparous strands of Northern nationalism and fighting off challenges from without or within weathering even the defection of Gerry Fitt and Paddy Devlin. But this is the biggest challenge they have faced so far.
If Sinn Fein manages to topple the SDLP it will throw British and Dublin government policy on the North into total disarray, burying all question of power-sharing or "cross-community support" for devolved government there. It will also force government officials to swallow miles of official handouts devoted to explaining that the 'men of violence' had the support of only a fraction of one per cent of the Northern population. For that reason the clash between the SDLP and Sinn Fein is the real kernel of this election, overshadowing for the moment the conflicts between nationalist and unionist and within the unionist camp.
There will be 17 seats in the North in this election instead of 12 in the past. The SDLP will be contesting all 17. Sinn Fein will be standing in 14. The real battle between the two will focus on the five constituencies with Catholic majorities: Armagh-Newry, Fermanagh-South Tyrone, Foyle, Mid-Ulster and West Belfast. Sinn Fein won one seat in each of these areas in the elections to the Northern Assembly last October and all their Assembly members are standing this time. The SDLP won two seats in Armagh, Newry, Foyle and Mid-Ulster and one each in Fermanagh, South Tyrone and West Belfast. They also dominate the three main councils in the Constituencies: Derry City, Fermanagh and Newry and Mourne. But Sinn Fein already holds the Fermanagh-South Tyrone seat at Westminster. The SDLP have held no Westminster seats since Gerry Fitt defected in 1979.
The SDLP's credibility has been battered over the last few years by the election of Bobby Sands and then Owen Carron in Fermanagh-South Tyrone and by Sinn Fein's success in the Assembly elections but each time an excuse could be found. The Fermanagh by-elections in 1981 took place in a highly emotional atmosphere during the Long Kesh hunger-strike and, anyway, the SDLP didn't stand so there was no direct clash.
The Assembly elections, when Sinn Fein got 64,191 votes and five seats - narrowly missing a couple more - to the SDLP's 118,891 votes and 14 seats, were harder to explain away, but eventually the pundits came up with some excuses. There was still an emotional overspill from the hunger-strike; the election was under PR so people could register a protest vote for Sinn Fein without wasting their votes; and Sinn Fein only got one third of the total nationalist vote and there had always been a maverick hard core in the nationalist community who never backed the SDLP. This time the excuses won't wash so easily. The effect of the hunger strike can't be blamed forever. This election is under the straight vote so nationalist voters will have to make a clear choice between the SDLP and Sinn Fein. And the 'maverick vote' argument will collapse if Sinn Fein get more than one third of the nationalist vote - as they confidently claim they will.
In fact a close look at the Assembly election tends to demolish the maverick argument anyway. Sinn Fein only contested seven of the 12 constituencies last October while the SDLP fought all 12. In the seven constituencies where they faced each other directly Sinn Fein actually got 40 per cent of the combined nationalist (Sinn Fein and SDLP) vote. And, in the five key constituencies listed above (the boundaries were a bit different), the gap was even narrower with Sinn Fein getting 45 per cent of the nationalist vote and actually beating the SDLP in two areas - Fermanagh-South Tyrone and West Belfast.
Sinn Fein is very precise about its objectives in this election. They don't claim that they will beat the SDLP overall this time. Gerry Adams aims at 90,000 votes or just under half the nationalist total. They see this election as only one step in their strategy and are looking ahead already to the North's local elections in 1985 - and possibly the EEC elections next year, though they haven't decided on contesting them yet. They aim to substantially improve their vote this time and get the SDLP on the run with a view to beating them in 1985 and ousting them from what Sinn Fein sees as the SDLP power base, the local councils. For Sinn Fein to win even 90,000 votes would require a 41 per cent increase over their total in the Assembly elections is a big undertaking. Can they do it? The signs are that they might.
Ask somebody in the street in the Bogside area of Derry for directions to Cable Street and the chances are they'll ask if it's the Sinn Fein offices you're looking for. They are that well known and they're in the heart of the depressed Bogside area. There are others in the sprawling working class areas of Creggan and Shantallow and in the Waterside.
The SDLP office is in an empty shop in Clarendon Street in Derry's city centre and has only been open for a couple of weeks. There was no sign outside last week to indicate what it was and one irate supporter came in complaining that he had had difficulty finding it.
At the Sinn Fein office a woman came in to say that Peggy O'Hara, the mother of one of the dead hungerstrikers, had been raided again that morning, a few days before her son's anniversary. Local people came in complaining about housing problems. Young men and women in denims, the working-class youth of the area, rushed in and out with posters and election registers. The SDLP office was busy enough too but the workers were middle-aged and mainly middle-class. They were mostly addressing envelopes. They would have young people too, they said, when they'd finished school. They didn't have the unemployed who make up the bulk of Derry's youth.
The offices illustrate the contrast. The Sinn Fein supporters are young, unemployed, ex-prisoners. So are most of their candidates. They live in the working-class ghettos, they speak the people's language, they experience their problems. The SDLP candidates are all middle-class. Three of the four candidates in Belfast are doctors. Most of their workers are middle-class too. On election day they have to pay people to staff the polling booths. Sinn Fein has no trouble getting volunteers.
The SDLP give the impression of being tired, jaded and out of touch with the people. The "Londonderry" issue is a good example. At the end of April the small Irish Independence Party (UP) group on Derry City council proposed that the official name of the city be changed back from Londonderry to Derry. The SDLP, who control the council, said they didn't want to offend the Protestant minority in the city and abstained. The motion was voted down by the Unionists.
The name Londonderry is as offensive to Northern nationalists as Rhodesia was to blacks in Zimbabwe - or Kingstown to people in Dun Laoghaire. Even the Derry Journal, which normally supports the SDLP, attacked them for "sadly misreading public opinion". Sinn Fein made hay out of their gaffe, sticking up mocking posters about the "Londonderry branch of the SDLP" all over the Bogside. It was a small issue but to a lot of nationalists it symbolises what they see as the SDLP's tendency to play down nationalist grievances to appease British, Unionist, and even Southern media opinion.
There has only been one test of electoral strength between the SDLP and Sinn Fein since last October - in a local council by-election in Carrickmore in Mid-Ulster. It was not an SDLP stronghold, the vacant seat had been held by the more nationalist UP, but in the by-election in March Seamus Kerr of Sinn Fein won, with 2,289 votes to 654 for the SDLP candidate who came third, after the Alliance party.
Carrickmore is not typical. It has a long republican tradition and the size of the Sinn Fein majority over the SDLP isn't likely to be reproduced elsewhere but, significantly, Seamus Kerr claims that Sinn Fein increased its vote substantially over its total in the Assembly elections. If that trend is repeated, even on a smaller scale, in other areas, the SDLP must be very worried. And there is reason to think it may be.
Firstly there's the credibility factor. Before October the Sinn Fein spokesmen (they have no women candidates) and their policies were little known outside republican circles. As their South Armagh Assembly member, Jim McAllister, puts it: "A lot of people thought we were just wild men, only good for shouting 'Brits Out'." Since then they have got a lot of TV and press coverage in the North, emerging as just as articulate and able as their SDLP counterparts. A lot of the bogeyman effect has been dissipated, just by public exposure. Secondly there's registration. The Assembly elections revealed that thousands of people had no votes. Electoral officers have admitted that in a few areas like South Armagh up to 30% of the population were unregistered. Many of these were republican sympathisers who saw no point in voting or were suspicious of all forms of officialdom. More were alienated youth. Sinn Fein have put in a big effort to get these people registered and it should have some effect on this election and a bigger effect in 1984 or 1985.
The most significant factor in increasing the Sinn Fein vote, however, is likely to be constituency work. They had gradually been getting interested in social and economic issues for some time but it has really taken off since October. They have five advice centres or clinics in West Belfast, four in Derry and one in Strabane, five in Mid-Ulster, four in Fermanagh-South Tyrone and three in Armagh-Newry. Most of the city ones and at least one in each of the rural areas are open full-time. The rural constituencies have a hard-core of four or five full-time workers each, as well as the Assembly members. West Belfast and Derry have about 15 full-time workers each.
The Sinn Fein advice centres deal with arrests, raids, prisoners' welfare and other traditional republican concerns. But they also deal with complaints about repairs to Housing Executive houses, social security benefits and even roads and agricultural grants. In West Belfast they have set up specialised housing and welfare departments, with fulltime staff, to get to know the regulations inside out. In some areas, instead of waiting for complaints to come in, they have gone round the doors with a check-list of possible repairs or benefits — like beds, blankets or rent rebates — to which the people might be entitled. Then they have submitted the claims en bloc to the Housing Executive or the Department of Health and Social Security (DHSS), already broken down into the various categories used by the Department themselves.
Gerry Adams claims this has forced the Housing Executive and the DHSS to increase their staff in West Belfast and to issue new instructions to their officials to be more cooperative and less aggressive towards claimants.
All this used to be the SDLP's bread and butter. Even at times when feeling ran high against the SDLP over issues like internment they held votes because of their constituency work. But they seem to have grown complacent and they can't compete with the effort Sinn Fein is putting in now. The SDLP had no office in West Belfast until a few weeks ago. John Hume had an MEP's office in Derry but it didn't deal with purely local issues and there was no party office in the city. Even those SDLP councillors who do work hard simply haven't the time and can't call on the back-up and support Sinn Fein can. Some of the SDLP mutter darkly about not having access to unlimited funds from bank robberies to pay all these full-time workers. Senator Brid Rogers, the SDLP's general secretary, even suggests the British administration may be going out of its way to facilitate Sinn Fein constituency work as a way of enticing the Provisionals away from violence. It doesn't really matter. The important thing as far as this election - and the next - is concerned is that Sinn Fein's housing and welfare blitz is likely to win them support outside the republican ghetto and bite into the SDLP's traditional support.
The SDLP are hitting back as hard as they can. They are hammering away at the Sinn Fein Ard Fheis resolution passed after the Assembly elections and committing future candidates to "unambivalent support for the armed struggle". They are pointing hard at the killing of a soldier's wife in Derry who was shielding her husband and at the breaking of a man's hands with concrete slabs, also in Derry, as examples of the effects of that armed struggle. The Catholic Church has weighed in with its strongest condemnation of republicans since the Civil War.
These attacks may hurt Sinn Fein since, to beat or even draw level with the SDLP, they have to reach out well beyond those who support the IRA's military campaign and the Sinn Fein leaders admit they are unsure of the effect the bishops' onslaught may have. But the attacks on Provo violence could be a two-edged weapon. If the church and the SDLP escalate their attacks too much they may seem to be ignoring the violence from the loyalists and the security forces that most Northern Catholics see as the root of the problem. And, if they stress too strongly that a vote for Sinn Fein is a vote for murder, they will have a lot of explaining to do if half the nationalist population does vote for Sinn Fein.
On the positive side the SDLP is putting great stress on the All-Ireland Forum, due to open with great pomp and ceremony in the middle of the campaign, on John Hume's achievements in the European Parliament and on the possibility that they could hold the balance of power at Westminster. Apart from the unlikelihood of the last, the points they stress indicate that they are losing touch with grassroots feeling. The Forum, Westminster and the EEC cut little ice in the Falls, Bogside or Crossmaglen where the burning issues are repression, housing and social security - the ones Sinn Fein is concentrating on.
The election is nearly as crucial for Sinn Fein as it is for the SDLP. Their new political strategy still sits uneasily on the advocates of pure physical force. Indeed, however loyally the Sinn Fein candidates defend it, the Ard Fheis resolution on support for the armed struggle looked very like an attempt by the militarists to put a curb on the politicians in the movement. A setback in the election could well lead to a backlash against the new political strategy.
Even success could have its problems. Sinn Fein sees its involvement in constituency work as central to its new socialist development. Gerry Adams talks of trying to involve the people in solving their own problems but the republican movement has never found it easy to work with other groups and organisations. There is also a narrow line between what they would term 'principled' constituency work and the sort of clientilism practised by Southern TDs and councillors in their constituency clinics.
Moreover, once the immediate backlog of social deprivation in the ghettos is tidied up a bit, constituency work, especially on local councils, will involve compromises and choices between priorities that are likely to lead to sharp divisions in an organisation aiming at revolutionary socialism. And, if Sinn Fein does succeed in winning substantial support outside the republican ghettos, tension will grow between the political and military wings of the movement as the politically involved confront the adverse effect of much of the IRA's activities on the population at large.
It looks as if Sinn Fein is more likely to have to cope with the problems of success than of failure. They look as if they will substantially increase their total and probably approach the 90,000 or 45% to 50% of the nationalist vote they are aiming at. In the five nationalist·majority constituencies they should do even better, beating the SDLP in three (West Belfast, Fermanagh, South Tyrone and Mid-Ulster), and they may well pull ahead of the SDLP in the five taken as a whole.
It is a two-horse race for the Nationalist vote. The other parties are irrelevant. Gerry Fitt's political career ended the day he denounced the hunger strikers in the House of Commons. He is likely to get between 3,000 and 4,000 votes in West Belfast, well behind the SDLP. The Alliance Party and the Workers' Party will get a maximum of 2,000 - 3,000 in their best areas.
Both the SDLP and Sinn Fein are very wary of predicting how many seats they will get because of the vagaries of the straight vote and the fact that they are faced with a single Unionist candidate in three of the five key constituencies. The SDLP are confident that they will win Foyle and Martin McGuinness would have to increase his vote dramatically to even put John Hume in danger from the Unionist candidate.
The SDLP claim confidence in Armagh-Newry as well but if Jim McAllister holds his vote, never mind increasing it, Seamus Mallon will be hard put to win against a single Unionist candidate. Sinn Fein is fairly confident in West Belfast and, especially since there are two Unionist candidates in the field, Gerry Adams should have little difficulty increasing his vote and taking the seat there. The SDLP privately concede they have no chance in Fermanagh-South Tyrone and they will come a poor third there but the nationalist majority against a single Unionist candidate is so small that the SDLP intervention is almost certain to cost Owen Carron his seat.
Mid-Ulster will be the real cockpit of the election. It has only a tiny nationalist majority but the fact that the Unionist vote is split between the Official Unionists and the DUP means it can still be won. The SDLP had a majority of 1,154 over Sinn Fein in the Assembly election but it was in Mid-Ulster that Sinn Fein so dramatically improved their vote in the Carrickmore by-election. The SDLP candidate Denis Haughey is not the most popular candidate they could have picked. He works in John Hume's MEP office and is about to join the Forum Secretariat. He is in more of a bureaucrat than a local politician. Sinn Fein's Danny Morrison must have at least a fighting chance of replacing Owen Carron as Sinn Fein's MP west of the Bann.
There is one other constituency where the SDLP has a good chance of picking up a seat -South Down. It has been changed by the boundary commission but almost certainly has a small Unionist majority. For once a split vote may benefit the nationalist camp. The DUP have nominated a candidate against the Official Unionist, Enoch Powell, and this was Sinn Fein's weakest constituency in the Assembly elections. If the SDLP candidate Eddie McGrady can hold most of the 84% of the nationalist vote his party won in October he should take the seat and put an end to Powell's parliamentary career.
Both the SDLP and Sinn Fein seem assured of one seat each - in Foyle and West Belfast. Both have a good chance of a second seat - in South Down and Mid-Ulster. And the SDLP has some chance of a third seat in Armagh-Newry. But one - or two - seats and a half share of the nationalist vote will satisfy Sinn Fein. They have come a long way in the two years since Bobby Sands won a Westminster seat and died three weeks later. And they are making progress towards their objective of ousting the SDLP by 1985. Officials in London and Dublin will have to start thinking seriously about what they will do if, in two or three years time, they have to deal with Sinn Fein, rather than the SDLP, as the majority voice of the nationalist population in the North.
The Battleground
These are the 6 constituencies where the SDLP or Sinn Fein have a chance of winning a seat. West BelfastGerry Adams (SF); Gerry Fitt (Ind); George Haffey (DUP); Dr. Joe Hendron (SDLP); Mary MacMahon (WP); Thomas Passmore (OUP)Once a fairly marginal seat in religious terms the new boundaries have given this seat a solid Catholic majority, removing the Protestant Shankill and Donegall Road areas and adding the Catholic Lenadoon estate. It is based on the Falls rd, Andersontown and Ballymurphy/Turf lodge. With a split vote Unionist vote Gerry Adams, who topped the poll in the Assembly elections, should have no difficulty winning the seat. Assembly Election 1982: (First Preferences) SF 10367, ONE SEAT; SDLP 8368, one seat; OUP 4505, one seat; DUP 4394; Alliance 2733 one seat; Workers Party 2493; Progressive Unionist 1255; PD 144.
Foyle
Gregory Campbell (DUP); John Hume (SDLP); Martin McGuinness (SF); Eamon Melaugh (WP); Gerry O'Grady (Alliance).
The old Derry constituency had a Unionist majority. Now much of Protestant North Derry has been hived off into the new East Derry seat and the solidly Catholic town of Strabane has been taken from Mid-Ulster and added to Derry city to make up Foyle. It now has a safe Catholic majority and John Hume should win here but if Martin McGuinness increases the Sinn Fein share of the vote, it could worry him. However, if Hume is beaten, the SDLP might as well pack up and go home. Assembly Election 1982: (First Preferences) All Unionists 30783, four seats; SDLP 20279, two seats; SF 8763, one seat; Alliance 3663; Workers party 974.
Mid-Ulster
Denis Haughey (SDLP); Dr Aidan Langan (All); Danny Morrison (SF); Rev William McCrea (DUP); Tommy Owens (WP); William Thompson (OUP).
This is Bernadette McAliskey's old seat. It used to have a Nationalist majority of about 3000 but was held by a Unionist because of a split Nationalist vote. It has lost Catholic Strabane to Foyle and the mixed Magerafelt area to East Derry and has gained a republican area around Dromore in Tyrone from Fermanagh-South Tyrone. It is now absolutely marginal in religious terms but with a split Unionist vote a nationalist may win. The SDLP has a small majority over Sinn Fein in the Assembly Elections but SF may be able to reverse that this time and Danny Morrison may win.
Assembly Elections 1982; (First Preferences) SDLP 15244, two seats; DUP 14426, two seats, SF 12690, one seat; OUP 10689, one seat; Alliance 2872; Workers Party 2054
Armagh- Newry
Jim McAllister (SF); Seamus Mallon (SDLP); Tom Moore (WP); Jim Nicholson (OUP)
The old Armagh seat, which included all Co. Armagh, had a unionist majority. Now the mainly Protestant North Armagh area has been transferred to the new seat of Upper Bann, while the Catholic Newry town area has been added on from South Down. The result is a Catholic majority of between six and ten per cent but with a single Unionist candidate and a split nationalist vote the outcome is doubtful. The SDLP took two thirds of the nationalist vote in the Assembly elections and their candidate, Seamus Mallon, is deputy leader of the party and identified with its greener wing. The fact that he was deprived of his Assembly seat because of his membership of Seanad Eireann will do him no harm but, unless he can actually win votes from Sinn Fein, the Official Unionist candidate, Jim Nicholson, is likely to take the seat.
Assembly Election 1982: (First Preferences) All Unionists 33,318, four seats; SDLP 15,630, two seats; SF 8,224, one seat; Workers' Party 2,806; Alliance 1,806.
Fennanagh-South Tyrone
Owen Carron (SF); Elizabeth Flanagan (SDLP); Davy Kettyles (WP); Ken Maginnis (OUP).
The constituency has lost a few thousand votes in the DromoreTrillick area of Tyrone to Mid-Ulster and gained some in Dungannon. The result may be to reduce the already small nationalist majority. This is the seat that elected Bobby Sands and then Owen Carron. Before that it returned Frank Maguire as a republican leaning Independent. The SDLP has never been strong here and the constituency is the home of tactical voting - nationalists vote for the strongest candidate on their side to keep the Unionist out and vice versa. The SDLP candidate is not well known and Owen Carron, the sitting MP, will have no difficulty beating her. He would need about 85% of the nationalist vote to beat the single Unionist candidate, however, and that isn't very likely, although he is playing down the Sinn Fein label and campaigning under the slogan, "Save the Seat". Ken Maginnis, the Official Unionist, is likely to take the seat.
By-Election April 1981 (Westminster): Bobby Sands (H Block) 30,943, Harry West (OUP) 29,046.
By-Election August 1981 (Westminster): Owen Carron (H Block) 31,728; Ken Maginnis (OUP) 29,048; S. Close (All) 1,930; T. Moore (WP) 1,132; Others 339.
Assembly Election 1982: (First Preferences) All Unionists 27,990, three seats; SF 16,725, one seat; SDLP 12,000, one seat; Workers' Party 1,394; Alliance 1,171.
South Down
Patrick Forde (All); Patrick Fitzsimmons (SF); Cecil Harvey (DUP); Eddie McGrady (SDLP); Margaret Magee (WP); Enoch Powell (0 UP}.
This has always been a fairly closely balanced seat religious wise but the Unionists have always held it up to this. It has lost the Catholic Newry area and the Protestant Banbridge area to neighbouring seats, probably leaving a small Protestant majority. The split Unionist vote gives the SDLP's Eddie McGrady a fair chance of winning, but only if he holds the lead the SDLP had over Sinn Fein in the Assembly election. It is one of Sinn Fein's weakest areas, however. So it looks as if Enoch Powell will have to go back to Birmingham.
Assembly Election 1982: (First Preferences) SDLP 20,610, three seats; OUP 18,371, two seats; DUP 11,349, two seats; Alliance 3,646; SF 3,393; Workers' Party 1,676