Hardliners to gain in North
The outcome of the elections are a good barometer of increased segregation in the political landscape, writes Fergal Keane from the campaign trail
On the campaign trail in the plush housing estates on the outskirts of Portadown, the DUP were last week on a roll. Some evenings they had 30 people out to help the candidate, David Simpson, meet and greet the electorate. The party pulled out all the stops in this campaign and with a day to go before voting, they were confident that they would consign the UUP leader, David Trimble, to the annals of Westminster history.
On the doorsteps Simpson and his workers are brimming with confidence. When I was with them they were concentrating on areas known to support Trimble and the reaction to them was almost universally positive. Here the DUP had done the maths and knew from their tallies exactly where in the constituency needed their attention. Every vote counted and was being worked for. With a majority of just 2000, all it would take for the DUP to take the seat would be for 1,000 Unionist voters to change sides.
In the past there was a belief that significant numbers of nationalists in the Upper Bann constituency voted for David Trimble to stop the DUP. With the changed political landscape, which happened by way of the assembly elections last year, no one now seriously believes that there will be any significant voting across the sectarian divide.
At the time of writing it seemed that David Trimble, and with him the whole Ulster Unionist Party, was in serious trouble. Should he lose, as seems inevitable, it will mark a seismic change in the political landscape of Northern Ireland. The old order of the UUP, be it in the form of Trimble or Molyneux, providing the leadership with Ian Paisley taking the lesser role, will have been totally reversed.
Whatever the outcome of the general election in Northern Ireland, it seems that nothing will stop or even slow down the increasing distances between both communities in that part of our island. Gains by the DUP and the SDLP mean that people have found solace in the politics of certainty; grey areas in political thought are out of favour, now it is almost all black and white. It is almost as if the only parties now trusted by the electorate are those who will not give an inch.
Sitting smoking in his office in the centre of Derry, vetern socialist Eamon McCann is pretty gloomy about the political and social future of the north. Standing for election himself as a candidate for the Socialist Environmental Alliance, he says that the walls of sectarianism have grown higher since the Agreement and look set to grow higher again. It is hard to disagree with his thesis that you could hold two separate elections on different days for both communities in Northern Ireland and the final result would not change. People have become so entrenched in their tribal positions that there are essentially two separate societies with little or no crossover. Each has their own schools, pubs, newspapers, sports – own everything – with only the common language of shopping ever bringing them into contact with each other.
This is a thesis which is being used by opponents of Sinn Féin and the DUP in an attempt to get voters to stop going down this road. According to David Trimble the two parties might hate each other, but they are more than willing to see Northern Ireland carved up into various fiefdoms in which they each will hold sway. Balkanisation, he calls it.
But the only thing that works against this slip into a new form of apartheid, is that it inevitably leads to economic stagnation. All parties will tell you that they believe they can get the economy moving if the Assembly gets up and running again. Direct rule ministers are not going to be the best managers, is a refrain from all sides.
But a deal, despite the protestations of Sinn Féin, seems a very long way off. They will tell you that since last December the DUP is now a pro Agreement party, give or take a photograph or two. That ignores the real political fall out from the bank robbery and the murder of Robert McCartney. Maybe when they were on the campaign trail the DUP people were just taking the hard line for the benefit of their heartland, but they convinced me that they are in no mood at all to mend the bridges with Sinn Féin. That is going to take something pretty unprecedented on the part of the IRA. Maybe when they are faced with an equally unequivical prospective partner in government, will they actually take that leap and shut up shop for good.