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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
June 2015 11
T
HE UK General Election in the
North saw the stalling of the Sinn
Féin juggernaut. Its share of the
vote fell by % compared to the last
election – despite fighting an extra seat,
South Belfast. This was the party’s first
electoral setback in the North since
, when Gerry Adams lost his West
Belfast seat at Westminster.
Overall, the long-running apparently
inexorable rise of the Nationalist vote
was halted. The Nationalist share of the
overall vote was down .%. For the
first time in years, Unionists took a
Westminster seat from Nationalists
– Fermanagh and South Tyrone.
Another nationalist seat is extremely
vulnerable, that of SDLP leader Alasdair
McDonnell in South Belfast. He was only
ahead of the DUP candidate,
despite a three-way Unionist scrap. In
North Belfast, seen as a possible Nation-
alist gain, the total Nationalist vote in
fact fell by .%.
While not as prominent as in the
Republic, social issues are at last and at
least bubbling below the surface. The
conservative wing of the DUP were
losers. Health minister Jim Wells
resigned after claiming child abuse was
more common among gay people, then
police being called to an incident with a
lesbian couple in Rathfriland.
Wells stood in the Nationalist-held
seat of South Down. His vote fell suffi-
ciently to allow the Ulster Unionists to
outpoll him. The Reverend William
McCrea, traditionalist Free Presbyte-
rian minister and outgoing MP for South
Antrim, lost to Ulster Unionist Danny
Kinahan. Kinahan was the only Union-
ist Assembly member to vote for equal
marriage.
The election has weakened the threat
to the DUP from the right. The right-
wing Traditional Unionist Voice polled
poorly: six of seven candidates polling
under , votes. A DUP source told
Village this indicates the DUP’s future is
in the centre, in electoral competition
with more moderate forces.
Under the radar, there is a peculiar
development. The DUP is courting Cath-
olic social conservatives – an estimated
minimum % of the North’s Catholics.
They are more middle-class and moti-
vated to vote.
A Catholic social conservative told
Village: “I have three issues: Abortion;
Homosexual marriage; A united Ire-
land. The DUP is with me on two of
them. Sinn Féin is only with me on one,
and even then it is compromised”. He
said he was reluctant to vote Ulster
Unionist, because some of their candi-
dates took liberal stances on social
issues.
After the election, a Catholic pro-life
group in Dungannon has claimed credit
for the Unionist victory in Fermanagh
and South Tyrone. It circulated ,
leaflets, targeting Sinn Fein as pro-
abortion.
The DUP source was careful not to
exaggerate the support from Catholic
social conservatives. “It may be only a
handful”, the DUP source said. “But in
an election, a handful of votes can make
a difference”. He pointed out that, while
all the Churches have sought DUP sup-
port on social issues “only one Church
ever backed that up with a statement
– that’s the Catholic Church”.
A priest in a nationalist rural area has
said he has been surprised at a number
of parishioners telling him they were
voting DUP. They were former SDLP
voters, who saw that party as standing
for Catholic principles – but have lost
faith in it. Certainly, with constitutional
issues and controversy over flags and
marches having retreated, the DUP is no
longer as toxic to a section of Catholics.
Its difficulty may be that the issues
which attract these Catholics are
increasingly toxic to the majority of the
North’s Protestants.
Sinn Féin’s stalling in the North has
certain implications for the Irish gen-
eral election. The political opponents
most avidly anti-Sinn Féin were those
who most strongly believed it was
unstoppable. They will breathe more
hopefully now.
Sinn Féin has perhaps been nurturing
excessive expectations or the next elec-
tion. Strategists believe its seat tally will
probably be in the mid-s, from the
current . It has suffered from the
reduction in the total number of Dáil
seats, and changes in constituency
boundaries. In a number of seats, it has
a weak organisation and no well-known
candidate. However, North and South
Sinn Féin has shown an ability to learn
from setbacks. From the Northern
results, it is clear that the Republic will
be the area of growth. •
Sinn Féin not
unstoppable,
North...or
South
“
NEWS Northern Ireland
Finally, some nuance comes to NI
Some Shinners are starting to vote DUP. By Anton McCabe
complexity coming to
politics in the North
