Major gains in Newry and Mourne
By Brian Campbell
A few generations ago Newry was a Labour town. Then it was SDLP.
Indeed, Newry has been one of their strongholds. Not any more.
For the first time, the largest party in Newry is Sinn Féin. They
got two councillors elected with Ann Marie Willis just missing
out.
It is a similar story in South Armagh where Sinn Féin put up five
candidates and got five elected. Comfortably.
Rostrevor man Mick Murphy completes the Sinn Féin team. He came
home well over the quota.
The SDLP no longer has a majority in Newry and Mourne Council. As
in Derry, where the SDLP also lost control, Sinn Féin's gains
were important because they were in an SDLP heartland.
The initial SDLP response was to attribute Sinn Féin's best ever
performance to vote stealing. In some ways, Sinn Féin is happy to
hear that. It shows that their political opponents can't see what
is really happening. The earthquake of political change of May
1997 has nothing to do with vote stealing.
There is an abundance of evidence from the Westminster and local
elections to show that a new mood has taken hold among
nationalists. One Sinn Féin canvasser in Newry knocked on the
door of a woman who suffers from agoraphobia. ``I haven't been
outside my front door for seven years except to put the clothes
on the washing line,'' she said, ``but I'm going out to vote for
Sinn Féin.'' Another canvasser was told at another house, ``we have
always voted Alliance but after Drumcree we sat down as a family
and decided to vote Sinn Féin. You can't be middle of the road in
this country any longer.''
Certainly the Drumcree factor played a part in increasing Sinn
Féin's vote. But Sinn Féin's opponents have held back from saying
why. The truth is that Drumcree confirmed the Sinn Féin analysis
of the Northern state. In the weeks after Drumcree last year
republicans lost count of the number of times that people came up
to them and said, ``You were right all along.''
The other side of that is that the SDLP was wrong. Most - not all
- SDLP elected representatives had no wish to think too deeply
about the flawed nature of the state. They tried to work within
it and gain what they could, many even supporting the RUC,
particularly in Newry. Drumcree blew their ideological world
apart. They could not explain what had happened, much less do
anything in response.
They are also a tired party - in Newry the SDLP had to pay people
to put up posters and sit in polling stations. In Belfast
students hired as SDLP polling agents were happy to spend the
time in the polling stations revising for their exams.
By contrast, Sinn Féin has a tremendous electoral machine allied
to hard-working elected representatives. The local election
victories were a recognition of that record of hard work.
But above all, the vote for Sinn Féin was a vote for their peace
strategy. There is a momentum now among nationalists which is
moving towards change. And a confidence that change will happen.
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