Tirconnail Tribune, 20th March 2001
The North is about numbers. It was set up on a headcount.
A sectarian head count.
Fermanagh was iffy, Donegal definitely out.
Subsequently, politics in the North have always been about numbers-tribal numbers.
For the past few years Tim Pat Coogan has been irking Dublin4 with his constant references to the demographic changes that are taking place in the North.
As Ballsbridge tut-tuted at such uncouth observations apropos the ever growing number of Taigs in Norn Iron the reality on the ground was moving the goal posts of Northern politics.
From Carson to Paisley Loyal Ulster was fervently democratic because it always gave them the result they wanted.
With an in-built 2-1 majority why wouldn’t they be good democrats?
The last census before the northern war was 1961. It showed that the headcount of 1921to be holding steady.
While at university twenty years after that census I read Dutch guys PhD thesis on Belfast Pogroms.
He reckoned that there had been an anti-Catholic pogrom in Belfast on average every 9 years since the post-Famine expansion of the city.
That pogrom was a wake-up call he reckoned for each new generation of wee Taigs.
That omnipresent fear plus slum housing meant that the fenians would always leave Sammy’s wee Ulster before they could do any democratic damage to Stormont.
The British census returns for 1971 in the North were largely useless because of the war situation in areas like the Ballymurphy and the No-Go areas in Derry.
1981-the next census year- was the year of the Hunger Strike.
Once more nationalist areas were in Uprising Mode.
So, ironically for a place built upon a sectarian head count, there was no effective sectarian headcount from 1961 until 1991.
This year’s Brit census in the Six counties-we are reliably informed-will show the nationalist population at or close to 47% of the population.
It is a young 47%.
The writing is on the Maternity Ward wall.
The coming British election might be the last British general election where a majority of votes cast in the Six counties are cast for Unionists parties.
Sinn Fein-like the nationalist population in the Six counties is the future.
Sinn Fein is growing, young & dynamic.
The SDLP is-like Unionism-old tired & defensive.
That description of the Social Democratic & labour Party is justified in my opinion given their behaviour in West Tyrone and in their general dealings on the possibility of an electoral pact with Sinn Fein.
Mr McLaughlin recently Sinn Féin wrote to the SDLP “in an effort to address sincere calls from sections of nationalism that Sinn Féin and the SDLP should consider running single candidates in some constituencies to maximise representation.”
An unofficial pact between the Ulster Unionist Party and the DUP has been in operation for decades and has led to unionists holding 13 and nationalists just five of the North’s Westminster seats.
Mr McLaughlin said he made the initial approach in a letter to SDLP chairman Mr Alex Attwood. He said when there was no response to the letter, and after Ms Bríd Rodgers announced her intention to enter the West Tyrone contest, Sinn Féin saw this as a rejection of the proposal.
Mr McLaughlin has insisted the approach is genuine and wants to put it to the SDLP a pact could realistically mean republicans/nationalists could take 11 out 18 seats in Westminster.
He said there were six constituencies which if targeted in a co-ordinated fashion could become republican/nationalists seats.
If more nationalists than unionists were elected to the British parliament, it would have a huge psychological effect on unionists.
Current demographics allow for a healthy contest between Sinn Féin and the SDLP in five constituencies – West Belfast, Foyle, Newry and Armagh, South Down and Mid Ulster – without allowing the seat to go to a unionist.
Seven constituencies – North Antrim, South Antrim, East Antrim, East Belfast, Lagan Valley, Strangford and North Down – are solidly unionist. However, the remaining six constituencies are winnable because of nationalist majorities or a fragmented unionist vote, according to Sinn Féin.
These are West Tyrone, North Belfast, Fermanagh and South Tyrone, South Belfast, Upper Bann and East Derry. Sinn Féin hasn’t publicly stated the constituencies in which it would like the SDLP to stand aside but it has pointed out that in the 1998 Assembly elections it was ahead in the first three.
In West Tyrone, Sinn Fein leads the SDLP by 8 per cent, but the local SDLP man who contested the last Westminster election is standing aside for the party’s high-profile Agriculture Minister, Mrs Bríd Rodgers.
The SDLP firmly believes Ms Rodgers can pull background from Sinn Féin and take the seat from anti-agreement UUP MP Mr Willie Thompson.
In reality the only thing that the SDLP will achieve by bringing in Brid Rodgers to West Tyrone is to return Willie Thompson for the constituency and not Sinn Fein’s Pat Doherty.
The SDLP have made-in my opinion- a calculation in West Tyrone that a candidate of the undoubted quality of Brid Rodgers will sufficiently spilt the nationalist vote in that constituency and return “Willie T” to Westminster.
Currently the SDLP trail Sinn Fein in the constituency by 8%.
The reasonable thing to do would have been to swing behind Sinn Fein’s Pat Doherty in the constituency.
However like the like Unionism itself the SDLP can only delay change in the Six Counties it cannot halt it.
Phil Mac Giolla Bhain
