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WSWS : News & Analysis : Europe : Ireland

Northern Ireland elections: Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein gain support

By Steve James
3 December 2003

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Elections for the suspended Northern Ireland Assembly resulted in predicted gains in support for the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and Sinn Fein.

The DUP has become the largest party in the Assembly should its one-year suspension by the British government be reversed. It is opposed to the power-sharing arrangements with Sinn Fein that are essential to the operation of the constitutional arrangements established under the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

The party led by the right-wing demagogue, Reverend Ian Paisley, increased its share of the 108 seats in the Assembly from 20 to 30, taking seats from the minority unionist parties such as the UK Unionist Party and the Progressive Unionist Party. The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) led by current First Minister of the Assembly David Trimble lost one seat, retaining 27. In percentages the DUP took 25.7 percent against the UUP’s 22.6 percent. But the swing to the anti-Agreement faction of the Protestant bourgeoisie is greater than this suggests. Around six UUP Assembly members led by Jeffrey Donaldson also oppose power sharing and the participation of Sinn Fein in the Assembly and have called for closer relations between the UUP and the DUP.

Sinn Fein won 24 seats, an increase of six, all taken from the catholic-based Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), making Sinn Fein the largest Irish republican nationalist party. The SDLP held only 18 seats as Sinn Fein won 23.5 percent of the vote against the SDLP’s 17 percent.

Also significant was the loss of support for smaller pro-Agreement parties such as the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition, who lost both their seats, while the Alliance Party made no gains. Both advance themselves as non-sectarian and dedicated to bridging the gap between Protestants and Catholics.

Turnout was 63.8 percent, higher than anticipated but still down.

Overall the parties perceived as the most aggressive defenders of nationalist and unionist “communities” triumphed. While Sinn Fein’s pro-Agreement and business oriented policies are all but indistinguishable from the SDLP’s, its use of left-wing rhetoric and militant history allowed it to win an unprecedented level of support amongst nationalists and Catholics who saw it as a more aggressive advocate of their interests. The anti-Agreement DUP was able to win support from sections of Protestants and unionists by claiming that the Agreement had unfairly benefited Catholics. Besides defending the Orange Order’s right to march and bemoaning the “destruction” of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the DUP nodded towards social concerns such as health and education sloganeering that “its time for a fair deal”.

Success for both parties has come at the expense of the UUP and SDLP, considered by the British government to be its most reliable allies in Northern Ireland. Under the terms of the Agreement, Paisley should replace Trimble as First Minister of Northern Ireland while Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams should be the Deputy First Minister.

In reality, Northern Ireland will continue to be ruled directly from London as an extended bout of horse trading takes place behind the backs of the working class so that the British, Irish and US governments can press for some form of accommodation between the DUP and Sinn Fein. The British government minister responsible for Northern Ireland, Paul Murphy, announced he intended to talk to leaders of the four major parties as soon as possible to explore possibilities.

These will not prove quick or easy as the DUP fought the election on the basis of denouncing the Agreement and Sinn Fein. During the two-day count, Paisley grabbed a reporter by his lapels and shouted, “No, I’m not talking to Sinn Fein and the party’s not talking to Sinn Fein.” His son, Ian Paisley junior, reiterated the message that the Agreement was “dead in the water”.

Nevertheless, while the DUP is led by Paisley who has built his political career on naked unionist demagogy he is hardly immune from political inducements, bribery and threats. And sections of his party are keen to find an arrangement to allow the Assembly and some version of the Agreement to be revived. Figures such as Paisley’s deputy, Peter Robinson, and Nigel Dodds, a barrister and former mayor of Belfast, have attracted praise from the business press, and are seen as more pliable than the 77-year-old Paisley. For all the DUP’s denunciation of the Agreement, both Dodds and Robinson served as ministers in the Assembly’s fitful existence—Dodds as the Minister for Social Development, Robinson as the Minister for Regional Development. Moves are likely to be attempted to sideline Paisley senior.

Seeking to encourage this, Gerry Adams, ahead of meetings with Paul Murphy, made what is likely to be a series of overtures aimed at enticing the DUP into discussion. Calling for “patience” Adams commented “I am not a Christian clergyman. I am not the leader of a church but I do not know of any Christian philosophy which is not about dialogue.”

For their part, the Irish government, in a move orchestrated with the British government, quickly moved to press Sinn Fein, with Taoiseach Bertie Ahern insisting that there was no scope for renegotiating the Agreement as demanded by the DUP, but that a review was necessary. As a carrot Ahern also indicated that his ruling Fianna Fail party would consider coalition discussions with Sinn Fein were “acts of completion” (a euphemism for the final disbandment of Sinn Fein’s military wing the Irish Republican Army) to occur.

Should these efforts fail, there is also the possibility that a fresh election with be convened in the hope that Britain’s Labour government of Prime Minister Tony Blair will get the result it wants.

The immediate fallout of the election is not going to be an immediate reversion to the pre-Agreement political landscape of Northern Ireland, with a wave of IRA bombings and British troops returning in large numbers to the streets of Belfast. Despite the polarisation apparent in the results, 76 percent of the population voted for pro-Agreement parties and even among those who voted for the DUP and the anti-Agreement unionists, outside the most die-hard bigots, paramilitaries and sections of the security services, there is no widespread belief that the old militarised Protestant ascendancy can be restored.

However, no one should minimise the widespread discontent with what has happened in Northern Ireland since 1998, or be indifferent to the danger posed by a resurgence of sectarian tensions.

This cannot be opposed by efforts to reinvigorate the Assembly and its provisions. The increased votes for Sinn Fein and the DUP are contradictory expressions of growing discontent with the so-called “peace process” precisely because it is devoid of any genuine democratic content and has failed to live up to the hopes invested in it.

When a huge majority of nationalists and Catholics and a smaller majority of Protestants and unionists voted in 1998 for the Good Friday Agreement and the new Assembly, it was because they sought a means of overcoming the long misery of “the Troubles” and an end to sectarian division and poverty. But these hopes were drawn into channels through which they could find no expression. Through the Agreement the four major parties and the participating governments established an anti-democratic set-up designed to manage and bring under control sectarian divisions, rather than end them. The constitution of the devolved executive for the north was aimed at ending open street warfare in order to attract investment, but it wanted to preserve and foster the disunity of the working class that has been and continues to be essential in order to prevent the formation of a coherent political challenge to big business.

The Agreement was based on the assertion that the fundamental division within Northern Ireland is between Catholics and Protestants, Irish republicans and pro-British unionists. On this basis the sectarian parties were given a joint veto on the limited forms of policy making granted to the assembly as official representatives of supposedly mutually exclusive “communities”. This concealed the more fundamental class divisions that cut across both supposed communities and militates against any attempt to secure the unity of the working class by pitting one section of the population against the other in a competition for limited social provisions.

This was a never subject to any democratic discussion or control. The Agreement was shaped exclusively by the requirements of British, US and Irish capital, negotiated behind closed doors and only then presented in a referendum—for or against with no chance of amendment or discussion—to lend it a veneer of democratic legitimacy.

Not only did it preserve the domination of parties wed to the interests of this or that section of capital, but it left real power with London for the foreseeable future. The Assembly has been closed down by the Blair government no less than four times—whenever the position of UUP leader David Trimble was threatened and in order to place the maximum pressure on Sinn Fein to agree to disarm. The absence of any genuine democracy was exemplified by an election held for seats in an Assembly that is not even functioning—purely on the say-so of Blair.

The question has to be posed through what means can the as yet inchoate democratic aspirations of the vast majority of working people in Northern Ireland—the demand for peace, an end to religious discrimination and for an equitable and prosperous future for all—be expressed? How can the monopoly of all areas of social, political and cultural discourse by big business and the sectarian parties be ended?

This requires the intervention into political life of the working class, acting on an independent political perspective. A genuinely democratic Ireland is only conceivable through a protracted, complex and unrelenting political struggle against the profit system and all its political representatives. It means advancing a programme that champions a society based on social and democratic equality, rather than the preservation of social privilege and wealth for a tiny minority. It means the elaboration of policies that would reorganise economic life to provide well paying jobs, decent housing and services for everyone, instead of fostering an ever more bitter conflict in which workers of one religious denomination fight those from another or of no religious persuasion for whatever crumbs are thrown their way.

See Also:
Northern Ireland election: An attempt to rescue the Good Friday Agreement
[26 November 2003]