Looks like MaryLou could struggle in Dublin Central: Bertie Ahern 1 3/4 quota Mary Lou 7.1% Labour 15% Tony Georgry 13% Pascal Donohoe 10%. Sean Crowe and Larry O’Toole may struggle to keep in the game: Dub nth east – FF 39% FG 21% LAB 15% SF 15%; and Dub sth wst – FF 38% FG 18% LAB 21% SF 16.
How has Ulster unionism arrived at where it is today – fractured and uncertain, yet dominated electorally by the DUP, a party that tells us it offers unionists sure footing in uncertain times? In his latest book, Ulster’s Last Stand? Reconstructing Unionism after the Peace Process (Irish Academic Press, 2010), Prof. James McAuley from the [...] read our review »
I loved Gerry’s quote from the Irish Examiner
” “I lost a seat myself in west Belfast, and we came back and we’ll come back again,†Mr Adams said. ”
He came back because the constituency was altered to make sure Joe Hendron would lose!
Few voters moved outside the main comfort zones of the 2 largest parties yesterday.Sinn Fein,Labour, socialists, greens etc.. all suffered.
Disappointed by the Sinn Fein showing but its important to dust ourselves down and prepare for the council elections in 2009.
Some good young candidates round the country to fill council seats next election.
There certainly needs to be a great deal of internal discussion over election planning etc..
and some change in emphasis on certain economic issues.
Overall disappointing but the vote held and with foundations going down in every constituency in the country, its a good base to build from.
The results would suggest that it is EXTREMELY far behind it!
Nope. I’ve seen SF in action up here in NI. They have by far the most effective electoral machine here. I would not underestimate their willingness to export that to the RoI. This is an organization with the leadership, drive and determination to more or less successfully convince a large and well-armed paramilitary group to down tools. It will not be hard for them to send their best electoral managers over the border and get people down there trained up.
I am not a republican and I’m quite pleased that SF have faced the first serious drubbing of their post-process career. I thought republicans were handling it quite well, though this is a new experience for them. It’s a rude awakening for anyone who thought that ending the IRA’s campaign of violence would lead to everlasting security from the electorate.
Last night’s results made me think of other points in history where people have lead their knuckle-dragging followers into the light, improving the lives of many people but finding themselves overtaken by events, consigning the organization they were trying to consolidate to oblivion. Mikhail Gorbachev and FW De Klerk spring to mind, though nobody could compare Adams to either of those statesmen.
Face it, you know the Provo project is effectively finished.
Underestimating the chuckies is a fatal mistake. Look where they were in 1992 when Adams lost his seat, and look where they are now.
Sharing ‘power’ with Paisley in a glorified county council of the UK and going into reverse in the south when every Shinner privately and many of them publically were assured of doubling the vote?!
The SF strategy was clearly a failure, but prior to the results it didn’t seem like a bad one. If you can successfully persuade the electorate that you’re a big player and you’re here to stay, they are more likely to vote for you. I can’t remember anyone predicting that they would hit their ceiling in the RoI quite so soon.
Face facts: it’s an unrecoverable disaster.
Which facts say that SF’s position now is “unrecoverable” ? Give over with the soundbites already.
Let’s talk about the real facts here. Ireland is in the midst of a period of unprecedented prosperity. The government is spending very large amounts of money on improving the economic and commercial infrastructure within the state. In these circumstances, nobody is ever going to vote a government out. That is why Labour are still in power in the UK despite the Iraq war. Administrative incompetence pales into insignificance as long as people feel money in their pockets. Nobody is going to kill the goose.
The presence of large quantities of cash visibly sloshing about in the form of new trains, new roads and other things masks the fact that while FF have stayed out of the way of business and commerce (pretty much all you need to do to sustain a boom), they have managed the state badly. Despite the outcome of this election I am still convinced that there is an underclass in Irish life who haven’t seen a penny of the new economic growth and opportunity in the country, and the administration has made no effort to improve their lot. In the longer term, I think the economic boom will come to be seen as a missed opportunity, where the government footered about instead of investing properly in education and infrastructure in order to secure the country’s long-term competitiveness.
The majority state on this island wants next to nothing to do with you.
Well, not me. I’m not a republican. In the RoI I’d probably vote Labour, or possibly FG.
My country does not need your lectures, your piety and your sectarian anachronisms. Crawl back to the northern ghettos where you belong and stay there.
Touchy.
Where’s Oilibhear Cromhail?????
“He came back because the constituency was altered to make sure Joe Hendron would lose!”
Less of the revisionism, please. Hendron took in 1992 on a majority of about 1,000. Gerry’s in 1997 was about 8,000. These days it’s almost 20,000.
Boundary changes do not account for that type of swing.
Gerry,Whatever,Sammy etc.,
I think it’s misleading to put a ‘partitionist’ slant on the result.If I can cut and paste my thoughts on another thread:
Speaking as someone who contributed to their demise I have to say that a grossly mistaken spin has been put on SF’s performance.The electorate were not straightarming NI or NI nationalism just the particular brand of NI nationalism represented by SF.That and their loopy economic policies.
Another insightful unionist posting in politics.ie:
Actually, continual defeats for the Sinners probably means a marginal increase in the likelihood of a United Ireland as a proper government with a proper leader reaches out to unionists in more ways than Gerry can possibly achieve.
The Sinners remain the problem, not the solution.
Economics and a proper democrat as a leader make it more likely. The Sinners have no grasp of the former and no likelihood of the latter.
“This is an organization with the leadership, drive and determination to more or less successfully convince a large and well-armed paramilitary group to down tools.”
This is an organisation that the southern electorate has rejected. Let’s not forget that it is the same organisation that fully supported the “large and well-armed paramilitary group” and it appears this thought hasn’t gone away you know!
No bad thing for the chucks long term, education is a wonderful thing and a smack in the mouth is a great teacher. Back to the drawing board now. they will have complacency replaced with anger( the best motivator) and they’re probably better off not being near Bertie’s third term, familiarity will breed… brown envelopes etc. Does anyone have evidence that their setbacks in the past have not made it worse for their opponents in the long term.
It’s factual Kensei – the Shankill wards – which had tactically voted Hendron – were removed …. and rather than being replaced with the strongly SDLP 6 wards of the Balmoral Electoral Area and the Shaftesbury ward ( where SF didn’t even stand in those days ) Adams was gifted staunchly Republican Twinbrook and Poleglass.
The Brits really have looked after Gerry and Martin.
“It’s factual Kensei – the Shankill wards – which had tactically voted Hendron – were removed …. and rather than being replaced with the strongly SDLP 6 wards of the Balmoral Electoral Area and the Shaftesbury ward ( where SF didn’t even stand in those days ) Adams was gifted staunchly Republican Twinbrook and Poleglass.”
I have no doubt the wards changed and that helped SF out. That isn’t the issue. The issue is would it have made a difference. 8,000 majority? Not a hope.
It’s a strange auld world. I mind the time when the Unionists, the whole lot of them, were prepared to bring the entire province to its knees rather than have Gerry Fitt in the cabinet. I don’t know what was wrong with him. Maybe he slurped his soup or something.
Then later that sort of person is no problem. The SDLP is all right by us. They are welcome: in fact we want them. Actually they’re Unionists. 50% of the Catholic population wants to stay in the UK so it must be them. It’s SF/IRA/666/Antichrist who we are not prepared to sit down with. When IRA/SF/Murdering Fenian Scum/IRA lose a few hundred votes in the elections of a neighbouring jurisdiction, you’d think Carson himself had risen from the grave. It’s going to add 50 years to the life of the province, so it is.
Well I don’t think SF have their head screwed on. They should have got Real Continuity IRA to go on bombing, so they could condemn them and become the good guys.
The Second Earl Russell had this problem. He went through a lot of wives, and his aunt never liked the new one. Eventually he said to her, “Auntie, you are always a wife behindâ€, which she thought was a great witticism.
Well bear in mind that the SDLP used to be the Antichrist, and the SDLP are thinking of joining up with Fianna Fáil, and they just won hands down. Indeed, in the 30s Éamonn De Valera occupied the same position as Gerry Adams today.
Excellent. I’m proud my party leader – who sadly lost his seat – managed just beforehand to demolish SF’s credibility on live-television 2 Wednesday’s ago.
Indeed, in the 30s Éamonn De Valera occupied the same position as Gerry Adams today.
Posted by PaddyReilly on May 26, 2007 @ 11:34 PM
Quite correct Paddy, and like De Valera Gerry Adams has made unionism more entrenched than otherwise would have been the case and in doing so reinforced the very border they dispised, the way to unify the island is to unify the people, and from a unionist point of view that won’t be achieved by waving a tricolour in our faces and raming the Irish language down our throats
O yeah and the Unionists were about to leap into bed with Clann na nGael when deValera came along and spoiled it. Pull the other one it’s got bells on it. The fact is, Unionists like ruling the roost, and they will find fault with anything Irish Nationalists do.
Paddy, I agree that unionist leaders were only to eager to portray the south as backward, hostile and priest ridden, but De Valera made it easier
Just back from a post-election count drink in town, and the camaraderie amongst FF, FG, Labour and a few others about SF’s rout was unreal
The one unifying factor amongst us all.
Our state doesn’t want you: only the brainwashed underclass, unreconstructed sectarian dinosaurs and the odd self hating ultra-left halfwit is bothering any more.
Get used to obscurity, fellahs. No party has ever deserved it more. Your day has indeed come.
“It’s factual Kensei – the Shankill wards – which had tactically voted Hendron – were removed …. and rather than being replaced with the strongly SDLP 6 wards of the Balmoral Electoral Area and the Shaftesbury ward ( where SF didn’t even stand in those days ) Adams was gifted staunchly Republican Twinbrook and Poleglass. The Brits really have looked after Gerry and Martin.”
Yes and if the Balmoral wards had been added to Belfast West the knock-on effects would have been:-
1) the abolition of Belfast South, then a UUP banker
2) good UUP territory added to Belfast East threatening Robbo’s position
3) the addition of 3 Shankill wards to Belfast North, killing off Nationalist hopes there
4) The abolition of John Taylor’s Strangford and its replacement by ‘Castlereagh&Newtownards’ which would have been a DUP banker
5) The effective merger of the Nationalist bits of South Down and NewryArmagh into a new ‘Newry&Mourne’ seat.
The latter in particular caused Seamus Mallon to describe the proposals as “the biggest gerrymander since the creation of the state” while Eddie McGrady pledged to “pursue the matter to the bitter end” and the Taoiseach apparently raised the issue at British Irish meetings. Meanwhile Unionist parties organised petitions against the proposals and spoke against them at the enquiries.
In the end, not surprisingly given the number of MPs effected, the boundary commission backtracked and went for the more conservative route that preserved most of the seats.
It would help if you read Gordon Lucy’s book on the 1993 local elections before you spout such complete crap in future.
This is all good news. The majority of Northerners and Southerners want partition. Irish republicanism is a pretty much Northern gig. If the Shinners had done well in the Free State they would have started pushing for a United Ireland which would have led to instability.
People must now recognise that Mackers and his ilk were right all along. Adams et al in their chauffer driven cars and the rest of them having got little for all they gave to the Republican cause. Social climbers always exploit others, and it is so funny when the wheels come of the cart.
Zippy pid do dah lol
“It’s factual Kensei – the Shankill wards – which had tactically voted Hendron – were removed ….”
Actually in addition to that, the Shankill wards weren’t removed.
Not according to wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belfast_West_(UK_Parliament_constituency)
Maggot it’s probably not a good idea to cite Wikipedia as a source as much of the boundary related stuff on there was written by me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Belfast_West_(UK_Parliament_constituency)&diff=prev&oldid=41659674
Nowhere on there does it mention the Shankill wards being removed as they weren’t.
Read the boundary commission reports available in Belfast central library for example. The reasons for the extension of West Belfast into Poleglass/Twinbrook rather than Balmoral in 1995 were quite simple
1) Poleglass and Twinbrook are logical extensions of West Belfast and were built as overspill estates to rehouse the population of the Lower Falls and Andytown. So adding them to West made sense, while adding the Malone Road would have been just plain stupid.
2)While the Belfast proposals were obviously welcomed by the SDLP, they were opposed overall by the same party, especially in the South Down/Armagh areas where two SDLP seats were collapsed into one. Furthermore the overall proposals which I’ve alluded to in my previous post would have massively altered the political map of NI, unseating many MPs in the process. Given the opposition from all parties, they were quite rightly rejected.
In any event if you look at the 1997 council election results it’s clear that the SDLP would have been sunk anyway, boundary changes or not. The Balmoral option would have boosted the SDLP by about 4000 (2000 from South Belfast and 2000 by not adding Poleglass/Twinbrook) meaning Adams majority would have been halved but would still have been a comfortable 4000.
The majority of Northerners and Southerners want partition. Irish republicanism is a pretty much Northern gig.
Here we have the problem of Unionist autism and self-obsession. Anything less than an active bombing campaign on the part of Irish Nationalists is taken as enthusiastic approval of the status quo. Bear in mind that Slugger contributor Brian Boru, who has enthusiastically plugged a nationalist Agenda for several years now, turn out to be a PD supporter.
SF are not the only party who would be happy to have the border removed.
Oh the irony. All these Shinners who for years have castigated the Southern Parties for their “partitionism” are now frantically back-pedalling because those same parties whalloped their outfit in this election.
The “true voice” of republicanism takes a hiding so everyone’s a republican now, is that it?
Face it folks, most people in the Republic are happy with the status quo, thank you very much. When polled, sure they’ll say they want a UI, but they don’t want it forced on people and its probably about tenth on their list of priorities, if even that.
“Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness, John O’Dowd, Pat Doherty, your boys (and girl) took one Hell of a beating!”
All these Shinners who for years have castigated the Southern Parties for their “partitionism†are now frantically back-pedalling
I’m not sure if I’m meant to be included in this, but if so, could you tell me when I voted for or joined SF, and when I castigated Southern Parties for partitionism.
those same parties walloped their outfit in this election
I think you’re making a little too much mileage out of the fact that SF’s vote in the Republic’s election only went up by 0.6%. If the Unionist vote had gone up by 0.6% in March it would have been counted as a signal victory.
Did the electorate reject SF? Well, nobody got a total majority, so everyone was partially rejected.
Did they lose? That depends on how desperate various parties are to get into power. What if FG tried to form a coalition with Labour, Greens and SF? Then it would be up to a couple of independents. I would say, SF’s price would be, the same slightly left wing agenda as Labour and Greens and don’t say anything against a United Ireland.
Something like this was tried before, around 1948 I believe, though it wasn’t terribly successful.
“Nowhere on there does it mention the Shankill wards being removed as they weren’t.”
The section in “History ” is a bit confusing Valenciano – and I wasn’t around then.
It mentions the Shankill wards “originally suggested removing the Shankill wards from the constituency and replacing them “… I thought you were saying that they were removed and instead of being replaced with “6 wards of the Balmoral Electoral Area and the Shaftesbury ward” they were replaced instead with “the mostly republican Twinbrook and Poleglass estates ”
It doesn’t say that they dropped the Shankill move, just that the Twinbrook/Poleglass replaced
Balmoral/Shaftesbury.
But thanks for the clarification.
Paddy
My post was in response to your comment re. the border. It’s clear that the one party in the election for whom the issue of the border was a central theme of their campaign took a hiding. They did not go up, they were actually considerably down on the last election to be held in the Republic – the Euros. Before this election there were SF supporters on this site predicting as many as fifteen seats for SF. The reality? 4 – down one and way, way below their own expectations.
What was it Conor Murphy said to Dermot Ahern? “Your republicanism stops at the border”. Seems to me as though the Southern electorate are perfectly happy with that.
The fact is that a UI is not a priority for very many ppl in the RoI – if it were SF would have made big gains – they are perfectly happy with the status quo.
Maggot, thanks for pointing that out, I’ve amended the article to remove the confusion.
Thanks valenciano. It was a claim I have seen in several articles – I think one may have been by Eoghan Harris. I now know it’s untrue.
So this result proves that the shinners are not the All Ireland Party they claim to be. They SF would need to remove this claim from their litrature. I think that the people in the ROI have told them to stay up in Northern Ireland.
ANOTHER FINE MESS Mr Adams
They did not go up, they were actually considerably down on the last election to be held in the Republic – the Euros.
Well this means that either SF have disgraced themselves in some signal way recently (though I can’t think what they could possibly have done that was any worse than what they have done in the past) or that their vote will go back up to what it was before when the concerns of the current situation are over.
Before this election there were SF supporters on this site predicting as many as fifteen seats for SF. The reality? 4 – down one and way, way below their own expectations.
Yes but so what? Are there any parties in existence that don’t win less seats than they predict they will? Special pleading, I’m afraid.
The fact is that a UI is not a priority for very many ppl in the RoI – if it were SF would have made big gains – they are perfectly happy with the status quo.
Well put it this way. If someone invited me to bomb the Council Offices because of speed bumps, I would decline. If they asked me to vote for the Anti-speed bump Party, I might not be able to because I have other issues which I think need settling first. But this does not mean I like speed bumps. I hate them.
Paddy
A spurious line of thought. Sinn Fein made the political process in Northern Ireland a central theme in their election campaign – indeed I remeber many people predicting that the Paisley/McGuinness show up at the White House was going to have a major impact on the election. It clearly did not.
The line of argument you are pursuing here reminds me very much of that which the UUP used to deploy when they were taking their first stage of thrashings at the hands of the DUP – this Westminster election result wasn’t as bad as the last European one, then when Stormont elections came around, this assembly result wasn’t as bad as the last European one, by the time of the European one, they were finished.
Face facts, Sinn Fein are the only party who makes a “32 County Socialist (snigger) Republic” a priority at election time and they got whalloped.
The UUP are not finished. They still have one of the three EU representatives, and they are not going to lose him to the DUP.
In the Assembly, the DUP cannot implement Unionist policies without the consent of the UUP, except in the unlikely event of them getting the SDLP or SF to back them.
Nor, for that matter have the SDLP been terminally beaten by SF.
A UI can only be brought about with the consent of SDLP voters, however enthusiastic SF may be.
In a situation where nobody has overall control, you have to be a very small party indeed before you become irrelevant.
All this ‘walloping’ talk is a misplaced metaphor.
Paddy
In the context of a Dail with 166 seats in which you hold four, I think it is perfectly safe to say that SF are an irrelevance. My point about the UUP was to demonstrate the depths of denial which creeped in – depths which some Sinn Feiners are plunging here.