East Belfast (75%) vies for the title of most Protestant constituency usually with my own home place of North Down (74%) and Strangford (73%), although none of them compete with the most Catholic constituency, West Belfast which now stands at 80%.
The shipyard is long gone, but according to Gerry Lynch’s profile in 2007, East Belfast remains home to a prosperous skilled working-class population. It’s most deprived areas lie in the inner east, where the Catholic Short Strand and the Protestant Newtownards and Albert Bridge Roads meet.
As a general rule further out you travel the greater the prosperity, up to Stormont, Ballyhackamore and Gilnahirk. Along the Knockbreda Carriageway, there’s the more working-class Braniel and Orangefield Estates that run as far as the boundary with South Belfast.
In the 20 years of the peace process or so, there has been a small but significant filtering in of Catholics who during the Troubles tended to stay stayed away, despite the fact it had suffered the least amount of violence. But they still only constitute 13% of the population.
Some 10% claim no religion, that’s the second-highest in Northern where the average rate is just 5.6%. What’s interesting about this new and growing trend within Northern Ireland is that it is both a sole feature of the Protestant dominant east, and coterminous with a strong Alliance presence.
Compare it with Catholic dominant West where the figure is just 2.7%, yet in North Belfast where the Catholic religion is slightly more numerous the figure sits somewhere in between, and yet unionism remains more competitive than it should if stated religion was the only influence here.
The Westminster of 1979 crystalised three competing tendencies in East Belfast when it resulted in an odd near three-way tie occurred between Peter Robinson of the DUP (31.4%), the UUP’s controversial William Craig (31.2%) and the Alliance’s Catholic leader of the time Oliver Napier (29.5%).
For most of the time since the Alliance thread became less dominant until the emergence of Naomi Long in the ‘noughties’. Oddly for Northern Ireland, the UUP saw its representation strengthen after the Belfast Agreement, in 2003 it returned: 2 DUP, 2 UUP, 1 Alliance and 1 PUP member.
Long has been the change candidate for Alliance within East Belfast. In the four years after taking her lone Assembly seat in 2007, she took on and defeated the then DUP leader in a tough three-way struggle with the UUP, and the year after brought home a second Alliance MLA.
However, at the same time as Alliance was strengthing, so was the DUP. As Alliance took hold in the more prosperous areas where the Ulster Unionists had once been dominant liberal/secular voice, the DUP was tightening its grip almost everywhere else from inner east to Ballybeen.
The denouement came in 2015 when the Ulster Unionist’s stepped back in the rematch between Long and a new DUP challenger, Gavin Robinson (no relation) who cantered home with 49.3% (a 16.5% rise) of the vote. In 2017, he pushed that back up to 55.8%.
Long faces two big problems in taking back the seat. We can probably safely presume that 2017 was a high watermark for Robinson, but he was 8000 votes ahead. I presume such collapses do happen, although I cannot immediately think of any. The other is the UUP’s weakness here.
This time, they are relying on a respected sitting councillor from Bangor in neighbouring North Down, Carl McClean to run for them. His job will be simple and extremely modest, which is to rebuild confidence in the party brand after Hazel Legge took just 1,408 votes in 2017.
This is just way below the level at which Long needs them to be in order that she can be competitive (such is the nature of NI’s fragmented party system). Unlike the DUP’s party leader in 2010 this Robinson is much more urbane and personable young man on the doors.
The fact both Sinn Féin and the SDLP have stood down in favour of Naomi will actually do her very little favours in a constituency where neither of them are more than trace elements in the east of the city.
Likely winner: Gavin Robinson.
“Westminster Bridge, London” by Arran Bee is licensed under CC BY
Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty
Discover more from Slugger O'Toole
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
