NORTHERN IRELAND
Unionists under pressure
MARTIN WALLACE
Belfast—There are only twelve Ulster seats at stake in the general election, but they are being contested by a range of parties and independent candidates unmatched in Great Britain. In terms of electoral issues, the struggle has little or nothing to do with what is happening on the other side of the Irish Sea. In a sense it is a shadow election, a substitute for a Stormont election which would indicate just how much support Major Cliichester-Clark's administration still commands. It is-a test for the Unionist party, which in the past two years has lost the sure political tcuch which has kept it in power since 1921.
The Unionists are defending ten of the twelve seats, and it is just possible that they will hold these and go on to win the two others. Miss Bernadette Devlin is not quite the Joan of Arc she appeared to be when the Catholics of Mid-Ulster swept her to power in last year's by-election. West Belfast has changed hands several times in the past, and Catholic movement out of the con- stituency since last August could harm Mr Gerry Fitt's chances. But, on the whole, it is the Unionists who are under pressure, and .a number of traditionally safe seats could be lost to a variety of opponents.
In North Antrim, the Rev Ian Paisley has been fighting the same sort of roistering campaign that recently won him the Bann- side seat at Stormont. The sitting member, Mr Henry Clark, is one of the more moder- ate Unionist sin at Westminster—the only one to join the Anglo-Irish parliamentary group, which has links with members of the Dublin parliament—and the radical presby- terian tradition is not dead in the con- stituency. However, there are Labour, Liberal and National Democratic party can- didates in the field, and these will syphon off votes which Mr Clark might have mustered in a straight fight.
The same three parties are contesting South Antrim, where they may spoil the chances of Mr Tom Caldwell, an Indepen- dent Unionist who won a Stormont seat in 1969 as a pro-O'Neill candidate. The Unionist candidate is Mr James. Molyneaux, former election agent to Sir Knox Cunning- ham and a natural successor to the only Unionist s4l3 who enjoyed Mr Paisley's endorsement. Three Stormont Unionists in the constituency have urged Mr Molyneaux and other Unionist candidates to declare their support for Major Chichester-Clark, but the Ulster Prime Minister has made it clear that he endorses the twelve official candidates without requiring any specific commitment to his leadership.
North Belfast could well change hands. The sitting Unionist. Mr Stratton Mills, faces a double challenge from the Protestant right wing in the Rev William Beattie, a by-elec- tion victor at the same time as Mr Paisley. and Mr John McKeague of the militant Shankill Defence Association. The constitu- ency includes those areas where Protestant discontent is strongest, and where there is a profound disillusion with the Northern Ire- land government, the police and the army.
The Northern Ireland Labour party's best
chance of victory seems to lie in East Bel- fast, which stretches from the narrow streets close to the Harland & Wolff shipyard and Shorts aircraft factory to the more bourgeois villas occupied by civil servants at Stormont. The Labour candidate, Mr David Bleakley, was a hardworking Stormont MP from 1958 until he was surprisingly defeated in the 1965 election; he is president of the standing con- ference of peace committees in Belfast, and his work during last year's disturbances could win him support from all but extreme Protestants. The sitting Unionist, Mr Stanley McMaster. has been trying to fight a cam- paign on economic issues related to Labour's record at Westminster.
Away from Belfast, in more rural areas with substantial Catholic populations, much of the pre-nomination negotiations centred on attempts to find 'unity' candidates capable of -mustering all the anti-Unionist votes. With the Unionists deeply divided—and official candidates uncertain of holding their tradi- tional Protestant vote, whether or not there was an extreme Protestant in the field—there was an unprecedented opportunity for elec- toral upsets. Miss Devlin originally won Mid-Ulster as a 'unity' candidate, after a series of selection meetings in the constitu- ency, so .there was a precedent for joint action. On the whole, though, the various opposition parties and personalities have made an indifferent job of subordinating their differences to the primary task of un- seating the Unionists. The best prospect of a Unionist defeat is in Fermanagh-South Tyrone, the Marquis of Hamilton's seat, where there is an appreciable Catholic majority in the constituency and where Mr Frank McManus, chairman of Fermanagh civil rights association, has emerged as a widely accepted unity candidate.
The Londonderry seat has produced a remarkable alliance between the civil rights leader, Mr John Hume, and the president of the Nationalist party, Mr Eddie McAteer, who is standing as a unity candidate. Last year, standing as an Independent, Mr Hume defeated Mr McAteer in the Stormont elec- tion. The third candidate in the Foyle seat at that time was Mr Eamonn McCann, a more radical civil rights leader and associate of Miss Devlin; he lost his deposit last year, but is standing this month as the nominee of the Derry and Coleraine Labour parties, 'Pass the word to every department level: the lean and hungry took is out' though rejected as a candidate by the central executive of the Northern Ireland Labour party. With a modest Protestant majority in the constituency, Mr Robin Chichester- Clark (brother of the Ulster Premier) should hold his seat comfortably.
However, the Hume-McAteer alliance has been presented as the possible beginning of a new political movement, left of centre in social and economic policies, and committed to the idea of an all-Ireland republic through peaceful persuasion of the northern Protest- ants. Mr Hume has lately been looking for something less ephemeral than the civil rights movement on which to build a political career, but it is doubtful if this latest move will help to break down the sharp political division between Protestants and Catholics.
It will be a confusing campaign in Northern Ireland, then, with the issues even less clearcut than in the muddled Stormont election of 1969. Probably the voting will reflect Protestant loss of confidence in the Stormont administration, particularly on the law and order' issues as stressed by Mr Paisley, but there may be no other very clear pattern in the results. It is possibly true to say that, while people are not concerning themselves much about the issues of the British campaign, they have a profound interest in knowing whether Mr Wilson or Mr Heath will be in power when next the Northern Ireland ,problem calls for British intervention.
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