THE ELECTION

GERRY ADAMS FOR PARLIAMENT

Stephen Robinson on why

people in West Belfast may still vote for Sinn Fein

Belfast THERE is an absolute peach of a photo- opportunity in the Falls Road, Belfast. A skilled photographer with the correct long tense can capture the down-trodden Catho- lics standing in line outside the DHSS office, with the two massive cranes of the Harland and Wolff shipyard — that symbol of Protestant hegemony and privilege looming in the background. The scene used to be popular with visiting American photojournalists in the 1970s as it so succinctly summed up the injustices of life in West Belfast.

With time it has become a little passé, not least because H&W is now so run- down that these days only about three and a half thousand Protestants go through the motions of making the ships that no-one wants to buy. With unemployment in West Belfast running at over 50 per cent, it affects both Catholic and Protestant. Twenty years of the IRA's inimitable brand of industrial euthanasia may not have corrected the imbalance between Catholic and Protestant joblessness, but it has most assuredly guaranteed that every- one is languishing in the gutter.

The constituency of West Belfast is so run down that if it were on the British mainland it would have every Labour backbencher reaching for his Roget's The- saurus for the right adjectives. In some parts of the constituency the jobless rate runs to more than 80 per cent, and there are some housing estates in the Lower Falls district where literally nobody works. West Belfast is, as they say, staunchly Republi- can. But, strangely, it also includes about 10,000 of the most militant loyalists from the Shankill Road.

Against this background, there are two ways to assess the likely outcome of the forthcoming election battle in West Bel- fast. One is to dig out the figures from the 1983 poll which were distorted by Gerry Fitt's decision to stand as an independent in opposition to the SDLP. Gerry Adams, the President of Sinn Fein, and the IRA propagandist-in-chief, polled 16,379. The anti-Sinn Fein vote comprised Gerry Fitt's 10,379 votes, and the SDLP's 10,934. Add the two latter figures together — for Fitt has been despatched to the Lords — and you have a clear majority for the SDLP, even if you subtract a couple of thousand votes for the Protestants who are generally thought to have voted for Gerry Fitt.

The alternative method of analysis more intuitive and rather less scientific is to stroll along the Falls Road and explore the side streets, surveying the twisted lamp-posts and last week's burnt-out vehicles. The election pundit must then ask himself if this is the sort of place where those amiable fellows from the SDLP are going to make a breakthrough — and the answer, regrettably, must be almost cer- tainly not.

Earlier this week when I called in at the main Sinn Fein office it was full of local people seeking help to get the council around to repair their leaky roofs. A small army of officials were taking down details of various complaints and promising swift action. Upstairs Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness, and Danny Morrison, Sinn Fein's ruling troika, were deep in conversa- tion planning the next phase of their campaign. A little further up the Falls Road, just a well-lofted petrol bomb away, the SDLP office was all well-intentioned bustle. Two earnest young men, desperate- ly keen to help, rushed around the building — but there was no one there seeking their advice.

There is no doubt that Sinn Fein have by far the stronger organisation on the ground. There are hundreds of young men who — while stopping short of actually picking up an Armalite — will happily do their bit for the struggle by pasting up Sinn Fein posters and menacing SDLP canvas- 'I just bit a Tory canvasser.' sers.

Every Republican funeral — and there have been plenty of those of late becomes a piece of political theatre, with Gerry Adams doubling up as male lead and artistic director, instructing the crowd how to deport themselves for maximum effect. It is difficult to match that type of expo- sure. And police handling of recent Re- publican funerals has handed Sinn Fein a timely election issue on a plate. One SDLP organiser was moved to ask despairingly this week whether Sir John Hermon, the Chief Constable of the RUC, had been retained as Gerry Adams's freelance elec- tion agent.

But Danny Morrison insists that general Republican lawlessness can rebound on his party. He draws a rather cute distinction between what he calls 'mindless' and 'con- structive' violence. 'The recent rioting after the IRA funerals did cause us difficul- ties,' he explained to me. 'If someone's vehicle is hijacked and then used for a car bomb which kills Brits they can see the point — but mindless violence can prove counter-productive.' (It was Mr Morrison, it might be recalled, who coined the memorable analysis of IRA strategy: the ballot box in one hand, and the Armalite in the other.) Into the maelstrom the SDLP have pitched Dr Joe Hendron, an immensely well-intentioned and boundlessly affable GP with a medical practice in the Falls Road and a home in a painfully affluent part of South Belfast. He speaks of the IRA with the venom of one who has had to treat countless victims of terrorism — from the young men whose knee caps have been blown away pour encourager les autres, to the housewives who suffer nervous break- downs when their children join the para- military gangs.

Unfortunately Dr Hendron is rather short on Republican credibility. He refers to his unionist opponent in the constituen- cy as that 'nice wee man'. If West Belfast were half as decent as its SDLP candidate, Dr Hendron would walk it.

The SDLP are basing their campaign around the Anglo-Irish agreement. 'Look what we have delivered', is the thrust of their election message. And there's the rub, for with the best will in the world, it is hard to see how the agreement has trans- formed the picture in West Belfast. The Falls Road is conspicuously empty of care- free nationalists skipping along and revell- ing in their new-found, post-Hillsborough sense of dignity. In the ghettoes of West Belfast, those nationalists who go out and achieve tend to get their BMW's torched.

Sinn Fein's vote around the rest of the province has been in steady decline since well before the Anglo-Irish Agreement was signed 18 months ago. In a constituen- cy such as Newry and Armagh, where Seamus Mallon won a famous by-election victory in January 1986, the agreement might have helped the cause of constitu- tional nationalism. Sinn Fein have now all but abandoned any serious effort to win seats outside West Belfast, and have thrown all their efforts into piling up the Adams vote. And in West Belfast, which contains more losers than any other consti- tuency in the United Kingdom, there could be no more appropriate winner than Mr Adams.

Stephen Robinson is the Belfast correspon- dent of the Daily Telegraph.