I know I’ve been diagnosed as being colour blind, but when I closed my eyes, I thought I was back at an SDLP conference in 1974, not 2024. Put bluntly, the Stoops - according to my interpretation of South Belfast and Mid Down MP Claire Hanna’s speech - have ditched the battle to out green the Shinners, and have reverted to the red socialist agenda which Fitt always envisaged for the party.
Last month, we had the remote anointing of Mike Nesbitt for his second stint as UUP leader. Having attended UUP conferences since I was a teenager in the Young Unionists, the UUP of 2024 is a mirror image of the late former Northern Ireland Prime Minister Brian Faulkner’s now defunct liberal Unionist Party of Northern Ireland.
Indeed, as a Right-wing Unionist, the party conference at times resembled an Alliance shindig when the latter was run by fellow Presbyterian minister’s son John Alderdice, with all the talk about being inclusive, moderate and liberal.
This month, we had the second anointing of a party leader with Claire Hanna installed in a bloodless coup following the resignation of Foyle MP Colum Eastwood.
Again, closing my eyes and listening to Ms Hanna’s well-delivered leadership speech, I actually thought I was at the annual get-together of the Irish Labour Party. I guess there’ll be no more political treason talk about a merger with Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil in Dublin.
From the turn of the new millennium, Sinn Fein managed to lay the foundation stones for overtaking the SDLP as the leading voice for Northern nationalism by steadily eating into the Stoops’ electorally lucrative Catholic middle class.
The Shinners did so by moving forward whilst at the same time retaining their support in traditional working class republican heartlands. There was also the selection of candidates. More draft dodgers were picked, namely candidates with no known links to the Provisional IRA. Ex-jailbirds were replaced with young academics.
The Catholic middle class swallowed the Shinners’ bait. Gone was the ethos of the ballot box and Armalite, and instead in came the ballot box and make-up bag.
So Ms Hanna’s strategy to rebuild the Stoops seems realistically simple. If Sinn Fein can eat into the Catholic middle class, the Stoops can return the serve politically by re-engaging with the nationalist working class through a more overtly socialist agenda.
The Shinners may have stolen the Stoops’ shirts to become top dog in nationalism, but the SDLP can become a political force once again if it pinches Sinn Fein’s pants.
Ironically, for both new party bosses - Nesbitt in the UUP and Hanna in the SDLP - reconnecting with their loyalist and nationalist working classes respectively will be the key to future electoral successes.
One thing must be clear to Hanna. To try and rebrand the Stoops as a 2024 version of the now defunct constitutional nationalist party, the Irish Independence Party, once fronted by ex-British Army officer John Turnley, will be akin to stepping on a political landmine.
The same pitfall warning applies to Nesbitt. He might wish there was no Unionist Right-wing; he might wrongly think there is no Unionist Right-wing in his party, but if he interprets liberal, inclusive or moderate as converting the UUP into a 2024 version of the UPNI or the equally defunct NI21, he’ll be facing the same situation which sparked his resignation during his first stint as leader.
While Hanna could be clever and build a so-called Red Front with the British and Irish Labour parties through her role as a Westminster MP, the challenge for Nesbitt will be how he uses his post as Stormont Health Minister to build bridges with the Westminster-based parties.
There will always be fine rhetoric from leaders about wanting to build a non-sectarian agenda in Northern Ireland politics which takes voters away from the traditional Orange/Green mentality.
In the 1980s, the pressure group, the Campaign for Equal Citizenship, became a launching pad to try and convince mainland parties, such as the Tories and British Labour, to organise and contest elections in Northern Ireland.
While Labour stuck to its ideological guns that the SDLP was its sister party in Northern Ireland, the Tories eventually formally recognised a series of constituency associations in the Province. But apart from a few councillors and on one occasion coming with a few thousand votes of unseating the then North Down MP Jim Kilfedder, the Tory electoral flame in Ulster has been well and truly extinguished.
With a pre-Christmas Dail general election on the cards following the South’s recent give-away budget, Hanna could score a few brownie points by being seen canvassing in the Republic with Irish Labour candidates. It would make a good political back door into the Northern nationalist working class which is perceived to be the electoral domain of the Shinners.
Equally, Nesbitt’s ability to implement the so-called inclusive UUP as involving the loyalist working class will be the key to success for Mike Mark Two.
If Sinn Fein has a banana skin election in the Republic, Hanna will be on course to strike north. If Nesbitt can help build a pan Unionist front with other pro-Union parties, he will be secure as party leader well beyond his supposed planned retirement date of 2027.
However, if Hanna fails to deliver an agenda among the nationalist working class, the SDLP will go the same way as the IIP, the Northern Ireland Labour Party and the old Stormont Nationalist Party.
For Nesbitt, talk of being inclusive, moderate, progressive and liberal should not be about forming a merger with the Alliance Party.
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| Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter Listen to commentator Dr John Coulter’s programme, Call In Coulter, every Saturday morning around 10.15 am on Belfast’s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM. Listen online. |
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