Opinion

Denis Bradley: Sinn Féin has been unravelling in Derry for some time

Denis Bradley

Denis Bradley

Denis Bradley is a columnist for The Irish News and former vice-chairman of the Northern Ireland Policing Board.

Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald on a visit to Derry last month. Photo: Sinn Fein/PA Wire
Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald on a visit to Derry last month. Photo: Sinn Fein/PA Wire Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald on a visit to Derry last month. Photo: Sinn Fein/PA Wire

A poll has placed Sinn Féin in premier place in next year’s Assembly election.

A photo shoot, days before the release of the poll, captured Mary Lou McDonald walking the walls of Derry in preparation for a selection convention that will replace the party’s two sitting Foyle MLAs. The handlers would have been better advised to avoid giving the Derry wits the opportunity of describing their leader of being ‘up the walls’ about finding a few candidates who might reverse the loss of local voters the party has experienced.

The conundrum for many observers and the annoyance for many party strategists is why Sinn Féin is holding its own in most parts of the north, improving its standing in the south and yet is in a complete shambles in Derry, one of its iconic constituencies.

Usually, such disparity of voter attraction is associated with a lack of diligence or commitment. But the two women, now former MLAs, were considered hard workers. Martina Anderson’s ‘where the sun doesn’t shine’ outbursts and a blinkered view of the purity of the republican cause certainly didn’t endear her and her party to the growing middle class but those characteristics, in themselves, do not explain why the core vote dropped so dramatically.

Martin McGuinness’s untimely death would be an obvious explanation, if the drop in the party’s vote had not begun happening long before Martin became sick. A preceding local election had indicated that the one-time loyal voters were no longer singing as loudly or harmoniously as before. That result alerted some commentators to be more cautious about the outcome of the Westminster election, but no one predicted that Colum Eastwood would have a 17,000 majority over Elisha McCallion, the Sinn Féin candidate.

Ironically, the first unravelling began when Sinn Féin was at the height of its powers. They allowed the University of Ulster to spend £300 million pounds moving campus from Jordanstown to Belfast while fobbing off Derry with £11million on the quasi-university that is Magee College. Sold at the time on the half-truth that universities are independent entities, and that the Derry campus would be shortly increased to ten thousand students, the election that followed saw Sinn Féin festoon the city with posters proclaiming that the university was ‘delivered’.

The unravelling continued as Derry began to suspect that Sinn Féin’s priorities lay in the eastern seaboard, where the greater population lived, and the economy was strongest. This was compounded as the small number of community jobs that were created in Derry were reserved for ‘elite’ republican families. In Derry that is mortal sin territory. Derry had been the runt of the litter for 80 years under unionist rule and the perception took hold that nothing was changing under Sinn Féin.

The caution arising from this fall from political grace could be heard in Conor Murphy’s tone and voice as he was interviewed recently at the opening of the new medical school in Derry. A medical school, initially for 70 students, and which has been most warmly welcomed, is a small finger in the dyke but far from enough to compensate for the promised ten thousand students which clearly is no longer on the academic or political agenda.

Most people in the north think that Derry is the capital city of whingers. Amongst those people is a fair smattering of Shinners. This is despite the pile of reports that place Derry at the top of every negative index of social deprivation, unemployment and poor health.

The word on the streets is that Sinn Féin have already carried out a number of reviews about what has happened to their vote in Derry. It will be interesting to see if they think they have enough talent within their own ranks to begin the reforms or that they have to throw their net wider to find and appoint a bigger fish.