Elections: middle ground collapses
Socialist Press1981 1981-05-28Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 8 →
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The ignominious defeat of quisling Catholic politician Gerry Fitt in the local elections of the six counties summed up the polarisation that has taken place following the hunger strikes.
Fitt, who has opposed the hunger strikes and sought simply to negotiate a more comfortable place for himself in the imperialist administration, won only 541 first preference votescompared with over 3,000 in 1977, and lost the council seat he had held for 23 years.
In ists of Peoples Democracy secured two seats and the IRSP two seats in Belfast. And the strongly anti-imperialist Irish Independence Party gained 21 seats in a successful bid to establish a base from which to oppose the collaborationist line of the SDLP.
Lost The SDLP itself lost seven seats overall though it beat back a strong IIP campaign in Derry.
In the Loyalist camp, Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party' doubled its number of seats to 142, coming close lo equalling the 151 seats won by the Official Unionists. In the face of this attack the non-sectarian Alliance Party collapsed-dropping from 70 to only 32 seats.
Paisley has now established his authority over Loyalist politics in the next period as the divisions between those for and those against imperialist rule are thrown into sharp relief.
The fact that sections of the working class are to be found on both sides of this divide should not divert British socialists from the need to side with the anti-imperialist forces against the Orange gunmen and the British state machine.