TBy Garbhan Downey
I can’t remember the number of elections I have attended all over the island it’s probably in the hundreds.
But I can honestly say I was never at a more unifying count than the one I attended in the Foyle Arena on Friday night. It was, uniquely, uplifting.
Derry, for once, got it close to a hundred per cent right.
Elections, by their nature, are disruptive and divisive. As a student, I ran, both as a beaten candidate and successful candidate (enjoying neither experience), before retiring from the sharp end of things to serve a term as Returning Officer with the Union of Students in Ireland.
The first poll I managed, however, we had to pull a Wexford lawyer out of his bed to settle, an enormous row, which fired up after two candidates tied in a vote for a senior office.
Sure enough, as we had told both contenders a hundred times, in the event of a draw, the person with the higher number of original first preferences wins the day.
There were then further ructions about the validity of polls – as some delegates had defied their College mandate to back the winning candidate. This later resulted in a new SU executive being partially dissolved.
And yes, there may also have been a notverysubtle threat to my health, livelihood and future children. But that went with the turf, and I was from the North and wasn’t afraid of no jumpedup, softboiled Free Stater. (Though, I never did seek reappointment to that particular position.)
As a reporter at elections, I have witnessed shouting matches, fallouts, walkouts, fistfights, hissyfits, fullon breakdowns, bomb scares and petrol bombings. (‘...Do not attempt to take the Station Car within one full mile of [named] Polling Station or, after it’s burnt out – as it will be, we will dock it from your wages. Like we did the last guy...’).
Indeed, I can’t recollect a single poll, from Regional Techs to councils to European elections, when there was not some degree of animosity at the count centre, if not outright enmity.
But Friday night was very different. It was a genuinely, almost exclusively, positive experience.
There were a couple of reasons. Firstly, all the main groups had something constructive to take home with them. Reasons to be cheerful, if you will.
One
The SDLP’s Gerard Diver may have lost his seat but, significantly, he didn’t lose it to Sinn Fein.
Notwithstanding the fact they wanted it so badly their little green hearts were breaking.
Diver had also rallied gamely after his brainfartinterrupted Nolan interview to reestablish his credentials in the course of the Radio Foyle debate a few days later.
More pertinently perhaps, the new SDLP leader Colum Eastwood had a creditable and surefooted, first election, despite having inherited a chalice so poisoned that Lucrezia Borgia wouldn’t feed it to her husband.
Truth is, the Derry seat was going to be vulnerable from the moment that Pat Ramsey, an electoral phenomenon unto himself, decided to retire. And Eastwood knew it was always going to take more than a couple of months to correct the Alistair factor.
So, while the Stoops did take a twoseat hit across the North, there was no major implosion. Despite Patsy Kelly’s best efforts.
Two
Sinn Fein have cause to be cheerful too. They didn’t win the sixth seat in Derry, and they lost a particularly strong talent in Maeve McLaughlin. But ultimately, the SDLP have now ceded a major foothold in Derry.
The Shinners will also be very relieved that their bête noire Anne McCloskey didn’t take the seat in their stead. This was, in part, due to another nonparty candidate, Kathleen Bradley, taking enough votes out of the indie pile to stop the Waterside doctor ever getting ahead of McCann. And, the SF backroom team will be pleased at having cultivated a partial voting alliance with Bradley.
Finally, in case we forget, the Shinners will feel at least satisfied with themselves for their quick and effective burying of the Gerry Adams tweet storm. But for the record, the idiot diehards who claim that incidents like that don’t cost the party votes need to start asking how many votes did it actually win them? Any other party member would still be standing out on the naughty step.
Three
Anne McCloskey, meanwhile, should be content that, regardless of a couple of dropped balls, she secured a strong vote that in other circumstances could have seen her elected.
Moreover, her later media performances – and, in particular, her postelection interviews – showed real signs of her coming into her own.
But without a Council presence, she will have difficulty maintaining a profile. So it wouldn’t be surprising if she were to quietly advise her left wing supportbase to return to its previous hinterland, i.e. behind McCann. If only to keep it warm.
The doctor’s fellow independent Kathleen Bradley will feel fully vindicated in contesting Radio Foyle’s decision to consign her to the kiddies’ (prerecorded) table of the station’s big debate. Despite refusing to appear on the programme at all, Bradley scored four times as many votes as the Alliance candidate, who was allowed on the ‘grownup’ BBC platform.
No, none of the groupings can have too much cause for complaint. Indeed, even the
CISTA (Cannabis is Safer that Alcohol) candidate, John Lindsay, whom I spotted on his way home from the count, can point to the fact that he outpolled the Conservative Party by about five to one. Any wonder he had a big mellow smile on his face?
Rainbow warriors
If the other groupings weren’t too disappointed at what was transpiring, the McCann camp were Happy, Clap Along, If You Feel Like a Room Without a Roof. They were also a little amazed by it all.
Up until Friday teatime, there was still a niggling fear that McCloskey had split the Left vote to the extent that one of the bigger parties would nip in and claim the sixth seat.
Paddy Power the bookie, you’ll recall, had McCann as a 5/1 outside bet only days before the election.
The response on the doorsteps, according to McCann’s Election Agent Bernadette McAliskey, had been one of overwhelming discontent at the Executive’s failure to deliver for Derry. And this was borne out by the fact that 30 per cent of the city’s population didn’t vote for any of the three incumbent parties here. Indeed, the DUP’s, SDLP’s and Sinn Fein’s share of the poll all dropped by more than five per cent each – in an election in which 44 per cent of the plebiscite didn’t bother to vote at all. The crisis in the city’s third level education sector, as repeatedly highlighted by Conal,McFeely’s Derry University Group was another telling issue.
But even after they had counted his thumping pile of first preferences, McCann’s tally-persons still didn’t quite believe what was going on. And it wasn’t until Martin McGuinness appeared at the count and conceded that he, personally, was pretty certain McCann had taken a seat, that the most colourful team in the arena began to wave their rainbow flags.
And in fairness to all the other camps, not one of them begrudged the godless Trots this long, longawaited moment.
Exhausted
It was, indeed, a strange and unprecedented confluence of events that allowed everyone some point of solace over the weekend.
But the second great unifying factor depended a lot less on the mercies of the Fates and a lot more on the combined grace and generosity of the successful Derry candidates.
If the hustings had been occasionally bruising, our new MLAs were, to a man, determined to ensure that the city would go forward as a harmonious and cohesive unit.
Maybe it was because most of us were drunk with fatigue after sixteen or more hours on our feet, but the earlymorning speeches were all quite moving.
It was well after midnight when SDLP Election Director Ian Doherty advised the media to get their pens and paper out, as the declaration was imminent.
‘Roma locuta est, causa finita est,’ he told us.
‘Eh?’ we said.
He looked at us mischievously over his spectacles. ‘It was what my late father [the former Nationalist Party chairman and classics scholar James Doherty] used to say when he,wanted to put an end to arguing: ‘Rome has spoken, the case has closed.’
And so it was.
Waiting
First, of course, there was yet another interminable wait, during which the younger McCann supporters entertained the little announcements’ room with the first verse, and
the bit they knew of the second verse, of ‘We Shall Overcome’. Dear Lord, I am old.
(By the way, small footnote, if you ever visit the Foyle Arena, you will notice that all the doors are labelled in UlsterScots, so the ‘Small Results Hall’ was renamed the ‘Wee Pollin Haw’ for the night.)
Eventually, at around one, the final declaration was called, and the six successful candidates lined up along the narrow stage, smiling like happy defendants who had somehow beaten the rap. (Which, indeed, for half of them might not have been a new experience.)
After the wonderfullyskilled, and calming, returning officer, Patricia Murphy, read out the results to varying levels of whoops and cheers – McCann’s crew were by far the loudest as they’d never gotten to do it before it was time for the speeches.
And first up was the DUP’s Gary Middleton, who was far more thoughtful and more engaging than I had ever heard him before.
The young Newbuildings man had taken a few digs during the unionist campaign, some of them quite low ones to boot, but he was forgiving of his opponents and passionate about the need to unite for the good of the North West. He also spoke with good heart about the need to protect the city’s Electoral Office, which has been marked for closure under Tory cutbacks.
Middleton, incidentally, had headed home several hours earlier, under the impression that counting was about to be suspended for the night. But when he was called back in, he was still a study in decorum, not a single wrinkle on his suit, shirt, tie or rosette. Clearly, he sleeps in a coffin.
Poignant
After the DUP, it was the SDLP’s turn, and Colum Eastwood was eloquent, gracious and generous. He looked a little tired but he had weathered, and survived, more storms than any other leader over the last few weeks, so that was hardly surprising.
The young leader paid a poignant and deserved tribute to the two defeated Foyle MLAs, Gerard Diver and Maeve McLaughlin. And he acknowledged the rise of the left wing vote and why it was happening. Delivery, and not promises, for the North West will be a key goal of the SDLP from this point in.
Martin McGuinness spoke next and, remaining as objective as I can, I have to say he was masterful. He has become, as the Irish News columnist Brian Feeney presaged a short time ago, a genuine statesman, and this city has done well to get him back home.
In his most genial opening remarks, McGuinness congratulated his friend Raymond
McCartney, his Executive colleague, Mark H Durkan, his fellow party leader Colum Eastwood, his partneringovernment Gary Middleton and his neighbour Eamonn McCann on their successes.
And suddenly in that one moment, everyone on the platform was on the same side.
Bound by a sense of real pride in who they were and where they were from.
After praising his team and the departed MLAs, the Sinn Fein man extended a heartfelt loving thank you to his wife Bernie, during which quite a few eyes misted up.
And he then proceeded to set out how the six people standing on the podium would all
,stand together, along with the city’s MP Mark Durkan, to fight for Derry – starting this Monday.
He spoke of the serious issues facing the city, the need for jobs, the need to better our infrastructure and develop the university. And he committed himself, firmly and unequivocally, to leading the campaign.
His speech was curative, restorative and inclusive. He was convincing without ever sounding bombastic or selfserving or superficial. It was, possibly, his finest ever performance. And for the first time in years, you could sense the beginning of real hope for Derry.
Advocate
Then finally, it was the moment that a good half the hall had been waiting for, for more than a good half of their lives. McCann’s first ever speech as an elected representative.
As you would expect, he was both compassionate and conciliatory from the off. He was strident and forceful, without ever being angry, challenging without being unrealistic, and crusading without being quixotic. And yet again, he proved, after all this time, that he is still one of the most articulate advocates this island has ever produced.
But it was the finale that will live forever in the memory. At the end of his speech, the veteran campaigner turned to Gary Middleton and suggested that, in the tradition of theDUP’s man former leader, they might finish off the night with a song.
And then, 47 years after he first stood for election in this city, one of our most iconic sons, in a voice that was both gentle and joyous, began to sing ‘The Internationale’.
It was both unexpected and quite magical. Not remotely triumphal nor political, but rather jubilant, celebratory and entirely appropriate for the occasion. And as I looked around,virtually every face in the ‘wee haw’ was smiling, even the one or two who were trying hard not to.
And as others in the room joined in the singing, you couldn’t help but think that this was the man who has fought virtually every injustice inflicted on this city, and its people, for the past half century.
This was the one guy you knew you could rely on to pull you up when noone else would help. He was the friend to the underdog, the dispossessed, the Protestant, the Catholic and the stranger. The harbour for the unwelcome and the refuge for the unwanted.
He never gave a damn about the consensus, if it wasn’t doing the right thing. He was theconscience of a city that often didn’t want to hear him. And because of that he was, for decades, unelectable.
He was never easy. He was the committed idealist who would haunt you to the grave if you strayed off the one true course.
But for all his fierceness and hugeness of intellect, he was also the kindest of men, the most forgiving of adversaries and the most approachable of role models. He was, in the truest sense of the word, an inspiration.
And now after a lifetime of struggle, he was finally getting the recognition, and validation, he deserved. And he was standing twenty feet away from you, singing sweetly from his victory podium.
And it was beautiful.
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