A Labour Party for the whole union

Over the summer, the Olympics have prompted a few people to ask: why Team GB, and not Team UK? The more geographically astute will notice that only one of these terms includes the fourth constituent country, Northern Ireland. A secondary issue for most, though it does pertain to the unusual position of the province in the union.

Perhaps one of the most visible manifestations of this (to politicos, anyway) is the exciting range of alternative political parties NI has. Whilst Scotland may have the SNP and Wales Plaid, Northern Ireland can boast the DUP, UUP, SDLP, Sinn Fein, APNI and TUV in the Assembly alone, as well as the more familiar Greens. The Tories have also stood in various guises. But the Labour Party has been conspicuously absent from the ballot paper for a long time. Part of this is understandable, given the need for the British government to act as an impartial arbiter during the peace process. But following the Good Friday Agreement, and the consolidation of the consent principle into NI’s constitutional future, many civic unionists hoped that we would get a ‘normalisation’ of politics in the province; becoming just another part of the UK. Normalisation has occurred to the extent that there is now an Assembly discussing more than just conflict issues.

But the point remains that the people of Northern Ireland still do not really get a say in who governs them in Westminster. In our electoral system, there is a fairly straightforward choice between a Conservative government and a Labour government (or rather, Tory- or Labour- led if politics remains hung). However, if my parents back in County Down wished, in 2010, to have a say on which way the country was going (which they did), they had a not so straightforward choice. They could vote for the Ulster Unionists, who had a slightly difficult link-up with the Conservative Party. Or they could vote for the SDLP, who unofficially take the Labour whip. But for those on the left, the SDLP may not necessarily be palpable. They are, of course, a nationalist party, which may not appeal to the unrepresented centre-left unionist. But they also take other positions that may not sit well, such as the party’s ambiguity on gay marriage, the party opposing NI getting the 1967 Abortion Act (meaning NI women must travel to Great Britain for an abortion), and a leader with perhaps a slightly odd idea of where the poverty line starts.

But beyond this, and more realistically for the short term given that Labour will not want to contest FPTP elections against the SDLP immediately, there is a need for the party to offer an alternative in local elections and in the Assembly. The political scene in Northern Ireland is stagnant, with a DUP-Sinn Fein carve up and what feels like a perpetually declining SDLP and UUP. If Labour in Northern Ireland could construct a suitably radical platform for the province’s range of social and economic problems, unconstrained with past grievances, then it could provide the change sorely needed. Recent polling conducted by Lucid Talk on behalf of the Belfast Telegraph suggested that 43% wanted UK parties (with or without Irish parties) to stand for elections in the province, suggesting at least some demand.

Adam McGibbon noted recently some of the problems that the Labour Party in Northern Ireland could face in trying to be electorally competitive, and there are substantial obstacles (as well as opportunities, such as a union link up). However, these cannot be solved in isolation by the party’s 350 activists in the province, requiring instead a dialogue with the electorate. At the very least, people should be given some form of choice. The Labour National Executive Committee is currently consulting on whether candidates should be allowed to stand in the next set of local elections in NI, and it is my sincere hope that they allow the local party to contest them. After the local elections in May, it was clear that Labour was the only national party that could represent people across the whole of Great Britain. Now, the party should take the first step towards making that the whole of the UK.