Trimble Needs Catholic Votes

Ulster Unionist Party leader David Trimble finds himself in the battle for his political life on May 5 against a Democratic Unionist candidate who is favored by bookmakers to replace him.

Last time out it was a close run thing with approximately 2,000 Catholic votes for Trimble making the difference in the end and ensuring his re-election.

This time there is no certainty at all that those Catholic votes will go Trimble’s way. If he loses Trimble can only bemoan the fact that his inability to reach out to moderate Catholics over the past few years may cost him dear.

Before the last Westminster election in 2001 Trimble was largely a sympathetic figure in the Nationalist community, an Ulster Unionist leader who had tried to break the mold. 

These days, however, he is seen as someone who broke every promise he made to moderate Catholics, instead allowing the hardliners in his own party to push him to the extreme on every occasion. 

If Trimble had stood up for the Good Friday Agreement he had signed on for, there seems little doubt that many more Catholics would now vote for him. The fact that he didn’t may end his political career.

A Missed Opportunity

Meanwhile, Trimble’s former arch rival Jeffrey Donaldson, now safe in the confines of the Democratic Unionist Party of Ian Paisley, must also be reflecting on the missed possibilities of his career.

While Donaldson is certain to be elected to Westminster he is now low in the pecking order in his new party, well behind the aspiring Paisley replacements such as Peter Robinson and Nigel Dodds.

Donaldson had power as long as he held a threat over Trimble’s head that he would run against him for party leadership.

However, on numerous occasions Donaldson’s nerve failed him and Trimble survived, leaving Jeffrey to go off and be a relatively low figure on the totem pole over at the DUP. For a man who once saw himself as a future prime minister of Northern Ireland it is a chastening experience.

SDLP Can Blame Themselves 

While commentators will bemoan the dire state of the SDLP as they face into this election and attribute it to the Sinn Fein surge, there is no doubt that the party itself, especially its former leadership, has to take its share of the blame.

Both John Hume and Seamus Mallon stayed one election too long in their respective seats in Newry/Armagh and Foyle. The upshot is that their successors, especially in Mallon’s case, have very tough battles holding on to the seats.

In Newry/South Armagh Sinn Fein’s Conor Murphy looks unbeatable, while in Foyle it is a duel to the death between Mark Durkan and Mitchel McLaughlin of Sinn Fein. 

Meanwhile yet another SDLP old bull, Eddie McGrady, now 74, appears to be making the same mistake in North Down. McGrady will win against the Sinn Fein candidate Caitriona Ruane, but come the next election Ruane will be hot favorite because of the groundwork she has put in. 

It seems that some of the SDLP leadership, despite their great service, never knew when to fold ‘em.

The Race to Watch

The most intriguing race in Northern Ireland’s election is South Belfast, long the redoubt of former Ulster Unionist deputy leader, the Reverend Martin Smyth.

Smyth has now retired and in act of blatant treachery has thrown his support not to his party colleague Michael McGimpsey but to the Democratic Unionist candidate Finlay Spratt.

The impact will be to split the Unionist vote in a constituency where the SDLP’s Alasdair McDonnell, a local doctor, has a big following. McDonnell may well sneak in between the two Unionists and snatch the seat which would be quite a coup for the SDLP.

Sad Suicide Stats

Finally, a piece on the sad suicide statistics in the Irish Republic. The worsening crisis was revealed on Tuesday in The Irish Times which reported that a coroner in Offaly said suicide was “reaching epidemic proportions” after a day in which five of seven inquests presented before him “were of people who took their own lives.”

Among the cases the coroner enumerated were those of an 81-year-old pensioner and a 48-year-old man who shot themselves; along with a 25-year-old laborer, a woman aged 47, and a father in his 50s who hanged themselves. The deaths were all separate incidents.

The newspaper quoted the Offaly county coroner Brian Mahon as saying, “Suicide is now such a frequent occurrence in this court and every court in Ireland. It has reached epidemic proportions, and doesn’t seem to be improving at all.”

Prior to the Offaly cases there was a particularly tragic and high profile suicide case involving the drowning of 28-year-old Sharon Grace and her two daughters in Wexford last week.

Certainly this finely drawn portrait of despair in a small corner of Ireland is representative of a trend on the wider scale.