Fourthwrite .............................Issue No. 6

There was very little in the Northern General and Local Elections for working-class people. But there has been little in any for them for the best part of a generation: this was little different. And, on its own, that first sentence is no explanation.  It shows the ignorance of commentators that they baldly presented the results as an 'advance of extremes'. Sinn Fein is now a party of the centre. Fermanagh and South Tyrone is the prime example: Michelle Gildernew  MP was exactly the candidate the SDLP needed. She carried no baggage of IRA involvement.

The only place where a more old-style Sinn Fein stood was South Down. There, the result was bad, though Mc Grady is the weakest of the SDLP's three MPs.

On the DUP side, the three new MPs are from the pragmatic wing of the Party. Two have been ministers in the new Assembly. Willie Mc Crea, from the rural fundamentalist wing, lost his seat almost before he had time to burst into song.

The DUP of 2001 is very different from the DUP that brought down the power-sharing Executive of 1974. Gregory Campbell's election leaflet in East Derry wanted "to have that Agreement replaced with one that can command our support". Today's DUP is increasingly resembling the Irish Labour Party of old wrestling with its conscience, and winning!

Both communities suffer their share of unreconstructed bigots. That is a reality that has to be faced up to, and which too many (particularly on the Catholic side) avoid. But it is not why the votes happened.

Sinn Fein is far better at being a constitutional nationalist party than the SDLP. It is a centralised party, which has a direction, and where public representatives sing from the same hymn-sheet. Like the SDLP of thirty years ago, when that party was eating the Nationalist Party for breakfast, it thinks of itself as a 'slightly constitutional' party. It is a party that is still in touch with the communities that vote for it. It 'gets things done'.

The SDLP is proof of the old Marxist belief that things are in a constant state of change, though often that is invisible. For 30 years, a lifetime for people under fifty, it was the dominant party in Catholic areas.

The Nationalist Party for forty years before 1970 had looked even more immovable. Some of those who founded it in 1929 had come from a background of armed struggle. For the Civil Rights' generation, it was as much the enemy as Unionism. While it collapsed in 1970, remnants staggered for a decade or more. They were able to keep a significant enough base in local government. Few parties simply disappear overnight.

The DUP reflects Protestant worries at the Agreement, at the advance of Sinn Fein, at the political advance of Nationalism. The economic dividends promised from the Agreement simply haven't arrived.

Like Sinn Fein, the DUP is still in touch with the communities it came from. In terms of representation, the contest was Gregory Campbell v Willie Ross, Nigel Dodds v Cecil Walker, Iris Robinson v David McNarry. The relative closeness of a couple of those contests is what is surprising. The DUP does not take its constituency for granted. It has a serious, professional approach to elections.  Two things which cannot be said about the UUP. It is nearly as isolated from the people it represents as SDLP, though it does have firmer roots in society.

Upper Bann is a prime example. Trimble clearly believed that, because he is First Minister, his media profile would do the same for him as for his constituency colleague, Brid Rodgers, and elect him. He was opposed by an Orangeman from Loughgall called Simpson, whom nobody had ever heard of. This man and his supporters were as uncouth a pack of bog men as the Shinners of West Tyrone, and would be similarly zapped.

Unlike the UUP, Simpson went out and fought for votes. He got the Loyalist estates of Lurgan and Portadown out to vote. Trimble was only elected because Alliance stood aside and recommended support, and between 6% to 7% of the SDLP vote went to him.

This was a polarised election, which carried over into the locals also. It was seen in the PUP losing seats, and totally failing to break out of Greater Belfast. There was a halving of the number of minor party and independent councillors. Many of these were -and are -even more politically rotten than anything in the big four parties. However, without party machines, most are forced to be a bit more responsive to their electorates.

There were chinks of light. Raymond Blaney, who was unable to canvass for health reasons, took a seat on Down Council on the issue of the SDLP's betrayal of the local hospital campaign. His was part of a genuine, community-based campaign against cuts. In the local elections, a big part of the survival of the SDLP and UUP was achieved by successfully cannibalising the Alliance Party. Will anybody notice its demise? Who cares? What happens to the two cannibals when there is nothing left there?

The last decade has seen a retreat of the left. After the fall of the Eastern bloc, socialism went off the agenda for a period. That was compounded, in the UK, by the defeat sixteen years ago of the Miners' Strike. Blairism rose as the new Toryism on its ruins. There was a certain discrediting of the whole idea of struggle.

Fortunately, nothing stays the same.  Labour faced the biggest left challenge since before World War Two in the General Election. It came from the Scottish Socialist Party, the Socialist Alliance (in England), and the Welsh Socialist Alliance. All three are new, the challenge was still small, how far it will develop in the immediate future still has to be seen. How the resurrection of the European left will impact on the specific situation of Northern Ireland has to be seen, but impact in some way it will.