‘Martin McAuley: The Enigma Candidate’ By Donal Lavery

If you read my previous article, you know my view on the SDLP’s underlying pro-Union agenda concerning all of this. You and I know just how low the public really think of them and their pathetically circumspect tactics – “boot shining boys” for the Unionists, to be polite about it. But for the purposes of foresight, let’s look at the odds themselves regarding their ploy in my home-turf and outline just how uphill their depressive battle actually is. For only a fool would place their word, let alone money, on any chances of Martin McAuley storming to victory in Belfast North, as he laughably suggests with every tweet. And before any votes have been cast he has seriously jeopardised his own political career prospects because people in Northern Belfast have a very long memory.

In the Oldpark electoral ward, which makes up most of the electorate for the nationalist constituency, Sinn Fein is hegemonic. The SDLP have but one mundane, part-time Councillor, who has likely helped them into the parading bed with the “blood nationalists” of GARC (perhaps given the direct family connections therein). Such is the desperate inclination for votes that a party claiming to be against violence goes cap in hand to people perpetuating intimidation against the locality and who are arrested at every turn for ‘splinter-group activity’ or issuing death threats to journalists. These areas, from Ardoyne to the New Lodge, will swing heavily behind John Finucane, given both the demographics (which are far more represented by his mandate and views) and the number of homes impacted by the same thing which haunts the Finucane family – state injustice/collusion.

Then we have the more suburban neighbourhood of the Antrim Road, which has always been strong territory for the worst excesses of ‘SDLP support’, but is now in terminal decline for them (like adjacent South Belfast). Each time the ballots are counted at election time these houses have routinely dropped in their share of support for the Redmondites. This is a pattern which will not be lost on John, a Solicitor by profession and family-man, with a down-to-Earth appeal and native of that area. He is a household name where McAuley is but an “unknown Unknown”. He can motivate people in their masses to go and canvass for him, where McAuley cannot.

And of course, you have working and middle class Unionist areas, where some elements of the electorate will be prepared to give John a hearing and even an X in the ballot paper, as a fresh faced professional with actual left-wing credentials – someone who isn’t part of a party discriminating against Loyalist/Republican ex-prisoners, despite some SDLP folk being related to them. But the noted irony of the whole campaign is this – McAuley claims to be a so-called LGBT Activist, having complained about having been spat on before at a demonstration for LGBT rights, yet his action could result in a Unionist being reelected who has consistently voted against the things McAuley protests for. So his campaign will hurt the prospects of the LGBT cause by aiding a candidate who holds no such sympathies instead of electing John who is fully in support of equality.

The second big flaw in this opportunist’s tactics is this, and he articulates it with every vain tweet; he is claiming that by electing him you will be “taking the fight to the Tories” over Brexit. Now there is a pertinent error here because surely a Solicitor and wannabe-MP should know how the British Constitution operates – what I mean is that Theresa May is under no legal obligation to put her Brexit deal to the House of Commons for a parliamentary vote to approve it. No no, she can and will likely use the same executive authority as all British governments can utilise to sign treaties, to go to war, to appoint Arch-Bishops, Peers and EU Commissioners, etc. – that is, the Royal Prerogative. It means that the British Prime Minister is in effect a democratically elected Dictator, with more national power and patronage concentrated in their office than on the shoulders of the American President. Once she signs the Brexit arrangement with the EU, it will become legitimate in the UK Constitution, irrespective of how many people in parliament actually favour it.

So either Mr. McAuley doesn’t know this and in which case his supposed raison d’être concerning Brexit is diminished before it begins; Or McAuley does know this and is taking the people of North Belfast for fools – leading them to believe that by electing him he could hold some sort of parliamentary sway over the final Brexit deal. The only time the SDLP MP’s ever had sway at Westminster was when they brought down the Callaghan government and ushered in Margaret Thatcher (getting a peerage in return).

If he seriously thinks that by sitting in the British Parliament made up of British MP’s, representing British interests, where his party won’t even be 1%, that he will determine the intricacies of Brexit for Ireland then he’s too naive to be a Member of Parliament. In order to get out the vote for John, we need to expose this ploy by the SDLP for what it really is – stifling the representation of nationalist people to aid the status quo. It’s almost as repugnant as when Austin Currie was attempting to stand against Bobby Sands on his death-bed, such is the malevolence within that party. So share this article and get as many local people informed and talking about the matter as you can. Come the 8th June, let’s ensure Mr McAuley loses his deposit and gets even less votes than he did in 2010 over his tactics.