‘Stoopery: The Ultimate Battle for North Belfast’ by Donal Lavery

Before I begin I want to outline that I, as a young person (25), have no qualms with other young people standing for election. I think that in a society bragging of democracy, linked artificially to a state prepared to drop an atom bomb in “defence” of it, that people should put their views to test at the ballot box. However, when you know you have no chance of winning and when you also know that you have the endorsement of some extremely right-wing forces you claim to oppose, that’s a game-changer; naturally.

The announcement by the SDLP that they are going to stand a really rather pointless and unknown candidate in North Belfast against John Finucane came as no shock to me in the slightest. This is the party after all who wanted to stand Austin Currie against Bobby Sands in Fermanagh-South Tyrone, when the man was on his death-bed, to reinforce Thatcher’s policy of criminalisation. This is the party which was preparing to oust John Hume as leader over the Hume-Adams peace talks. This is the same group of individuals who brought down the Callaghan government and ushered in Margaret Thatcher, obtaining peerages in the process. Time after time, the Irish people have discovered a tendency within the SDLP that is all too willing to betray them. They wouldn’t just proverbially cut their grandmother’s throats for office, they would eat the old girl as well.

The interesting thing about it is that quite a number of individuals within the SDLP actually come from families who’s relatives are ex-republican prisoners, including some MLA’s. Yet they afford their support and efforts to a pro-Brit party which presides over routine discrimination against them. You really couldn’t get any lower than that like.

These people aren’t behind the door at all in their belief that a hierarchy of victims exists. And even if that is the case, the Finucane family would be at the very top of it. Yet McAuley et al., are reinforcing that rotten gut instinct right in their faces by electorally obstructing political recognition of the fact that an inquiry into Pat’s killing not only has mass support but is a long overdue promise. You would think this individual, who happens to be a lawyer himself, would empathise with the family struggles of another lawyer who was murdered over the course of his human rights work.

But it gets worse. One of the interesting and utterly disgusting things about the SDLP’s conduct here is that they know for a fact they can never win the seat – otherwise they would have stood the better known sitting MLA for the area, Nicola Mallon. So this is being done in spite of the fact that McAuley will poll a miserable number of votes – less than their MLA in the Assembly election. Who is he after all? What does he stand for? Does he have a track record on any of the big issues impacting North Belfast? Is he well known on the doorsteps?

Ultimately, this comes down to a rotten mindset within these people that if they can’t have the seats, then other nationalist candidates certainly won’t be given a better chance of winning them. In doing so, they have shown they care nothing about Brexit, when this move could result in a pro-Brexit MP being returned, and they care nothing about victims, clearly. What you need to do, and I say this to everyone in North Belfast and a far, including people not linked to any party but who sympathise with the Finucane family, is mobilise like it was the 1981 Hunger-Strike campaign again, working the shirts off of your backs to get John elected and help expose to the world shocking state-sanctioned murder of a Human Rights Advocate. Every right thinking and self respecting person needs to ensure that Mr McAuley loses his deposit over this lower than low ploy. For if you find the energy to get out the vote to the highest extent possible, not only will this be a verdict on Brexit (and a rerun of the referendum) but if enough republican MP’s are elected then there would be a legal/political basis for an immediate border poll on the reunification of our country. No matter what anyone says, this is the election of a lifetime for future generations.