Britain | The election in Northern Ireland

Nice to see EU

In a marginal constituency in Northern Ireland, two nationalist parties hail closer links with the Irish Republic—and worry that British exit from the EU could undermine these

|DERRY-LONDONDERRY

IN Derry, a rainy port on the United Kingdom’s northwestern edge,the electoral contest is hard-fought and emotionally resonant. Yet the two main contenders concur on certain basic principles: they both want Northern Ireland to leave the United Kingdom and to merge with the Republic of Ireland. And, now at least, both the incumbent, Mark Durkan of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), and his strong challenger, Gearoid O’hEara of Sinn Fein, also agree that the island’s unity should be pursued peacefully—despite the two representing moderate and militant Irish nationalism respectively.

Not everybody here feels that way. A reminder of that much came on the evening of April 27th, when a bomb went off outside a probation office. It was blamed on dissident republicans. No-one was hurt, but the police said the warning was inadequate and the bomb could easily have caused deaths or injuries. Still, it hardly seems necessary to plant bombs to bring the two parts of Ireland closer together. Despite some fine monuments to the port’s settlement by London merchants in 1613, its heart already feels closer to nearby Donegal, a tourist magnet of the Irish republic, than it does to Britain. Businesses, law firms, church dioceses and chambers of commerce straddle the border, though regulatory differences still cause headaches.

Helping people manage those differences is part of the daily work of Mr Durkan, who has consistently opposed violence, even in the darkest days of Northern Ireland’s Troubles, which broke out in Derry in 1969. He is defending a lead of 5,000 over Sinn Fein, which is fielding a charismatic candidate. Mr O’hEeara is an Irish-language activist and former commander of the youth wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) who now talks a lot about inter-communal reconciliation. He has even joined the local police board. As products of the city’s roughly 80-20 Catholic majority, both main candidates call their home Derry, though the British name, Londonderry, still has official status.

The two men may agree on the big picture. Yet they have drastically differing strategies for pursuing its interests. On the one hand, Mr Durkan epitomises diligence and caution. An ex-chairman of the SDLP, he believes that while Northern Ireland stays in the United Kingdom, he should lobby for local interests by working hard at Westminster. This he unquestionably does. As he presents it, securing prizes for a geographically isolated city is a complex game, and part must be played in London. He closely studies London-inspired projects to boost depressed regions, such as the current government's "city deals" and "enterprise zones", and wants Derry to benefit from them.

Mr O’hEara, on the other hand, says that if elected he will boycott the House of Commons—in line with his party’s policy of refusing to take an oath to the Queen. Northern Irish votes in London make little difference, he insists; his party should concentrate on building its already impressive power base in Ireland, and at a European level. A Sinn Fein victory in a city whose walls have resonated in Protestant memory (since a siege by a Catholic king in 1689) would be seen by many as a momentous turning-point. But Mr O’hEara plays down such triumphalist talk. He describes the port’s history as a shifting kaleidoscope in which Protestant memories have their place. "Those walls are my heritage too," he insists, arguing that an inclusive approach to the city’s diminishing Protestant minority could augur well for a united but culturally diverse Ireland.

One of his achievements is running a giant Irish music festival called the Fleadh (pictured above); this is a peripatetic annual event which came to Derry in 2013, for a week bringing 430,000 visitors to a city of 110,000. And he stresses the good relations that were built up then, thanks partly to marching bands celebrating the city’s Protestant heritage. Kenny McFarland, chairman of the Londonderry Bands Forum, confirms that Protestant musicians were well treated at the Fleadh, and since then (though he stresses that the co-operation has been cultural, not political).

The greatest difference between the SDLP candidate and the Sinn Fein one may, in fact, derive from their shared opposition to the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish republic. It is widely acknowledged here that it would be a disaster for Ireland’s north-west if the United Kingdom left the European Union, of which the Republic of Ireland remains a relatively keen member. That possibility would rise substantially if the Conservatives led the next government in London; David Cameron has pledged to hold an in/out referendum by 2017 and only today insisted that he would not "barter away" the commitment in coalition talks. An "out" vote would suddenly give the border, running just west of Derry, great significance—after years in which it has appeared to be fading away.

The two parties are responding in very different ways. Fears of a "Brexit" has turned the SDLP’s staunch pro-European outlook into an asset. The party wants to send an MP to Westminster to fight for Derry’s ongoing place in the EU. For Sinn Fein, however, the risk of Britain leaving the union is a case for a separate ballot for Northern Ireland in any referendum. The party claims that, were the Northern Irish to vote to stay and Great Britain to go, the answer would be to unite Ireland. In Derry, at least, it feels very much as if a decision to leave the EU could accelerate the United Kingdom’s disintegration.

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