Post by therealriga on Jul 12, 2023 11:00:57 GMT
Updated, with a small section in italics added.
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Few, if any, UK cities with a population over 300,000 can have had the stability in representation that Belfast has had. With the exception of the interlude from 1918 to 1922, when its representation was briefly raised to 9 members, Belfast has had 4 seats since 1885, all named after the principal points of the compass.
At the most recent boundary revision, Belfast North was made up of the northernmost 14 wards of the city, plus 11 of the now abolished Newtownabbey council’s 25 wards on the fringes of Belfast.
A first-time visitor to the constituency could be briefly fooled by the constituency’s picturesque natural setting, with the leafy slopes of the Cavehill on one side and the expanse of Belfast Lough on the other. In reality, the constituency is dominated not by the Belfast mountain, but by stark sectarian divisions and serious poverty and social issues. The constituency contains grim reminders of The Troubles in the form of ubiquitous murals devoted to paramilitary figures, with numerous peacelines serving as a reminder that, while The Troubles may have ended, the divisions that spawned them remain very much alive. While the worst of the violence has gone, the constituency still sees periodic outbreaks of low-level violence and rioting. Disputes over symbols, flags and marching routes continue to sour relations. Protests around Holy Cross School brought unwanted international headlines to the area in 2001. The constituency had the greatest death toll of the Northern Ireland conflict and includes most of the infamous “Murder Mile” which was a regular hotspot for sectarian violence and murders. Aptly, the New Lodge served as the "hopeless place" in the video of Rihanna's 2011 international hit single "we found love in a hopeless place."
The constituency begins with mostly lower middle-class commuter territory in the north around Glengormley and the working-class loyalist Rathcoole estate. It then follows either the Antrim Road through middle-class Catholic territory or the Shore Road through mostly Protestant working class territory, though the latter section does include one of just two middle class Protestant areas in the city proper around Fortwilliam; the other being the upper Ballysillan Road. It then ends with inner-city wards whose names became infamous during the conflict: Ardoyne, New Lodge, Shankill (part), and Woodvale. These are bordered by Duncairn ward, whose working-class Tiger’s Bay estate takes its name from a former area of Cardiff visited by Belfast sailors. At its southern edges, the constituency snakes erratically through the Greater Shankill area, taking in the middle Shankill and Woodvale, but not the Lower Shankill or Glencairn areas.
Socially, North contains some of the most poverty-stricken areas not only in Northern Ireland, but in the whole UK. In 2016, Waterworks ward was the most deprived of the region’s 462 wards, while Ardoyne, Woodvale and New Lodge were the 3rd, 4th and 6th worst, respectively, with Shankill registering in 9th place.(***) The traditionally religiously mixed middle and upper Antrim Road areas became heavily Catholic in the 1980s and 1990s.
The constituency had an owner-occupancy rate well below the national average at 54% in the 2011 census, with 9 wards below 50%. These included all 4 Rathcoole wards. The lowest figures were seen in the republican New Lodge (29%) and the loyalist Duncairn (26%) and Crumlin (23%.)
Urban depopulation has seen the constituency expand at the last few boundary reviews. For 1974, it gained the Dock ward (the precursor of the current New Lodge ward) from Belfast East. For 1983, it expanded to the city’s new boundary around Bellevue. The Rathcoole estate was added in 1997 and, for 2010, the constituency gained religiously and socially mixed parts of Newtownabbey, including Cloughfern and relatively more affluent territory in parts of Glengormley and Ballyhenry.
At the 2011 census, Belfast North ranked 8th in terms of the number of people of a Catholic community background at 46.9%, with 45.7% of a Protestant community background. This was the first census at which Catholics had overtaken Protestants. However, after significant demographic change in the 1980s and 1990s, the rate had stabilised, with the tight difference reflected in the election results.
Politically, it had been a safe seat for the Ulster Unionist Party until the 1970s. In 1972, UUP MP Stratton Mills broke from the party, sitting first with the Westminster Conservatives, before joining the Alliance Party. Mills did not defend his seat in 1974 and it returned to the UUP fold. However, the new MP, John Carson, backed the Labour government in the crucial 1979 vote. This led to his de-selection after only 5 years and at the 1979 election the DUP made one of two gains in Belfast (East being the other.) A seven-way spread of votes meant that their vote of 27.6% was the lowest winning majority of the entire election. This was a post-war record until being superseded by Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber in 1992. Belfast (South) would regain the crown at the 2015 election.
In his late 60s at the time of his election, McQuade was one of the oldest freshmen of the 1979 intake. He announced his retirement in the early 1980s. At the 1982 Assembly election the UUP ticket, headed by former MP John Carson, outpolled the DUP ticket, headed by controversial loyalist George Seawright, by just over 1,600 votes. Seawright had gained notoriety for a number of statements and incidents, which included his support for the National Front, an alleged death threat to a nationalist councillor and leading a group of armed loyalist protesters to the middle of the republican Falls Road to remove an Irish flag which had been placed on a leisure centre. Whether as a result of this or not, the 1983 election saw a swing of nearly 10% from DUP to UUP, with Cecil Walker of the UUP, who had been narrowly defeated in 1979, becoming the new MP.
At subsequent elections in the 1980s and 1990s, Walker held on easily, assisted by the unionist non-aggression pact in response to the Anglo-Irish agreement. For the 1987 election, Walker did face unionist opposition. In 1984, Seawright had suggested that Catholic protesters and priests be incinerated. This proved the final straw for the DUP, who expelled him. Undaunted, he romped home as an independent at the 1985 council elections. He stood in the 1987 Westminster election, but saw his vote share fall. This would be his last election as he was assassinated by republican paramilitaries later that year.
Despite Walker’s easy victories, the DUP vote had merely lain dormant. The 1996 forum elections saw another even spread of votes, with the UUP falling to fourth place on 17.2%, with the DUP first on 19.2% and the SDLP and Sinn Féin in between. At the following year’s Westminster election, the DUP did not put up a candidate and this allowed Walker another comfortable victory, winning an absolute majority of votes with the two nationalist parties far behind both polling just over 20%. However, the writing was on the wall. The 1998 Assembly election saw the DUP outpoll the UUP by over 2 to 1 and this meant that they entered the 2001 Westminster election as strong favourites to unseat Walker. In the event, the UUP did far worse than expected. At a televised pre-election debate Walker struggled to answer basic questions and appeared to forget his lines, leading to suggestions of senility. In the general election his vote collapsed from 52% to 12% with the beneficiary being the new MP, Nigel Dodds of the DUP.
Another significant result at the 2001 election saw Sinn Féin outpoll the SDLP for the first time. Subsequent elections saw increasing levels of polarisation as both the DUP and SF squeezed their rivals, turning the constituency into a two-way contest. The growing number of Catholics on the register saw the constituency become marginal, with Dodds’ majority falling from over 6,000 in 2001 to over 5,000 in 2005 to just over 2,000 at the 2010 general election. Though Dodds was able to pull ahead in 2015, increasing his majority to over 5,000, it fell back to 2,081 votes for the 2017 election. That election saw a new Sinn Féin candidate. The longstanding SF candidate had been Gerry Kelly, whose background as an IRA bomber was felt to limit his chances of obtaining tactical votes from middle-class SDLP voters. He was replaced by solicitor John Finucane, the son of a lawyer who had been controversially assassinated by loyalist paramilitaries in 1989 in an incident which David Cameron later confirmed had been a result of collusion involving state security forces.
The 2019 election saw controversy on both sides. After vowing to contest all 18 constituencies in NI, the UUP withdrew their candidate amid rumours that loyalist paramilitaries had threatened them to do so. This seeming respite for Dodds proved short-lived as, for the first time, the SDLP withdrew their candidate, justifying it as being part of a “Remain Alliance” against the staunchly pro-Brexit Dodds. With the only other candidate being from the centrist Alliance party, Finucane ousted Dodds by nearly 2,000 votes.
Whether Finucane can hold on in future contests will depend on which pacts are formed by rival blocs and the growing middle ground. The Alliance party won assembly seats here in the 1970s and 1980s and have recently seen their vote share raise across NI. Their candidate doubled her vote here in 2019, taking nearly 10%. Furthermore, in contrast to the two-way contest for Westminster, local and regional elections have been extremely fragmented. The 1998 Assembly election saw all six seats won by six groupings. This included the PUP, a small left-wing loyalist party close to the paramilitary UVF which won council seats in Oldpark and the Shankill in 2014 and 2019. The far-left Workers' party polled well here in the 1980s and the 2019 council elections saw the far-left People Before Profit gain a foothold with a council seat which they lost in 2023. The same council elections saw the Green Party make their breakthrough, while Alliance have increased their vote in recent times, gaining a seat at the 2023 Assembly elections.It remains to be seen whether Finucane can consolidate his vote or whether he will lose to challengers old or new.
The 2023 review sees an exchange of territory with Belfast West. North gains the Forthriver ward, while losing the Woodvale ward and the north Shankill area (which formed part of the abolished Crumlin ward.) From South Antrim, it also gains a small amount of territory as a result of the updating of ward boundaries, gaining more of the Ballyhenry and Hightown areas. As well as providing a more logical boundary in the Shankill area, these changes will give a slight boost to Sinn Féin, making a DUP regain harder.
Both the 2022 Assembly election and 2023 local elections saw SF make strong advances, increasing by 6% in the Assembly election and gaining council seats in each of the main DEAs that make up the constituency (Castle, Oldpark and Glengormley Urban.) This makes the party favourites to hold for the 2024 Westminster election, though they will remain reliant on the SDLP standing down.
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(***) www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/revealed-northern-irelands-10-most-deprived-areas-37157128.html
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Few, if any, UK cities with a population over 300,000 can have had the stability in representation that Belfast has had. With the exception of the interlude from 1918 to 1922, when its representation was briefly raised to 9 members, Belfast has had 4 seats since 1885, all named after the principal points of the compass.
At the most recent boundary revision, Belfast North was made up of the northernmost 14 wards of the city, plus 11 of the now abolished Newtownabbey council’s 25 wards on the fringes of Belfast.
A first-time visitor to the constituency could be briefly fooled by the constituency’s picturesque natural setting, with the leafy slopes of the Cavehill on one side and the expanse of Belfast Lough on the other. In reality, the constituency is dominated not by the Belfast mountain, but by stark sectarian divisions and serious poverty and social issues. The constituency contains grim reminders of The Troubles in the form of ubiquitous murals devoted to paramilitary figures, with numerous peacelines serving as a reminder that, while The Troubles may have ended, the divisions that spawned them remain very much alive. While the worst of the violence has gone, the constituency still sees periodic outbreaks of low-level violence and rioting. Disputes over symbols, flags and marching routes continue to sour relations. Protests around Holy Cross School brought unwanted international headlines to the area in 2001. The constituency had the greatest death toll of the Northern Ireland conflict and includes most of the infamous “Murder Mile” which was a regular hotspot for sectarian violence and murders. Aptly, the New Lodge served as the "hopeless place" in the video of Rihanna's 2011 international hit single "we found love in a hopeless place."
The constituency begins with mostly lower middle-class commuter territory in the north around Glengormley and the working-class loyalist Rathcoole estate. It then follows either the Antrim Road through middle-class Catholic territory or the Shore Road through mostly Protestant working class territory, though the latter section does include one of just two middle class Protestant areas in the city proper around Fortwilliam; the other being the upper Ballysillan Road. It then ends with inner-city wards whose names became infamous during the conflict: Ardoyne, New Lodge, Shankill (part), and Woodvale. These are bordered by Duncairn ward, whose working-class Tiger’s Bay estate takes its name from a former area of Cardiff visited by Belfast sailors. At its southern edges, the constituency snakes erratically through the Greater Shankill area, taking in the middle Shankill and Woodvale, but not the Lower Shankill or Glencairn areas.
Socially, North contains some of the most poverty-stricken areas not only in Northern Ireland, but in the whole UK. In 2016, Waterworks ward was the most deprived of the region’s 462 wards, while Ardoyne, Woodvale and New Lodge were the 3rd, 4th and 6th worst, respectively, with Shankill registering in 9th place.(***) The traditionally religiously mixed middle and upper Antrim Road areas became heavily Catholic in the 1980s and 1990s.
The constituency had an owner-occupancy rate well below the national average at 54% in the 2011 census, with 9 wards below 50%. These included all 4 Rathcoole wards. The lowest figures were seen in the republican New Lodge (29%) and the loyalist Duncairn (26%) and Crumlin (23%.)
Urban depopulation has seen the constituency expand at the last few boundary reviews. For 1974, it gained the Dock ward (the precursor of the current New Lodge ward) from Belfast East. For 1983, it expanded to the city’s new boundary around Bellevue. The Rathcoole estate was added in 1997 and, for 2010, the constituency gained religiously and socially mixed parts of Newtownabbey, including Cloughfern and relatively more affluent territory in parts of Glengormley and Ballyhenry.
At the 2011 census, Belfast North ranked 8th in terms of the number of people of a Catholic community background at 46.9%, with 45.7% of a Protestant community background. This was the first census at which Catholics had overtaken Protestants. However, after significant demographic change in the 1980s and 1990s, the rate had stabilised, with the tight difference reflected in the election results.
Politically, it had been a safe seat for the Ulster Unionist Party until the 1970s. In 1972, UUP MP Stratton Mills broke from the party, sitting first with the Westminster Conservatives, before joining the Alliance Party. Mills did not defend his seat in 1974 and it returned to the UUP fold. However, the new MP, John Carson, backed the Labour government in the crucial 1979 vote. This led to his de-selection after only 5 years and at the 1979 election the DUP made one of two gains in Belfast (East being the other.) A seven-way spread of votes meant that their vote of 27.6% was the lowest winning majority of the entire election. This was a post-war record until being superseded by Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber in 1992. Belfast (South) would regain the crown at the 2015 election.
In his late 60s at the time of his election, McQuade was one of the oldest freshmen of the 1979 intake. He announced his retirement in the early 1980s. At the 1982 Assembly election the UUP ticket, headed by former MP John Carson, outpolled the DUP ticket, headed by controversial loyalist George Seawright, by just over 1,600 votes. Seawright had gained notoriety for a number of statements and incidents, which included his support for the National Front, an alleged death threat to a nationalist councillor and leading a group of armed loyalist protesters to the middle of the republican Falls Road to remove an Irish flag which had been placed on a leisure centre. Whether as a result of this or not, the 1983 election saw a swing of nearly 10% from DUP to UUP, with Cecil Walker of the UUP, who had been narrowly defeated in 1979, becoming the new MP.
At subsequent elections in the 1980s and 1990s, Walker held on easily, assisted by the unionist non-aggression pact in response to the Anglo-Irish agreement. For the 1987 election, Walker did face unionist opposition. In 1984, Seawright had suggested that Catholic protesters and priests be incinerated. This proved the final straw for the DUP, who expelled him. Undaunted, he romped home as an independent at the 1985 council elections. He stood in the 1987 Westminster election, but saw his vote share fall. This would be his last election as he was assassinated by republican paramilitaries later that year.
Despite Walker’s easy victories, the DUP vote had merely lain dormant. The 1996 forum elections saw another even spread of votes, with the UUP falling to fourth place on 17.2%, with the DUP first on 19.2% and the SDLP and Sinn Féin in between. At the following year’s Westminster election, the DUP did not put up a candidate and this allowed Walker another comfortable victory, winning an absolute majority of votes with the two nationalist parties far behind both polling just over 20%. However, the writing was on the wall. The 1998 Assembly election saw the DUP outpoll the UUP by over 2 to 1 and this meant that they entered the 2001 Westminster election as strong favourites to unseat Walker. In the event, the UUP did far worse than expected. At a televised pre-election debate Walker struggled to answer basic questions and appeared to forget his lines, leading to suggestions of senility. In the general election his vote collapsed from 52% to 12% with the beneficiary being the new MP, Nigel Dodds of the DUP.
Another significant result at the 2001 election saw Sinn Féin outpoll the SDLP for the first time. Subsequent elections saw increasing levels of polarisation as both the DUP and SF squeezed their rivals, turning the constituency into a two-way contest. The growing number of Catholics on the register saw the constituency become marginal, with Dodds’ majority falling from over 6,000 in 2001 to over 5,000 in 2005 to just over 2,000 at the 2010 general election. Though Dodds was able to pull ahead in 2015, increasing his majority to over 5,000, it fell back to 2,081 votes for the 2017 election. That election saw a new Sinn Féin candidate. The longstanding SF candidate had been Gerry Kelly, whose background as an IRA bomber was felt to limit his chances of obtaining tactical votes from middle-class SDLP voters. He was replaced by solicitor John Finucane, the son of a lawyer who had been controversially assassinated by loyalist paramilitaries in 1989 in an incident which David Cameron later confirmed had been a result of collusion involving state security forces.
The 2019 election saw controversy on both sides. After vowing to contest all 18 constituencies in NI, the UUP withdrew their candidate amid rumours that loyalist paramilitaries had threatened them to do so. This seeming respite for Dodds proved short-lived as, for the first time, the SDLP withdrew their candidate, justifying it as being part of a “Remain Alliance” against the staunchly pro-Brexit Dodds. With the only other candidate being from the centrist Alliance party, Finucane ousted Dodds by nearly 2,000 votes.
Whether Finucane can hold on in future contests will depend on which pacts are formed by rival blocs and the growing middle ground. The Alliance party won assembly seats here in the 1970s and 1980s and have recently seen their vote share raise across NI. Their candidate doubled her vote here in 2019, taking nearly 10%. Furthermore, in contrast to the two-way contest for Westminster, local and regional elections have been extremely fragmented. The 1998 Assembly election saw all six seats won by six groupings. This included the PUP, a small left-wing loyalist party close to the paramilitary UVF which won council seats in Oldpark and the Shankill in 2014 and 2019. The far-left Workers' party polled well here in the 1980s and the 2019 council elections saw the far-left People Before Profit gain a foothold with a council seat which they lost in 2023. The same council elections saw the Green Party make their breakthrough, while Alliance have increased their vote in recent times, gaining a seat at the 2023 Assembly elections.
The 2023 review sees an exchange of territory with Belfast West. North gains the Forthriver ward, while losing the Woodvale ward and the north Shankill area (which formed part of the abolished Crumlin ward.) From South Antrim, it also gains a small amount of territory as a result of the updating of ward boundaries, gaining more of the Ballyhenry and Hightown areas. As well as providing a more logical boundary in the Shankill area, these changes will give a slight boost to Sinn Féin, making a DUP regain harder.
Both the 2022 Assembly election and 2023 local elections saw SF make strong advances, increasing by 6% in the Assembly election and gaining council seats in each of the main DEAs that make up the constituency (Castle, Oldpark and Glengormley Urban.) This makes the party favourites to hold for the 2024 Westminster election, though they will remain reliant on the SDLP standing down.
==========
(***) www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/revealed-northern-irelands-10-most-deprived-areas-37157128.html
