Post by therealriga on Nov 19, 2023 20:05:26 GMT
Though the name is new, this constituency is Belfast South, with a bit of suburban territory added. In contrast to its neighbours to the north and west, South Belfast presents visitors with a more relaxed side of the city. Many of the areas, such as Malone, Stranmillis and Rosetta, consist of leafy, suburban streets. The constituency includes most of the city centre and the region’s main university, Queen’s. A diverse range of cultural options, nightlife and ethnic restaurants, together with a much more cosmopolitan mix mean that South probably more closely resembles trendier London constituencies than it does the mean streets of the Falls or Shankill in north and west Belfast. There are some pockets of poverty. The wards of Blackstaff, Shaftesbury and Woodstock were in the 10% most deprived wards. The Taughmonagh estate, in Upper Malone ward, also contains some of the poorer census output areas. South has not been immune to the Northern Ireland conflict as shown by the assassination of its MP in 1981, tensions over marching routes in the Ormeau Road and occasional violence, though the last major incident was probably when 5 civilians were killed by loyalist paramilitaries in a 1992 attack on a bookmaker's.
The constituency has also seen the rapidest pace of demographic change of any Northern Ireland constituency, transforming from a seat where nationalist parties struggled to reach 10% of the vote in the 1980s to one where the SDLP won in 2019 with a convincing majority of over 15,000.
When drawn for the 2010 election, South consisted of 13 Belfast city council wards, plus 10 wards from the now abolished Castlereagh council. Following local government reform, just over half the former Castlereagh areas were added to the city.
Compared to the Northern Ireland average, South has fewer children, fewer old people and a much higher percentage of people aged 20-34. South had the lowest percentage of benefit claimants of an NI constituency, the fifth lowest unemployment rate and double the average number of people with higher education qualifications. The rates of crime and anti-social behaviour were also double the regional average, with the crime rate the highest of any constituency, a factor probably related to the large nightlife quarter it contains. The constituency has long had the largest ethnic population in Northern Ireland, with the Ormeau Road and surrounding areas being host to the region’s largest Chinese and South Asian communities since the 1970s. In more recent times, these have been joined by a more diverse group of immigrants, especially from the newer EU member states. South saw the first ethnic minority candidate win a seat in Northern Ireland in the 2007 Assembly election when Anna Lo, born in Hong Kong of Cantonese ethnicity, won a seat for Alliance.
In the 2011 census, 44% declared a Catholic community background, a figure close to the regional average and the ninth highest in NI. This also represented the first census at which Catholics overtook Protestants and showed a rapid increase from the figure of 25% recorded at the 1991 census for the equivalent areas. Some of the wards highlighted this change. The Catholic figure in Malone ward jumped from 30% to 61%, Ravenhill from 14% to 40% and Windsor from 23% to 42%. Even the most heavily Protestant wards became less so. Woodstock went from 1% Catholic to 19% Catholic in this period, with Blackstaff, centred around the loyalist areas of Donegal Road and The Village, increasing from 3% to 15%.
Until 1974, South was wholly within the city boundary. It then extended to include the Dunmurry, Belvoir and Newtonbreda areas. In 1983, these areas were removed and replaced by solidly loyalist territory in the form of Sandy Row and the Donegal Road from Belfast West. Controversy came in 1995 when the Boundary Commission proposed reducing Belfast to three seats and splitting South between Belfast West and Belfast East. This was opposed by all the major parties except the SDLP, a move which hindsight shows would have been a mistake for the party. The commission then reversed course and extended South by adding six wards of the neighbouring Castlereagh council, restoring areas like Newtonbreda and Belvoir to South. The review for the 2010 election played it safe, adding further Castlereagh wards: both Carryduff wards from Strangford and Wynchurch ward from Belfast East. The proposal to transfer the Cregagh ward, where the DUP are strong, was rejected and Hillfoot ward was added instead from East. For the abortive sixth review after 2010, the commission returned to the offensive again, proposing a three-seat Belfast with South yet again the loser. Predictably, this was rejected at local enquiries.
Politically, South sees substantial ticket-splitting at elections. In the most recent Assembly elections, in 2016 and 2017, it was the only constituency where no party won more than one of the five seats. Centrist parties have historically polled well. The Alliance Party have historically had one of their highest votes here, though their chances of doing better have been scuppered by other centrist groupings. From 1998 to the 2000s this was the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition. In recent times, this has been a strong Green Party vote, the highest outside North Down. In both the 2016 and 2017 Assembly elections the Greens won a seat, taking nearly 10% of first preference votes. They sustained this in the local elections of 2019, topping the poll in the Botanic area, and also winning a seat in Lisnasharragh. At times, the loyalist PUP has also polled well.
At Westminster elections, South was a safe UUP seat for decades. The seat was won by unionist candidates from its 1885 creation until its abolition in 1918. Upon its restoration in 1922, it was held by the UUP until 1974. Rafton Pounder had backed the power-sharing Assembly set up the previous year. He was unseated by Robert Bradford of Vanguard. When the party split in 1977, Bradford stayed with the leadership of Bill Craig and followed him into the UUP in 1978, easily holding his seat a year later.
Bradford was one of the more outspoken and controversial UUP MPs. In 1974, he penned a letter of support to the far-right National Front, supported British Israelism and claimed that the problems of Northern Ireland were down to Marxism and the Catholic church. He was assassinated by the IRA while hosting a constituency surgery in November 1981. The by-election the following March attracted interest due to the challenge to the UUP from two diverse sides of unionism. First, the paramilitary UDA were testing the waters for their political wing, the Ulster Loyalist Democratic Party (ULDP). Their candidate was UDA leader John McMichael, who himself would be assassinated by the IRA five years later. From mainstream parties, the DUP had overtaken the UUP across the region the previous year and were keen to sustain their momentum. Both were disappointed. The DUP candidate and future Mid-Ulster MP William McCrea could only finish third, behind Alliance and well behind the new UUP candidate Martin Smyth. For the ULDP, the election was an even more chastening experience. McMichael could only muster a paltry 576 votes, just over 1% of the total.
Smyth held on comfortably in subsequent elections, helped after 1983 by the unionist non-aggression pact in protest at the Anglo-Irish Agreement. However, the late 1990s saw an increasing nationalist vote and the perennial SDLP candidate, Alistair McDonnell, reduced Smyth’s majority to around 5,000 votes in 1997 and 2001.
Smyth stood down for 2005, throwing the contest open. The DUP had been increasing their strength in the area and targeted the seat more seriously. Though they overtook the UUP for the first time, this split in the unionist vote allowed McDonnell to come through the middle and win with 32% of the vote to become the constituency’s first ever nationalist MP. While not breaking records, McDonnell came close. His win came after seven unsuccessful contests in the constituency starting in 1979. He had also contested North Antrim at the 1970 election, making a gap of 35 years between his first candidacy and ultimate success.
Talks on a unionist unity candidate for 2010 broke down and Sinn Féin (SF) withdrew their candidate, this allowed the SDLP to hold on, with a majority of nearly 6,000. For the first time, the SDLP vote exceeded the combined vote of the unionist parties, casting doubt on whether a unionist unity candidate would have won.
2015 saw a remarkable result. Sinn Féin’s withdrawal at the previous election had not been a benevolent, unilateral move. It was intended to put pressure on the SDLP to withdraw their candidate in SF’s main target, Belfast North. When the SDLP did not reciprocate, and refused to countenance any pact for 2015, SF announced their candidacy. With the DUP pulling further ahead, this was expected to hand them the seat. However, the result showed the constituency’s fragmented nature. Both unionist and nationalist sides were split, with Alliance also taking 17%, the Greens saving their deposit and UKIP almost saving theirs. This enabled McDonnell to win with 24.5%, the lowest winning percentage ever at a Westminster election. In 2010, the DUP had been able to focus more resources on South, but had unexpectedly lost East and come close to losing North Belfast and therefore in 2015, they had been forced to divide resources.
Having held on in such circumstances, McDonnell was favourite in the 2017 election, but the DUP candidate, Emma Little-Pengelly, managed to monopolise the unionist vote and take the seat by nearly 2,000 votes, winning with 30% of votes cast.
This put her in a precarious position and her fate was sealed before the 2019 election. With the SDLP standing down in North Belfast, Sinn Féin stood down their candidate in South. The new SDLP candidate, Claire Hanna, also secured the backing of the Greens. The latter’s Northern Ireland leader and South Belfast Assembly member, Clare Bailey, signed Hanna’s nomination papers to underline the support. Nevertheless, Hanna’s majority of 15,401 votes, and 57% vote share, represented an unexpected landslide after recent close contests and cannot be fully explained by demographic change.
A possible contributing factor may be candidates. Alistair McDonnell represented the more traditionally Catholic wing of the SDLP and held more socially conservative positions: opposing abortion and making contradictory statements on gay marriage. This possibly hindered his chances of obtaining tactical votes in a more socially liberal constituency. Similarly, South was the only constituency in 2019 where the Alliance vote fell. While tactical voting can explain this, it is possible that their candidate Paula Bradshaw’s background as a UUP candidate may have reduced the number of nationalist votes prepared to vote for her.
The biggest reason, however, for the 2019 result is probably the Brexit issue. 69.5% in South backed remain. Given the demographics, at least a third of this vote must have come from Protestants. After 2017, the DUP became increasingly linked with Brexit, due to it propping up the Conservative Party government in a supply and confidence arrangement. A Brexiteer MP, in a constituency which voted 70% against Brexit, therefore seemed an aberration and was the reason for the Green support for the SDLP in 2019. A substantial number of remain-minded Protestants seem to have backed Hanna.
In the 2023 review, South loses 2 and a half wards (Woodstock, Hillfoot and the southern half of the redrawn Cregagh ward) to Belfast East. In compensation it expands well beyond the city boundary, gaining the commuter town of Saintfield from Strangford and the mainly rural wards of Drumbo (from Lagan Valley) and Moneyreagh (from Strangford.) As a result, the constituency is renamed Belfast South and Mid Down.
With the demographics trending nationalist, a declining unionist vote and a divided centrist vote, Hanna seemed to be safe after the 2019 election. However, the 2022 Assembly election saw a surge for the Alliance party, who topped the poll, as well as Sinn Féin overtaking the SDLP for the first time. As so often in Northern Ireland politics, candidate selection, pacts and tactical voting will decide the next election and Hanna's majority is nowhere near as secure as it looks as she will have to fend off the challenges of Alliance, Sinn Féin and the DUP, the latter of whom will hope to benefit from the division of their opponents.
The constituency has also seen the rapidest pace of demographic change of any Northern Ireland constituency, transforming from a seat where nationalist parties struggled to reach 10% of the vote in the 1980s to one where the SDLP won in 2019 with a convincing majority of over 15,000.
When drawn for the 2010 election, South consisted of 13 Belfast city council wards, plus 10 wards from the now abolished Castlereagh council. Following local government reform, just over half the former Castlereagh areas were added to the city.
Compared to the Northern Ireland average, South has fewer children, fewer old people and a much higher percentage of people aged 20-34. South had the lowest percentage of benefit claimants of an NI constituency, the fifth lowest unemployment rate and double the average number of people with higher education qualifications. The rates of crime and anti-social behaviour were also double the regional average, with the crime rate the highest of any constituency, a factor probably related to the large nightlife quarter it contains. The constituency has long had the largest ethnic population in Northern Ireland, with the Ormeau Road and surrounding areas being host to the region’s largest Chinese and South Asian communities since the 1970s. In more recent times, these have been joined by a more diverse group of immigrants, especially from the newer EU member states. South saw the first ethnic minority candidate win a seat in Northern Ireland in the 2007 Assembly election when Anna Lo, born in Hong Kong of Cantonese ethnicity, won a seat for Alliance.
In the 2011 census, 44% declared a Catholic community background, a figure close to the regional average and the ninth highest in NI. This also represented the first census at which Catholics overtook Protestants and showed a rapid increase from the figure of 25% recorded at the 1991 census for the equivalent areas. Some of the wards highlighted this change. The Catholic figure in Malone ward jumped from 30% to 61%, Ravenhill from 14% to 40% and Windsor from 23% to 42%. Even the most heavily Protestant wards became less so. Woodstock went from 1% Catholic to 19% Catholic in this period, with Blackstaff, centred around the loyalist areas of Donegal Road and The Village, increasing from 3% to 15%.
Until 1974, South was wholly within the city boundary. It then extended to include the Dunmurry, Belvoir and Newtonbreda areas. In 1983, these areas were removed and replaced by solidly loyalist territory in the form of Sandy Row and the Donegal Road from Belfast West. Controversy came in 1995 when the Boundary Commission proposed reducing Belfast to three seats and splitting South between Belfast West and Belfast East. This was opposed by all the major parties except the SDLP, a move which hindsight shows would have been a mistake for the party. The commission then reversed course and extended South by adding six wards of the neighbouring Castlereagh council, restoring areas like Newtonbreda and Belvoir to South. The review for the 2010 election played it safe, adding further Castlereagh wards: both Carryduff wards from Strangford and Wynchurch ward from Belfast East. The proposal to transfer the Cregagh ward, where the DUP are strong, was rejected and Hillfoot ward was added instead from East. For the abortive sixth review after 2010, the commission returned to the offensive again, proposing a three-seat Belfast with South yet again the loser. Predictably, this was rejected at local enquiries.
Politically, South sees substantial ticket-splitting at elections. In the most recent Assembly elections, in 2016 and 2017, it was the only constituency where no party won more than one of the five seats. Centrist parties have historically polled well. The Alliance Party have historically had one of their highest votes here, though their chances of doing better have been scuppered by other centrist groupings. From 1998 to the 2000s this was the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition. In recent times, this has been a strong Green Party vote, the highest outside North Down. In both the 2016 and 2017 Assembly elections the Greens won a seat, taking nearly 10% of first preference votes. They sustained this in the local elections of 2019, topping the poll in the Botanic area, and also winning a seat in Lisnasharragh. At times, the loyalist PUP has also polled well.
At Westminster elections, South was a safe UUP seat for decades. The seat was won by unionist candidates from its 1885 creation until its abolition in 1918. Upon its restoration in 1922, it was held by the UUP until 1974. Rafton Pounder had backed the power-sharing Assembly set up the previous year. He was unseated by Robert Bradford of Vanguard. When the party split in 1977, Bradford stayed with the leadership of Bill Craig and followed him into the UUP in 1978, easily holding his seat a year later.
Bradford was one of the more outspoken and controversial UUP MPs. In 1974, he penned a letter of support to the far-right National Front, supported British Israelism and claimed that the problems of Northern Ireland were down to Marxism and the Catholic church. He was assassinated by the IRA while hosting a constituency surgery in November 1981. The by-election the following March attracted interest due to the challenge to the UUP from two diverse sides of unionism. First, the paramilitary UDA were testing the waters for their political wing, the Ulster Loyalist Democratic Party (ULDP). Their candidate was UDA leader John McMichael, who himself would be assassinated by the IRA five years later. From mainstream parties, the DUP had overtaken the UUP across the region the previous year and were keen to sustain their momentum. Both were disappointed. The DUP candidate and future Mid-Ulster MP William McCrea could only finish third, behind Alliance and well behind the new UUP candidate Martin Smyth. For the ULDP, the election was an even more chastening experience. McMichael could only muster a paltry 576 votes, just over 1% of the total.
Smyth held on comfortably in subsequent elections, helped after 1983 by the unionist non-aggression pact in protest at the Anglo-Irish Agreement. However, the late 1990s saw an increasing nationalist vote and the perennial SDLP candidate, Alistair McDonnell, reduced Smyth’s majority to around 5,000 votes in 1997 and 2001.
Smyth stood down for 2005, throwing the contest open. The DUP had been increasing their strength in the area and targeted the seat more seriously. Though they overtook the UUP for the first time, this split in the unionist vote allowed McDonnell to come through the middle and win with 32% of the vote to become the constituency’s first ever nationalist MP. While not breaking records, McDonnell came close. His win came after seven unsuccessful contests in the constituency starting in 1979. He had also contested North Antrim at the 1970 election, making a gap of 35 years between his first candidacy and ultimate success.
Talks on a unionist unity candidate for 2010 broke down and Sinn Féin (SF) withdrew their candidate, this allowed the SDLP to hold on, with a majority of nearly 6,000. For the first time, the SDLP vote exceeded the combined vote of the unionist parties, casting doubt on whether a unionist unity candidate would have won.
2015 saw a remarkable result. Sinn Féin’s withdrawal at the previous election had not been a benevolent, unilateral move. It was intended to put pressure on the SDLP to withdraw their candidate in SF’s main target, Belfast North. When the SDLP did not reciprocate, and refused to countenance any pact for 2015, SF announced their candidacy. With the DUP pulling further ahead, this was expected to hand them the seat. However, the result showed the constituency’s fragmented nature. Both unionist and nationalist sides were split, with Alliance also taking 17%, the Greens saving their deposit and UKIP almost saving theirs. This enabled McDonnell to win with 24.5%, the lowest winning percentage ever at a Westminster election. In 2010, the DUP had been able to focus more resources on South, but had unexpectedly lost East and come close to losing North Belfast and therefore in 2015, they had been forced to divide resources.
Having held on in such circumstances, McDonnell was favourite in the 2017 election, but the DUP candidate, Emma Little-Pengelly, managed to monopolise the unionist vote and take the seat by nearly 2,000 votes, winning with 30% of votes cast.
This put her in a precarious position and her fate was sealed before the 2019 election. With the SDLP standing down in North Belfast, Sinn Féin stood down their candidate in South. The new SDLP candidate, Claire Hanna, also secured the backing of the Greens. The latter’s Northern Ireland leader and South Belfast Assembly member, Clare Bailey, signed Hanna’s nomination papers to underline the support. Nevertheless, Hanna’s majority of 15,401 votes, and 57% vote share, represented an unexpected landslide after recent close contests and cannot be fully explained by demographic change.
A possible contributing factor may be candidates. Alistair McDonnell represented the more traditionally Catholic wing of the SDLP and held more socially conservative positions: opposing abortion and making contradictory statements on gay marriage. This possibly hindered his chances of obtaining tactical votes in a more socially liberal constituency. Similarly, South was the only constituency in 2019 where the Alliance vote fell. While tactical voting can explain this, it is possible that their candidate Paula Bradshaw’s background as a UUP candidate may have reduced the number of nationalist votes prepared to vote for her.
The biggest reason, however, for the 2019 result is probably the Brexit issue. 69.5% in South backed remain. Given the demographics, at least a third of this vote must have come from Protestants. After 2017, the DUP became increasingly linked with Brexit, due to it propping up the Conservative Party government in a supply and confidence arrangement. A Brexiteer MP, in a constituency which voted 70% against Brexit, therefore seemed an aberration and was the reason for the Green support for the SDLP in 2019. A substantial number of remain-minded Protestants seem to have backed Hanna.
In the 2023 review, South loses 2 and a half wards (Woodstock, Hillfoot and the southern half of the redrawn Cregagh ward) to Belfast East. In compensation it expands well beyond the city boundary, gaining the commuter town of Saintfield from Strangford and the mainly rural wards of Drumbo (from Lagan Valley) and Moneyreagh (from Strangford.) As a result, the constituency is renamed Belfast South and Mid Down.
With the demographics trending nationalist, a declining unionist vote and a divided centrist vote, Hanna seemed to be safe after the 2019 election. However, the 2022 Assembly election saw a surge for the Alliance party, who topped the poll, as well as Sinn Féin overtaking the SDLP for the first time. As so often in Northern Ireland politics, candidate selection, pacts and tactical voting will decide the next election and Hanna's majority is nowhere near as secure as it looks as she will have to fend off the challenges of Alliance, Sinn Féin and the DUP, the latter of whom will hope to benefit from the division of their opponents.
