With the vast majority of the coverage of Northern Ireland’s Assembly election centred firmly on Sinn Féin and the DUP’s race to become the largest party at Stormont, less attention has been paid to other key aspects of the election.
The collapse of the SDLP vote in many places is a discussion which has taken a back seat, while the influence of the new Republican party Aontú on the SDLP’s decline has been left out of most of the discussion in the establishment media.
Aontú polled 1.5% of the vote, reaching 4% in West Belfast and in Derry, growth that some seasoned commentators see as significant given that the new party polled ahead of the established People before Profit and the Greens in most constituencies.
Aontu will be well pleased with its first Assembly election performance. On 12,777 votes it came in ahead of People Before Profit (9,798) and behind the Greens (16,433). It's in a strong position to win seats in a number of councils in the next local government election. #AE22 pic.twitter.com/BcUMA4eCnE
— Suzanne Breen (@SuzyJourno) May 6, 2022
https://twitter.com/IRLPatricia/status/1522512144184619011?s=20&t=5BtyHc1gws9IYUvoo5wxOw
The pro-life nationalist community seems to have shown up in support of Aontú at this election – a party in its infancy which didn’t anticipate winning seats, but rather hoped to grow its profile in this election campaign. It was also to be predicted that the SDLP would lose some of its more conservative voters, with Aontú making the plausible claim that 50% of the votes lost by the SDLP were won by Aontú.
50% of the votes lost by the SDLP were won by Aontú. pic.twitter.com/aWyafrSMFH
— Aontú (@AontuIE) May 6, 2022
In West Belfast, the SDLP’s first preference vote was down by almost 1,000, while Aontú’s Gerard Herdman took 1,753 votes in his first time out for this fledgling party.
The SDLP returned to Stormont on Monday with four fewer MLAs after losing two of its most high-profile female Assembly members, Nichola Mallon and Dolores Kelly, in what has been a punishing election for the nationalist party. Deputy leader Nichola Mallon, one of the most high-profile casualties, lost her North Belfast seat to Alliance’s Nuala McAlister while SDLP stalwart Dolores Kelly lost her seat in Upper Bann.
Nichola Mallon’s demise stunned the SDLP and perhaps the party’s deputy leader herself, after she only managed to secure 3,604 first preference votes – 1,227 votes short of Alliance. More than half of those seem to have gone to Aontú who took 640 votes in that constituency, eating into Mallon’s first preferences.
Nichola Mallon was criticised by pro-life organisations for what they described as a ‘U-turn’ taken by the Infrastructure Minister. In two short years, the former MLA went from blasting Northern Ireland’s abortion legislation as “extreme,” stating unequivocally, “I do not support it” in 2019, to speaking to The Irish News in 2021 about her “growing frustration” with the ‘blocking of abortion services’ in the North.
To add fuel to the fire, she joined a ‘Feminism in Schools’ conference held in partnership with abortion campaigners Alliance for Choice at a Belfast secondary school in March. During that event, students at the integrated school were photographed holding posters emblazoned with ‘Get your Rosaries off our ovaries,’ a display which inevitably ignited disgust among Catholics – and was cited by campaigners as evidence of Mallon’s defection from her pro-life position.
Her colleague Dolores Kelly – who had been joined by Mallon on the campaign trail in Upper Bann, during which the two posed in front of an SDLP billboard ‘targeting’ the DUP’s Dianne Dodds – also lost her seat after failing to assure voters of her pro-life credentials. Despite the long-serving MLA’s insistence during past media interviews that she is a “pro-life politician,” many pro-life nationalists felt disappointed, even betrayed, when the MLA voted in favour of a Bill to introduce exclusion zones around abortion centres, rendering the offer of support to continue a pregnancy a criminal offence.
Incidentally, Clare Bailey of the Greens, who was videoed dancing in delight after the success of her exclusion zone bill which would criminalize peaceful pro-life prayer, lost her seat in the election.
The SDLP did themselves no favours by effectively surrendering a significant part of their faithful demographic constituency – nationalist, pro-life Catholics – in their attempt to rebrand themselves into an ultrawoke alternative to Sinn Féin, giving even Sinn Fein a run for their money on issues from abortion to transgenderism, with a period poverty Bill pioneered by Pat Catney neglecting to mention the word ‘woman’ once. Catney was another casualty of the election, indicating that the SDLP, in its all-out embrace of wokeism – an agenda rejected by straight-talking Aontú – only succeeded in pushing away some of their loyal, conservative voter base.
Knowing that Aontú was unlikely to win any seats at Stormont in an election where Orange and Green was always most likely to prevail, many pro-life Catholics were simply happy to have a party to vote for in good conscience, regardless of anything else. Many, I know personally, were former Sinn Fein and SDLP voters who were delighted to have a principled alternative.
The election was important to Aontú in terms of building visibility and support, and some political commentators recognised a breakthrough at the expense of the SDLP.
Míle buiochas to every voter, supporter & member who brought us to where we are today
Our political project of Human Rights, Irish Unity & Economic Justice is more important now than ever
Join us as we prepare to take council seats throughout out Irelandhttps://t.co/ftgYsQXUxs pic.twitter.com/Js58iW5qk9
— Aontú (@AontuIE) May 7, 2022
As political commentator and former Sinn Féin election candidate, Chris Donnelly, said in the BBC’s post-election coverage:
“If a party needs to have a long, hard look at itself, there’s no-one [more so] than the SDLP. I actually envisage further difficulties for the [SDLP] because the likes of Aontú, I think, are only going to develop further as a credible alternative to Sinn Fein in nationalist heartlands.
“The issue of abortion, which defines Aontú, look at what’s happening in America around the whole Supreme Court Roe versus Wade. We know how issues like [that], they cross the pond. I fully expect that issue to feature more and more as an identity and morality issue, and the likes of Aontú to benefit from that, and therefore, the SDLP has a problem.”
Voting in good conscience was something some Catholics simply felt was not an option in their constituencies without a pro-life candidate. The number of voters for whom this issue is the first priority ahead of the deep-rooted mentality of ‘us and them’ in post-conflict Northern Ireland, is a base on which to grow support for policies addressing bread and butter issues. Aontú have shown they can fill that vacuum, and – as the potential long-awaited reversal of Roe v Wade in the US illustrates – it has every chance of growing.