McCann beats Ulster Unionists

national | politics / elections | news report Monday May 09, 2005 10:29 by Home for the weekend - none Dublin

Following a good result in the Westminster election, Eamonn McCann of the Socialist Environmental Alliance called on the various ’left groups and fragments of the left across the North’ to look at the impact that the SEA is having in Derry and to finally come together to build a credible ‘socialist labour party’.

At home in Derry for the weekend, I discovered that Eamonn McCann of the Socialist Environmental Alliance in Derry outpolled the Ulster Unionist Party by 600 votes in the Westminster election. Local media commentators are saying some of the SEA votes came directly from former Unionist voters. Seems that, as a result of a combination of campaigning against water charges and highlighting police brutality in protestant working class areas, the SEA has now got a fair bit of support in those areas. SEA people had been predicting about 1,000 votes for McCann who, they said, would be squeezed by the battle between Sinn Fein and the SDLP to become the sole authentic voice of Nationalism in the North. In the event, McCann managed to win 1,649 votes – 3.6% of the vote.

Having pushed the Ulster Unionists into fourth place, McCann’s speech after the count is reported in local papers as beginning tongue in cheek with ‘as a representative of one of the four main parties in Foyle….’. He went on to say that the fight against water charges was just beginning and called on the various ’left groups and fragments of the left across the North’ to look at the impact that the SEA is having in Derry and to finally come together to build a credible ‘socialist labour party’. Given that he polled hundreds more than combined vote of the five Workers’ Party candidates who between them attracted less than 1,000 votes and that the Derry papers are saying that the SEA might pick up a Council seat today, maybe he has a point? One of the things that strikes me every time I go home is the way the SEA manages to include EVERYONE on the left in Derry - from boring, middle aged trade unionists to young people influenced by autonomism, Greens and, it seems, all the local artists/musicians. Maybe an 'alliance', as opposed to a new party is the way to go??