Divisions run deep on Lough Erne's banks, in the UK's most marginal seat
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Version 0 of 1. When Barack Obama, David Cameron, Vladimir Putin and other world leaders visited Fermanagh two years ago they were were treated to stunning scenery, sumptuous food and legendary hospitality from one of the most picturesque regions of the island of Ireland. But when the world’s power players left the county after the 2013 G8 summit, the dark divisions that lurk underneath the bucolic surface of the Lakeland county – the islands dotted around Lough Erne, the old-fashioned market towns – remained. At the end of the first world war, a future war leader, Winston Churchill, turned his thoughts to this same border region, now at the westerly edge of the union. “Great empires have been overturned. The whole map of Europe has been changed … The mode of thought of men, the whole outlook on affairs, the grouping of parties, all have encountered violent and tremendous changes in the deluge of the world, but as the deluge subsides and waters fall, we see the dreary steeple of Fermanagh and Tyrone emerging once again. The integrity of their quarrel is one of the few institutions that have been unaltered in the cataclysm which has swept the world,” Churchill wrote. Though the modern Troubles are over, every election in Fermanagh and South Tyrone reverts to this ancient quarrel: the struggle between unionists hanging on to their British identity in the frontier constituency and nationalists determined to bring the region into an all-Ireland entity. Tom Elliott is the sole standard bearer for unionism in the 2015 general election on Thursday after a deal between his Ulster Unionist party and the larger Democratic Unionists. Last time around another united unionist candidate was just short of unseating the Sinn Féin MP, Michelle Gildernew, by four votes. In his soft, lilting Fermanagh accent, Elliott says he is quietly confident he can win back the seat unionism lost to Sinn Féin in 2001. The former part-time soldier, who would have been regarded by the Provisional IRA as a “legitimate target” during the Troubles, insists he is pleased at the way the DUP has thrown its weight behind his campaign. The wounds within local unionism are deep in Enniskillen, especially after several key Ulster Unionists defected to the DUP at the end of the 1990s in protest at the way Nobel peace prize winner David Trimble pushed the former party towards compromises with former republican enemies. Among the most prominent defectors was Arlene Foster, a one-time rising star in the UUP and now a DUP industry minister in Northern Ireland’s power-sharing executive. “Arlene has been out on the streets campaigning for me. She spent two days in Enniskillen alone seeking support for me on polling day and the DUP printed a huge advert in the local paper, The Impartial Reporter, urging all unionists to unite and vote for me. This time around every unionist force is behind a single candidate and this has definitely rattled Sinn Féin.” Elliott points to a leaflet Sinn Féin distributed reminding nationalist voters that he caused controversy by stating that he would never attend a Gaelic football or hurling match – sports played in the main, though not exclusively, by nationalists and Catholics in Northern Ireland. “They forgot to tell people that I have worked very hard with local GAA clubs to get them improved facilities and have backed many planning applications for gaelic clubs in the county,” he says. “The leaflet also describes me as the ‘Tory Orange’ candidate, which is an appeal to basic sectarian instincts.” The farmer is of course a member of all three Protestant marching institutions – the Orange Order, the Royal Black Preceptory and the Apprentice Boys of Derry – but Elliott claims some nationalists will vote for him on 7 May. “Our message to everyone in Fermanagh/Tyrone is that a vote for a candidate who boycotts the House of Commons is a wasted vote. She is unable to do anything in parliament for this constituency and I think there are some people within the nationalist community who realise this,” he says. Like the DUP, Elliott takes a pragmatic stance on the issue of who between David Cameron and Ed Miliband would be the better prime minister : “I will only make up my mind when I see what the national parties have to offer the people of Northern Ireland. I am not fixed on either Labour or the Conservatives. We will do the best deal for all of the people of the province.” Surprisingly, the woman he seeks to defeat makes a similar cross-community appeal to unionist voters. Gildernew cites her record as Northern Ireland’s agriculture minister in the devolved administration up in Belfast as reason for unionists to back her. “Unionists vote for me for the same reason nationalists vote for me: because they believe in me. They know I am a worker and a woman of my word. When I was Dard minister I built up a fabulous relationship with many unionist farmers, whom I have stayed in contact with and who I know have voted for me. I know there were people who said to their friends that I had been an excellent agriculture minister and that they should vote for me. “Although they may not all believe in our number one aim of a united Ireland, they don’t support the negative, sectarian, pro-austerity campaign of the unionists. They believe in equality, progressive politics and reconciliation – everything that I stand for. They value their jobs, public services, and protection of their families. Working-class unionists recognise that a vote for anyone other then Sinn Féin is a vote to prop up a Tory government,” Gildernew says. Insisting that she can hold on to the seat in the face of yet another united unionist challenge, Gildernew repeats her support for Sinn Féin’s boycott policy and claims that unionist parties would only get “crumbs from the Westminster table”. Observers of this constituency through the years including 1981 when IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands won a byelection here just before his death in the Maze prison, doubt that there will be much cross-community voting in this still deeply divided border zone. Denzil McDaniel, the former editor of The Impartial Reporter, who lives in the constituency and has been commentating on its elections for four decades, is deeply sceptical about the idea. “In 40 years of covering elections in Fermanagh/South Tyrone, it’s generally the case that voting goes along religious lines, either pro the union or against,” he says. “There may be a few who buck that trend but I doubt if there will be any significant change this time. Times and attitudes may have moved on but I don’t quite see that translating into major change when it comes to the crunch on polling day especially in such a tight contest.” Profile Fermanagh and South Tyrone is geographically the most westerly and largest constituency in the UK. Its “capital” is Enniskillen on Lough Erne, the scene of an IRA bombing on Remembrance Sunday 1987 in which 11 Protestant civilians were killed. The religious breakdown of the area is 60% Catholic/40% Protestant. 60% of the population is in employment, mainly in agriculture and tourism. |