Surprise in Ulster

Militant Protestants in Northern Ireland received less than they had bargained for when they forced by-elections for 15 of the 17 seats that Ulster holds in the British Parliament. That gave at least a hint of much-needed moderation in the explosive situation.

They had sought to make the elections a referendum to demonstrate the unpopularity of the Anglo-Irish agreement signed between Dublin and London last November, predicting that 500,000 people would in effect vote against the agreement by supporting a coalition of unionists who want above all else to maintain Northern Ireland’s union with Britain. But their tally fell far short--a total of 418,230, an increase of fewer than 3,000 over their returns in the last elections three years ago. The Unionist grip on the politics of Northern Ireland remains firm, obviously enough, but the electorate did not seem as excited about the new agreement as the political leaders did.

There were other encouraging developments. In the four races in which there was a direct contest among the Protestant Unionists and moderate and militant Catholic Nationalists, the moderate Catholics showed the greatest gains. The moderate Catholic Social Democratic and Labor Party won 19% more votes than three years ago--enough of an increase in one district, Newry and Armagh, to defeat the Unionist incumbent. That gave the SDLP a 65% majority of the nationalist vote. Sinn Fein, the political arm of the terrorist Irish Republic Army, suffered a 25% loss of votes in those four contested districts. The Protestant Unionists gained less than 1%.

Britain and Ireland had made clear from the start that they would not, regardless of the outcome of the election, withdraw the agreement that they reached last November to give Dublin an advisory voice in Northern Ireland’s affairs. Their continued firm commitment to that constructive agreement is important to the long-term peace of Ireland.

Peacemaking in Ireland is, as one Irish diplomat commented, “a slow, grinding process.� But it is a process that can bring some new sense of security to the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland. Already the agreement has encouraged the drafting this year of a new code of conduct for police in the north. And the regular and continuing consultation between the two governments can in the long term ease the suspicions of the Unionists, who sometimes are inclined to forget the provisions of the agreement requiring support from the voters before any change can be made in the status of Northern Ireland.