Letter: Where was the Labour Party in the recent Northern Ireland council elections?

For many voters, the local elections in Northern Ireland last week were yet another wasted opportunity. Polling by Lucid Talk shows that a third of people in Northern Ireland want the Labour Party to stand candidates for election in Northern Ireland and two in every five would give Labour a voting preference if they did. It found we would get 6% of the first preferences, more than the Greens, People Before Profit and the TUV combined.

Is it not surprising then that images of voters choosing to spoil their by writing ‘Where Is Labour?’” across them has been viewed over 140,000 times on Twitter. So where was Labour? It’s a good question. Even The Conservatives stood candidates. We’re of course pleased that Northern Ireland continues to be hostile terrain for them but the Tories at least they seek a mandate from all corners and people. A former-Tory who previously stood for the party was elected.

Labour presumably expects the Labour supporting electorate to vote for the SDLP in Northern Ireland. Even if we put aside our serious policy disagreements – Labour Party NI’s neutral community designation and our cherished trade union affiliation, all quite fundamental differences between political parties – the SDLP is a party that can’t find the bottom. They call this a context election (as they did last year too), but they’ve gone down in every single council and assembly election without fail in the last 25 years. That covers five leaders, a ‘vote Colum, get Mike’ alliance with the UUP, a ‘partnership’ with the centre-right Fianna Fáil, a ‘link-up’ with the also centre-right Fine Gael and a stand-aside arrangement with Sinn Féin, Alliance and the Greens that allowed SDLP their only gains in a generation. In fact, it seems the only party the SDLP won’t work with is their own ‘sister party’ – the Labour Party NI.

The Labour Party NI has a much clearer position. We would designate as Other – a voting block that is surging – and give people a genuinely cross-community, economically left, socially liberal, pro-worker offer to deal with the real problems people face, on jobs, health, education, climate, rights.

The draft document by Labour’s National Policy Forum that was leaked last week also set out a serious plan for devolution and Northern Ireland’s constitutional position which is markedly different from the status quo, but without seeking a mandate from the people of NI what does it really mean?

Until that option is on the ballot – until Labour, who consider the Good Friday Agreement to be one of their proudest legacies, stop speaking over local voices and live up to their responsibility by offering a better future – why shouldn’t fee paying members and affiliates, and voters like them, spoil theirs?

Boyd Black, Labour Party NI, Belfast