Veteran writer puts key NI elections under microscope

A writer and academic who left Belfast to live in England 45 years ago has just produced his latest book about the Province.
Alan F Parkinson, in the News Letter Belfast office, discusses his book 'Election Fever  Groundbreaking electoral contests in Northern Ireland'Alan F Parkinson, in the News Letter Belfast office, discusses his book 'Election Fever  Groundbreaking electoral contests in Northern Ireland'
Alan F Parkinson, in the News Letter Belfast office, discusses his book 'Election Fever Groundbreaking electoral contests in Northern Ireland'

Alan Parkinson, 68, has published a work on notable elections in Northern Ireland since its foundation in 1921.

Dr Parkinson, who taught first in schools and then in universities, has been studying political events here for decades.

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In 2012, on the centenary of the Ulster Covenant, he wrote ‘Friends in High Places: Ulster’s Resistance to Irish Home Rule, 1912-14’.

Front cover of the book 'Election Fever  Groundbreaking electoral contests in Northern Ireland'Front cover of the book 'Election Fever  Groundbreaking electoral contests in Northern Ireland'
Front cover of the book 'Election Fever Groundbreaking electoral contests in Northern Ireland'

His other works include a book on 1972, the most violent year of the Troubles, during part of which he was working in Belfast as a young graduate.

In the early 1980s, Dr Parkinson taught a course in London and elsewhere in England on the conflict. “It was interesting, because I was coming from a unionist background, not somebody who was attached to the political parties, but I was presenting a different viewpoint,” he recalled.

Dr Parkinson, who is married to an English woman with three adult sons and a daughter, the actress Katherine Parkinson, said: “My interest is partly determined by my father who was John Parkinson. He was the person behind the Ulster Titanic Society and was described as ‘Mr Titanic’.”

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Mr Parkinson senior, who died in 2006 aged 99, worked in the shipyard and saw the Titanic sail off when aged five.

Front cover of the book 'Election Fever  Groundbreaking electoral contests in Northern Ireland'Front cover of the book 'Election Fever  Groundbreaking electoral contests in Northern Ireland'
Front cover of the book 'Election Fever Groundbreaking electoral contests in Northern Ireland'

Of his latest book, Dr Parkinson said: “I thought I’d be interested in doing a book which looked at elections. The book’s called ‘...in Northern Ireland’ but I do make it clear one of the elections I feature is 1905 when there was no such place as Northern Ireland.”

He examines “the characteristics of elections, what makes them different to elections in England”.

“The fact that politically, this is a place apart. It’s regarded by people in England, political observers, as an alien political culture.”

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Elections here, he said, “have been fought against the perennial backdrop of violence, or threat of violence until recent years”.

The key elections he examines are the 1921 election (“which set up the state”); the ‘Chapel Gate’ election of 1949; the 1969 ‘Crossroads’ election and the hunger strike by-election in 1981.

“I look at the characters, the political personalities from Joe Devlin and Jim Craig through to people like Tommy Henderson, the independent unionist from the Shankill, a working-class socialist guy, but with hard right constitutional points of view, Gerry Fit, Ian Paisley, the usual people.”

• ‘Election Fever – Groundbreaking electoral contests in Northern Ireland’ is published by Blackstaff Press. Alex Kane will review it in the coming days for this newspaper.