October 10 1974
Views of all kinds outside the valid ones have found expression during the days before polling. Having sought to persuade the electorate that they are the rightful heirs to the twelve seats at Westminster, the candidates to-day submit themselves to the verdict of the ballot box.
Nobody, only the most optimistic, expects that the results at the end of the day will bring fundamental changes in the representation of the twelve seats.
Can there be much doubt that at least nine of the seats will go to the Loyalist Coalition? That Fermanagh-Tyrone and Mid-Ulster will return to their old anti-Unionist allegiance? West Belfast? There is beginning to acquire the title of a safe seat for Gerry Fitt.
The rival claimants for the voters’ endorsement have had a hard task rousing them from a general apathy and we can anticipate a fairly low poll all round.
Voters may say that they will cast their votes to-day the way they think best but any suggestion of change in traditional voting patterns can be firmly dismissed. The voters have not been shown the coin of government at Westminster with all the implications which a change of rule could bring. They have been told, instead, about ancient divisions and enmities.
There are problems, economic and financial which, unless solved, could depress all our standards of living; but while the voters here are not apathetic about them, they have been obscured by issues far removed.
Inflation and right or left wing governments at Westminster have hardly been mentioned. Some candidates, like Mr [Enoch] Powell, have not hesitated to rake among the embers of division; and the minority have had a buffeting from many a Loyalist speaker.
Unemployment, which is hitting workers in all the constituencies was never made an issue, but Protestant unity was; and this was sufficient, along with that great nightmare the “Irish Dimension” to prevent any serious self-examination of the likelihood of disaster for this area if inflation cannot be curbed in Britain.
[Harold] Wilson and [Ted] Heath have appeared on television as essentially decent politicians not unaware of the tremendous odds facing Britain; but their problems were not easily transferred to North or South Down, to Fermanagh, Tyrone and Mid Ulster. There was a too easy acceptance, certainly on the Loyalist side, of the need to beat the drum of sectarianism and warn against a doomsday situation of Dublin creation.
