Join the stand against new gerrymander

Posted by Jim on March 24, 2018

The DUP are behind the redrafting of constituency boundaries to hold
onto as much power in the North as possible, writes Sinn Fein MP Elisha
McCallion.

Fifty years ago the people of Derry took a a stand against
gerrymandering and the denial of equal voting rights to nationalist
citizens.

It is appalling that half a century on from the birth of the Civil
Rights movement, people are again taking to the streets to demand
democratic equality.

But that is precisely what happened yesterday when the people of
Dungiven protested against the new electoral boundaries being proposed
by the Boundary Commission.

If given the go ahead, these plans will carve the town of Dungiven into
three separate constituencies. This is farcical, unnecessary, and
completely unacceptable.

But it isn’t just Dungiven that will be affected. The new boundaries, if
implemented by the Tory Government, will disfigure and distort the
electoral map right across the North. Representation will be denied to
thousands of nationalist voters and leave several constituencies without
any nationalist representative whatsoever at an Assembly and Westminster
level.

That is a democratic affront so it is worth reminding ourselves how this
situation came about.

In 2016, the Boundary Commission was established with a remit to reduce
the number of constituencies from 18 to 17 and to distribute the
electorate in a fair and equitable way across the new constituencies.

The commission initially produced a plan that by and large achieved
these key objectives, but they were heavily criticised by the DUP
because that party stood to lose out electorally.

The DUP’s Ian Paisley Jr announced that his party “[would] see about
that” and submitted their own version of how they would like the new
boundary map to look. This DUP proposal sought to maximise the number of
DUP elected representatives and minimise the number of nationalists by
manipulating electoral boundaries.

In the subsequent period, the DUP entered a self-serving pact to keep
Theresa May’s Government in power. And just six months after that deal
was signed, the Boundary Commission produced new proposals.

And it is these radically revised plans – which are virtually
indistinguishable from the DUP’s – which have hemmed thousands of
nationalist voters into constituency’s that no nationalist
representative has a hope of ever winning.

The Boundary Commission deny there has been a deliberate gerrymander at
the behest of the DUP and stress their independence from political
interference.

Nevertheless, they do admit to radically altering their plan, as well as
applying the controversial rule seven – known as the ‘gerrymander rule’.

This rule is only available in the north of Ireland and gives the
Commission scope to go beyond the usual electorate quotas in any given
constituency. Despite ruling out the need to evoke it in their original
proposals, the Boundary Commission changed this approach after the DUP
argued for it to be implemented.

Indeed, the Commission’s revised report overturned every key decision
that underpinned their original proposals, without offering any
reasonable explanation as to why.

It is Sinn Fein’s firm view that these changes are unjustifiable and
must be overturned.

Votes should be equal. Political representation should reflect the
population in any given constituency. These proposals achieve neither of
these aims and, instead, effectively deny representation to thousands of
nationalist voters.

When the northern state was created, it was deliberately gerrymandered
in order to try to guarantee a perpetual unionist majority.

The last Assembly election finally ended that democratic injustice when
unionism lost its majority status for the first time since 1921.

Demographic changes are also indicating a nationalist voting majority by
2022, coincidentally the same year when these boundary changes are due
to take effect.

But rather than respond to these changing political and demographic
trends by reaching an accommodation with their neighbours on this
island, it seems the DUP would prefer to re-gerrymander constituencies
in order to try to artificially hold onto as much unionist control as
they can for as long as possible.

But this isn’t 1968.

We cannot allow them to turn back the clock.

Sinn Fein has submitted our proposals to the Commission which set out a
fair and equitable way forward in line with accepted good practice and
the Commission’s own remit.

And we are urging members of the public to also make submissions before
the consultation closes on March 26.

You can do so by emailing Review@boundarycommission.org.uk or go online
at www.bcni2018.uk

If enough of us object, our voices cannot be ignored.

So stand up for fairness in the electoral process and demand that all
votes are equal.

This was once the Ireland’s capital city of injustice. We need to send a
strong message that there will be absolutely no return to the
gerrymandering of the past.