BY PAUL DAVIES
MANCHESTER, England - A blow was struck against the British occupation of northern Ireland with the election of Sinn Fein leaders Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness to the seats of West Belfast and Mid-Ulster in the United Kingdom general election on May 1. Sinn Fein is the nationalist party in the forefront of the struggle to end British rule in the north of Ireland.

Adams and McGuinness are the first Sinn Fein representatives to win seats in the UK Parliament since Adams lost West Belfast to Joe Hendron of the Social Democratic Labour Party (SDLP) in 1992. The SDLP is a reformist party with a base of support in the nationalist community. It remains the second largest party in northern Ireland. Tactical voting for the SDLP by voters who normally support the Unionist (pro-British) parties helped Hendron win the seat from Adams in 1992. This year tactical voting by Unionists for the SDLP almost doubled, but it could not stop Adams from taking the seat by winning the overwhelming majority of nationalist votes. Sinn Fein won 16 percent of the overall vote in the six counties on northern Ireland, surpassing the loyalist Democratic Unionist Party to take the third largest total in the north of Ireland. The vote for Sinn Fein was more than double that of the last UK general election in 1992.

Like all Sinn Fein members who have been elected to Parliament, Adams and McGuinness will refuse to take their seats at Westminister, as doing so requires taking an oath of allegiance to the British rulers. The party is, however, planning to open an office in London for the first time.

On Sunday, May 4, thousands of republicans rallied in heavy rain in Belfast's Dunville Park to celebrate the election of the two Sinn Fein candidates and to mark the death of Bobby Sands, a republican prisoner who died on hunger strike on May 5, 1981. Sands himself was elected to the UK parliament in the course of that hunger strike. While addressing the rally, Adams had a message for the newly elected UK prime minister, Anthony Blair: "What Mr. Blair and the British government have to understand is that there is a huge opportunity here for the people of this island to come together in peace and in equality." He continued, "Sinn Fein is ready to do business with the British government. We are ready to do business with the Unionists. We are ready to seek an agreement, to seek an accommodation. We make no apologies for wanting an end to British rule in our country. We make no apologies for being a party which wants change, a party which wants equality."

Sinn Fein's election success came despite warnings from the Dublin government. Irish prime minister John Bruton went out of his way to urge nationalists not to vote for Sinn Fein. The election win also came despite a step up in repressive measures against Catholics. A loyalist gang of 200 drove eight Catholic families from their homes in Limestone Road, north Belfast in April, as police and army riot squads looked on. There have also been several army raids on homes in the predominantly Catholic Ardoyne neighborhood. On April 28, the fifth loyalist bomb in as many weeks was discovered outside the Sinn Fein offices on the Falls Road in West Belfast.

The British government also used antidemocratic measures during the election. In an unprecedented step, the Home Office imposed searches and random bag checks at polling stations, as a response to alleged IRA bomb threats.

During the election campaign in Manchester, local politicians and the Manchester Evening News led a successful campaign to block a Sinn Fein councilor from Derry, Mary Nellis, from addressing a public meeting. The city has 50,000 residents who were Irish born and 150,000 with Irish parents.

The only local candidate to speak out publicly in the defense of free speech was Tim Rigby, a chemical worker and the Communist League's candidate in Manchester Central. Rigby was quoted in the Evening News arguing that "working people had the democratic right to hear Sinn Fein's views."

Sinn Fein's electoral advances follow a growth in the self-confidence of nationalist fighters across northern Ireland. Community self-organization mushroomed last year in defense of Catholic communities from sectarian Orange Order marches. The Orange Order is a rightist group that stages provocative marches through Catholic neighborhoods aimed at terrorizing the nationalist population. This year the Orange Order have retreated from some, but not all, of the marches planned through Catholic areas.

The Conservative government, defeated in the general election of May 1, had excluded Sinn Fein from talks on the future of Ireland despite their success in the 1996 elections held to elect representatives to the talks. The Labour Party has made plain it will continue this policy. New Secretary of State for northern Ireland, Labour's Marjorie Mowlam explained that "none of my colleagues will have any contact with Sinn Fein while the IRA makes that impossible."

Labour's prime minister Blair, writing in the Irish Times, maintained the position of the outgoing Major administration that "there must be a genuine cease-fire from the IRA. It must be proven to be genuine in both word and deed."  
 
 
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