Sectarian Victory

Ulstermen in record numbers flocked to the polls last Wednesday for Northern Ireland's first provincial election in four years. Their impressive turnout--about 70% of the eligible voters--cheered moderates in the strife-torn province. That so many people participated in the balloting for local district councilmen suggested that Ulster might be taking a first step toward rational discourse rather than sectarian violence.

Not so. When the results trickled in at week's end, it was clear that the voters had returned to the traditional patterns of Orange and Green politics.

The Protestant-dominated Unionist Party, led by former Prime Minister Brian Faulkner, swept the Protestant vote. Most Catholics supported the Social, Democratic and Labor Party (S.D.L.P.). Most disappointing, the moderate and non-sectarian Alliance Party finished a poor fourth, trailing even candidates of the Protestant extremists. Noted the Belfast Telegraph: "The people have spoken and their terms are uncompromising."

In themselves, last week's elections were not very important. With the British government assuming rule over most potentially "divisive" matters, the 26 district councils have little to do besides consumer protection and sanitation. More significant will be the voting for the 78 members of Ulster's new provincial Assembly on June 28 and the later formation of a new executive body --both prescribed by Britain's recent White Paper (TIME, April 2).

For all their sectarianism, the Unionists and the S.D.L.P. do support the White Paper. Moderates now look to the Assembly election for the first real ray of hope that Ulster may choose the ballot box rather than the bomb.

South of the border, the overwhelmingly Catholic populace of the Republic of Ireland demonstrated, in a remarkably peaceful election, that politics need not be sectarian. For only the second time in the Republic's history, Irish voters elected a Protestant to the largely ceremonial office of President. He is London-born Erskine Childers, 67, a former Cabinet member, son of Robert Erskine Childers, an Englishman who involved himself in the Irish struggle for independence and paid for it with a martyr's death. Erskine Childers, who is a member of the conservative Fianna Fail, which lost control of the government three months ago, defeated Thomas O'Higgins, the candidate of the governing Fine Gael and Labor coalition, by a vote of 636,162 to 587,577. When he starts his seven-year term later this month, Childers will succeed Eamon de Valera, 91, who has dominated Irish public life for half a century.

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