Northern Irish election: Peace process generation turning away from traditional religious politics

Early results indicate a growing generational divide in Northern Irish voters as younger voters opt for newer and smaller parties

(AP Photo/Peter Morrison)

This election is the first one in which Northern Ireland’s so called ‘peace babies’ or children born in the year of the Good Friday Agreement can vote. The generation currently turning 18 has become a symbol of hope in the region as they enjoy new opportunities in peacetime which their parents could scarcely have imagined in the Troubles and with knowledge of the conflict coming only from anecdotes and textbooks rather than first-hand experience. As the teenagers cast their votes in ballot boxes across Northern Ireland yesterday, many saw the milestone as a moment to take stock of whether Northern Irish politics and peace process structures have reached an age of maturity as well.

This election suggests that while the Catholic-Protestant divide continues to be the primary feature in Northern Irish politics, its influence is waning, especially among younger generations. Exit polls suggest increased support for smaller parties, mixed religion parties and more liberal or left wing parties.

Younger generations are increasingly voting for ‘non-traditional’ parties away from the core Protestant parties the UUP and DUP and core Catholic parties the SDLP and Sinn Fein. There is little doubt that these four will remain the four largest parties, but their vote share is slowly trickling outwards to other smaller parties after decades of stagnation. Crucially these parties seldom have strong focuses on religion and the constitutional question. Instead, younger voters appear more likely to vote based on a party’s stance on Northern Ireland’s abortion ban, or same-sex marriage ban, austerity or education policy.

The generational divide in Northern Irish politics has been recently heightened by a number of controversial moves by Stormont. Stormont remains largely Christian, male and conservative in outlook. The DUP recently blocked marriage equality being extended to same-sex couples; a source of growing frustration among younger voters. The parliament also recently voted to keep the country’s abortion ban, despite a high court ruling that to do so breached international human rights legislation, prompting large protests by young women in Belfast city centre following the prosecution of a 21-year-old who was convicted of taking abortion pills.

Younger voters are increasingly demanding more of their politicians than a stance on whether Northern Ireland should be part of Ireland or the UK. As they find dissatisfactory answers among existing politicians and parties, they are turning elsewhere to previously niche or side line parties.

One of the biggest winners anticipated in this election is the cross community Alliance party which holds as a core philosophy the need to end sectarianism in Northern Ireland. The party campaigns against the current education system which sees Catholic and Protestant children and schoolteachers educated separately. They have also been vocal in criticising the on-going practice of different communities marking ‘their’ territory by hanging British or Irish flags from lamp posts and called for council housing to be mixed religion in a bid to strengthen relations between the two communities. The party expects to see a measured but significant increase at the expense of other ‘traditional’ unionist or nationalist parties.

Results so far indicate growing support for the Green Party, although it remains to be seen if this increase is significant enough to transfer to an increase in seats under the proportional representation system.

A number of anti-austerity parties with no religious affiliation or strong focus on the constitutional question also look set to make significant gains. People Before Profit, a hard-left party which describes its focus as standing up for working class communities, has won a seat in Gerry Adams’ old stronghold West Belfast, topping the poll with more than 8,000 votes.

The hegemony of ‘traditional parties’ in Northern Ireland is slowly weakening and younger generations in the region come of age and reject the politics of their parents and grandparents. While the parties around Stormont’s executive table in this parliament are expected to be the same which have been in place for almost every parliament so far, a significant number of politicians taking seats in the chamber represent a considerable challenging to the old politics which have dominated for so long even if their presence if too limited to hold much sway over legislation. Even as side line voices the new or alternate parties can represent a significant force for change as they shape how Stormont governs by forcing them to look beyond traditional religious divisions.

In a parliament where the almost exclusive focus since inception has been Northern Ireland’s constitutional status, focus on other social issues could have a homeopathic effect which spreads throughout the language, agenda and style of Northern Irish politics, regardless of whether it changes the content of statute books.