Rise of the People Before Profits alliance offers a challenge to Sinn Fein and the SDLP… but this is not the case for the DUP

Posted By: May 13, 2016

John Brewer. Belfast Live. Thursday,  May 12, 2016

 John Brewer, Professor of Post Conflict Studies at Queen’s University gives his opinion as the dust has settled on the Assembly elections

The dust has now settled on Last Thursday’s Assembly elections in Northern Ireland.


Some commentators got very excited as the results slowly unfolded, thinking there was evidence of real change in people’s voting patterns.

Looking back now, some things are clear, but there is evidence of less change than first thought.

Republican and Nationalist parties have a serious threat from the left, as critics push for more working class and socialist policies.

The rise of the People Before Profits alliance offers a challenge to Sinn Fein and the SDLP in their heartlands. Surprisingly, this is not the case for the DUP.

Although urban Loyalist areas are amongst the most socially deprived in Belfast, the Progressive Unionist Party made no similar inroads into the DUP’s working class vote.

The PUP did not offer the same working class socialist alternative for Unionists as People Before Profits did for Republicans and Nationalists.

It may well be that Protestant-Unionist voters are not as open to mobilisation on working class issues as their Catholic counterparts, which suggests that those commentators who claim evidence of change in voting patterns are looking too much at Catholic voting trends.

But the PUP must now seriously ask itself whether it needs to develop more working class friendly policies.

It is a time for serious reflection by the PUP. Is class politics a vote winner in the Protestant-Unionist-Loyalist community?

If the answer to this is no, another serious question opens up for the PUP. Can the PUP ever rival the DUP in articulating the traditional cultural and identity concerns of the PUL community?

And if not, what is the point of the PUP?

The DUP triumphed in the election over the PUP despite the DUP’s poor track record on working class policies and issues.
Large numbers of working class Loyalists either voted DUP or stayed at home. The DUP also triumphed over its critics within conservative traditional Unionism, with both UKIP and the TUV failing dismally in making inroads into the DUP vote.
The DUP, while not gaining any seats, emerged strongest of all parties out of the election.

Regardless of the enthusiasm of some commentators on the growth of minor parties after Thursday’s election, it is only the Greens and the PBP that has emerged with any sense of success.

The Greens ate into middle class votes for the UUP and Alliance, neither of whom grew in the election, and not into the DUP. This leaves the issue of the Protestant working class.

What hope can the PUP have of realising the late David Ervine’s dream of developing a socialist, non-sectarian, working class Loyalist party – a kind of People Before Profits party of the Protestant working class?

The 2016 Assembly elections suggest none. This failure, though, is less that of the PUP itself as a party, than of the Loyalist working class. Culture not class is its major concern, and therein lays the problem for the PUP in becoming a class-based party.