Peelers Minister David Ford's Alliance could be the pillar in a new third force
in Northern politics after 5 May.
Ironically, this is the 30th anniversary of the forming of the Paisley
licking loyalist vigilante mob, the Ulster Third Force.
Three decades ago, I stood as a young BBC freelance journalist in the North
Antrim Unionist bastion of Kells as around 400 loyalists, many masked and
brandishing cudgels occupied the village, much to amusement of the heavily
outnumbered cops.
The Third Force's purpose was to defend Protestant communities from
republican terrorists.
But all it did was organise illegal late-night marches around safe loyalist
towns. With its Home Guard-style armbands, and responding to military commands,
it quickly gained the nickname, The Third Farce.
Derry republicans mocked it as a DUP election stunt, and even hosted their
own parades, with nationalists marching in republican strongholds, responding to
commands in Gaelic.
The SDLP lacks credible policies; the Ulster Unionists are imploding, so the
call to form a Stormont opposition to the seemingly secure DUP/Sinn Féin
coalition will fall to Alliance.
It was simply not a publicity coup that Fine Gael boss – and the hot top to
replace Biffo Cowen as Taoiseach – Enda Kenny addressed the Alliance conference.
Kenny could have spent the day touring SDLP heartlands with party chief
Maggie Ritchie and her cronies.
The SDLP is also expected to suffer heavily as Catholics vote tactically for
Sinn Féin in a last ditch attempt to give Unionists a bloody nose over the First
Minister's post.
The UUP needs at least 18 MLAs to fend off another leadership battle, with
liberal champion Basil McCrea chomping at the bit for the second crack at the
coveted hot seat.
Even within the UUP, many fear the party will be lucky if it emerges with a
dozen seats – a result from which it could take the UUP generations to recover.
There will also be a crop of liberal and left-leaning independent Unionists
in the frame, with gossip that a new unionist party will emerge in the Assembly
after 5 May.
Until Naomi Long snatched Peter Robinson's once rock solid East Belfast
bastion, Alliance was constantly dismissed as a middle and upper class wine and
cheese club for people who wanted society status, not political power.
For the first time in its 41-year history, Alliance has the chance to
potentially become the Third Force in Stormont behind the DUP and Shinners.
Such talk – even at last year's Commons poll – would have been dismissed as
political nonsense. But the mood of the Northern electorate has now radically
changed.
Suddenly, being on the centre left in the North is no longer just a joke.
Even the DUP has moved onto the liberal unionist ground once firmly occupied by
Trimble.
But Ford cannot pull this feat off alone. To form a realistic Assembly
opposition, he needs a Rainbow coalition of the Green party, UUP liberals,
independent Unionists – and a Labour input.
Northern socialists need to get politically organised. We need the rebirth of
the once influential Northern Ireland Labour Party, or the British Labour Party
must start fighting Assembly elections.
Better still, Eamon Gilmore's Irish Labour, if it contested Stormont, could
make a real impact on the much-needed centre left Alliance-led coalition.
Ireland's own Red Eamon is odds-on to have a major role in Leinster House
after next month's Dáil showdown.
