Here's a wee postscript to the election results. When Sinn Féin burst onto the north's electoral scene in 1982 with 64,000 votes the reaction in the SDLP was one of, 'we told you so'. They hoped that the British administration here would sit up and pay attention to the result of ignoring the SDLP during the hunger strike. There was a bit of complacency too. The SDLP got 118,000 votes in 1982. Many assumed that most of SF's 64,000 would 'return' if there was political movement.
That air of complacency vanished the following year when Sinn Féin polled 102,000 in the British general election to the SDLP's 137,000. Another cry went up from within the SDLP. The surge in the SF vote was due to 'massive personation' they protested. Members of the Ulster Unionist Party took up this cry too, some because they believed it, others because they had a suspicion their rivals in the DUP were at it as well, others again because the SDLP was demanding that some form of identity be produced at polling stations. Unionists always love anything which would help keep track of the natives.
This SDLP campaign for ID continued for 20 years, based on the fantasy that SF's vote was the result of 'massive personation'. Of course there was personation. There always has been in Ireland and most of it on the nationalist side mainly to outweigh the effects of unionist gerrymandering, but also to do down rival nationalists. In the early years of the 20th century the master was Joe Devlin, the MP for Falls. Cartoons were produced showing his voters popping out of crevices in the footpath to vote alongside skeletons making their way from the cemetery. He organised it all through the Hibernians who were virtually an adjunct to his party in the north.
Fianna Fail was notorious for it in Dublin. The IRA personated for them in the 1930s and some of their descendants in Fianna Fail were still at it in the 1980s. And so was the SDLP until Sinn Féin cornered the market in the north in 1982. In all cases however it was merely the icing on the cake. Personation may have swung the odd very tight seat in the British first past the post system – though it's probably best not to mention which ones – but to suggest that Sinn Féin's growing vote was due to 'massive personation' was not only absurd but a denial of political realities: wishful thinking.
It doesn't take a world-class mathematician to work out how difficult it is to personate or 'plug' as the term is, 500 votes. Think about it. How many teams of personators do you need and transport, clothes and documentation? Five teams of ten? How many polling stations do you do? Your pluggers need to know the names and addresses of the people they're personating. What if there's a queue? And so on. Now try plugging 5,000.
Even if Sinn Féin successfully plugged five to 700 votes in one constituency, so what? It had no effect on the result. They were winning by thousands. Furthermore, to claim that they could personate so many votes conceded they had a detailed knowledge of the constituency, widespread support within that constituency and masses of, shall we say, volunteers prepared to be arrested. The accusers seemed not to see that they were admitting Sinn Féin literally owned the constituencies where the 'massive personation' was perpetrated.
Nevertheless the SDLP, ably abetted by the UUP, pressed on with the accusations until they finally found a proconsul gullible enough to take them at their word: Mo Mowlam. She duly set in train legislation requiring photographic ID at polling stations and doing away with the medical cards which it was claimed formed the basis of SF's personation campaigns.
It took some time to get the new procedures up and running. A complete revolution in registration was introduced whereby all individual voters must register. There's a complicated form to fill in which disadvantages SF and DUP voters most. Tens of thousands were struck off the register amid dark murmurs that most removed were in republican constituencies. We don't know yet how many were denied their vote. We do know that thanks to the SDLP/UUP campaign for ID it is more difficult than ever to get a vote in the north.
The result of the scheme at its first outing? The most successful ever results for Sinn Féin and the DUP. So the sole achievement of the ID drive was to prove the SF vote is real, the opposite of its objective.
