Scientific Sinn Féin in Newry and Armagh
On a bleak, wet Thursday night last week I trailed after Conor Murphy and Davy Hyland as they canvassed the Altnaveigh Park area of the town.
I had intended to do a similar job to that I had recently attempted in West Tyrone with Pat Doherty - speak with the people being canvassed to guage their reactions to Sinn Fein, the candidate and our chances in the coming elections. Well, that was the plan.
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By the time you're reading this, Conor Murphy will have done really well in Newry and Armagh, but the key to his success is the professional organisation that has been built up in the constituency
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By the time you read this, the elections in the Six Counties - both Westminster and local, will be over bar the counting. Davy Hyland looks a shoe-in for the council and Conor Murphy will at the very least have done extremely well against Seamus Mallon in the Westminster poll.
As Conor and Davy went from door to door there was an important man following close behind them. Brian Campbell wandered discreetly behind the two candidates (well, as discreet as he could be with a scruffy Derrig in tow). Armed with a clipboard, he ticked off names of identified ``Green voters''. This was the third canvass of the area.
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Conor Murphy presses the flesh on a canvass with fellow Westminster candidates Michelle Gildernew, Gerry Kelly, Pat Doherty and Gerry Adams
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Brain was armed with a list that was a hybrid voters roll/canvass form. This was the printout of a specially designed computer programme for the Sinn Féin campaign team in the area.
Like all computer systems, if its ``Garbage in'' then it will be ``Garbage out''. Here it is quality information from areas that have already been canvassed three times. You would need to be in your own wee cave in Newry and Armagh not to have met Conor Murphy and the council candidate for where your cave is situated.
For that evening, I was witnessing as slick an electoral machine as exists on this island going door to door about its business.
Our first gig was in a new development - full of young families whose parents still lived in Newry itself. This was one of the last Housing Executive developments. These abodes were of a different order than the Lifestyle Supplement haciendas I had trailed around after Pat Doc on my previous story.
As doors were answered, Conor and Davy handed over literature and chatted with the people. The big man at my side noted anything down that came up as a concern or a question about where to go on polling day.
This was no false listening exercise. After the previous canvasses of the area, the Sinn Féin campaign team had drawn up a list of the top 20 issues that had emerged on the doorstep. This was turned into a newssheet, ``Tairseach/Threshold''. Top of the list was rates and councillors' expenses, then health, then policing, then demilitarisation and so on.
On the back page of this wee blatt was a telling balance sheet of which councillors took the highest expenses out of Newry and Mourne council. Any guesses for top dog? Yup - no prizes. The local SDLP chap with over 16k. The average spending on ``conferences'' within the four-year period was SDLP - £9,750 per councillor, Sinn Féin - £2,883 per councillor. Value for money?
The big issues in the Westminster election that seemed local to this constituency was the dramatic economic decline of Armagh city - I was shocked as I drove through. It had been a few years since I had been there. The place is falling down, with rows of boarded up and dilapidated commercial premises.
The other issue, locally, is the ``Fee factor''. The local SDLP man was the heir apparent to Seamus Mallon, but even SDLP-minded farmers have been incensed by his crass comments about the farming community's culpability in the Foot and Mouth epidemic. The SDLP camp has even been forced to distance Mallon from the party locally.
The SDLP have little in terms of campaign workers and have been forced to hire a PR firm from the south to put up posters and deliver election material. I suppose hiring a PR firm from the South is the nearest they will ever be to being an all-Ireland outfit!
Brian Campbell explained to me that I was witnessing a process that was three years old. ``Two weeks after the Assembly elections in 1998, we sat down and plotted this course,'' he told me.
At that point, Sinn Fein was only 4,500 votes behind Mallon. This was the closest ever. Sinn Féin got two Assembly members in the areas covering the Westminster constituency that Conor Murphy is now fighting. Conor and Pat McNamee are those Assembly members; Davy Hyland missed being the third by only 60 votes.
Brian told me that a plan was drawn up to establish a stronger organisation on the ground a fortnight after those votes were counted. A publicity department was set up locally; people were trained in welfare rights and in dealing with the public in a professional manner.
``We now have 19 cumainn in the constituency - three years ago we had 15''.
In providing this constituency service in terms of advice and advocacy work, the party was able to build up its political intelligence profile on the constituency. The Assembly money was used to set up offices in Camlough and Armagh. Then the party, from its own resources, opened new offices in Keady, Crossmaglen and Newry.
The SDLP, by contrast, have a full-time office in Newry (donated by a local businessman) and a part-time office recently opened in Armagh. They have a defeated, washed out look about them. They are all but invisible on the ground.
The campaign they have fought has been fought for them by a friendly media, but they cannot match us on the ground; in the quality of our candidates or in the relevance of our message to the new Ireland we are building.
Brian told me that on election day ``hundreds'' (yes, hundreds) of cars will go out and lift the Sinn Féin votes. He described a system that would get whittled down as polling day wore on. In the final few hours, a fleet of Sinnféinmobiles will scour designated areas, knocking on doors like demented Mormons.
To get the Brits out we have to get the vote out.
By the time you're reading this, Conor Murphy will have done really well in Newry and Armagh. He's a star for sure, but my man of the match is the guy in the middle of the park with the clipboard.
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