W2A-014 Voting systems-0.txt
Electoral boundaries and vote counting

The Government of Ireland Act did not create an independent body responsible for the conduct of elections or the supervision of electoral boundaries. The Northern Ireland Parliament had power to regulate its own elections; but it could not increase the number of members and in any redistribution it was bound to pay due regard to the population of constituencies. For local government election, county boroughs and boroughs could recommend their own ward structure. The county council electoral divisions had to be as nearly equal in population as convenient, with regard to changes since the last census and the pursuits of the urban and rural population. The Local Government Act (NI) 1922 added rateable valuation to the factors to be considered. In addition, the redistribution of Parliamentary seats in 1917 provided a body of practical guidance on procedure.

The adequacy of these provisions was tested throughout the period. Disputes over electoral boundaries were the main feature of the electoral debate between the Unionist government and opposition parties. They emphasized the different expectations over territorial versus communal representation. The detailed nature of the disputes precludes anything other than a cursory review of the main types and periods of dispute.

The single-member Stormont constituencies formed in 1929

When it became clear that the Unionist government would abolish PR before the end of the second Parliament, opposition parties demanded a Commission to redistribute seats. Nationalists feared that the opportunity would be taken to reduce their members from ten to six; Labour members asserted that failure to establish a Commission would be proof of an intent to gerrymander. However, the request was rejected in 1927 and when the Bill was introduced in 1929 the Prime Minister Viscount Craigavon (James Craig) stressed his personal responsibility for it.

During the debate there were some claims for communal rather than territorial representation; some Nationalists were willing to accept the termination of PR in return for the guarantee of sixteen seats or representation on the basis of religion. Nationalists claimed that the redistribution scheme gerrymandered Antrim and Fermanagh by taking away a seat from them in Antrim and giving Unionists two seats in Fermanagh. Craigavon replied that it was impossible to create a Nationalist seat of sufficient size in Antrim and that the joint representation of Fermanagh and Tyrone would continue the same as under two PR elections in 1921 and 1925.

Nationalist fears were not realised in the 1929 election, and they won eleven seats. During the third reading Joseph Devlin, leader of the Nationalist Party, had stated that it was the duty of the government to ensure that the minority would be worse off under the new scheme. In effect this had been accomplished with some rough justice in Fermanagh and Antrim. If there was gerrymandering in 1929 it was of an honest variety.

From a technical point of view, no constituency lay outside the normal range of plus or minus one-third of the population quota for the forty-eight territorial constituencies or the range within the multi-member constituency from which they were derived. Only two technical issues seem to have occurred - whether to give Fermanagh two or three seats and the West Belfast area four or five seats. Both issues were resolved by favouring the easier course and retaining intact the registration areas of 1920.

Ward changes in Omagh, Londonderry and Armagh

In the mid-1930s inquiries were held in Omagh UDC and Londonderry County Borough as a result of ratepayers'associations seeking improved representation. The ratepayers'associations were thinly disguised and were in effect Unionist. Although their ward plans were rejected in both instances, the effect of subsequent ministry favoured the spirit of the proposals. The proposals for Omagh resulted in a change of party control to Unionist and in Londonderry the three-ward structure ensured a permanent Unionist majority when it would have disappeared in a few years under the five-ward system. In addition, Armagh UDC was dissolved for maladministration in 1934, and when it was returned to council control it was with a boundary extension and a new five-ward structure which reflected the new Unionist majority in the city.

The failure to establish Boundary Commissions after 1945

After the Second World War, Northern Ireland did not follow Britain in making provision for periodic boundary commissions for Stormont Parliamentary constituencies. Indeed, the nationalist gerrymander motion became a hardy annual at Stormont. Allegations against Stormont constituencies gradually faded as the smallest constituencies became occupied by opposition party candidates while huge Unionist constituencies built up on the fringes of Belfast. Labour members and some of the Unionists with large constituencies began to demand a Commission early in the 1960s. The principle was accepted in 1966 and an Interim Boundary Commission was created in 1968 to create four new territorial seats to replace the university seats. The Electoral Law Act 1968 created a permanent Boundary Commission for Parliamentary seats but it had not reported before direct rule in 1972.

Allegations against local authority areas persisted. The demand for 'one vote, one value' was part of the civil rights demands enshrined in the shorthand slogan 'one man, one vote'. Boundaries for the new system of District Councils, recommended by the Macrory Report of 1970, and the electoral areas within them, were determined by an independent commission. These single-member units were subsequently grouped into multi-member units when PR was reintroduced in 1973. The Local Government Act (NI) 1972 provided for a Local Government Boundary Commission to report every ten years.

To summarize, the number and intensity of disputes over electoral boundaries made it the main area of electoral grievance. Part of the problem concerned the absence of independent procedures but the main period of dispute occurred before the Second World War when independent bodies did not exist in the rest of the United Kingdom. Although there were allegations of widespread gerrymandering, research enables attention to be directed to specific areas: Londonderry County Borough, Omagh UDC, Omagh RDC and possibly County Fermanagh. The two Omagh decisions may have produced wider consequences for control of the county council. However, claims about electoral boundaries are difficult to disentangle, particularly where there was an expectation that territorial representation should produce what only communal representation was capable of achieving. The experience of Fermanagh after 1973 is a cautionary tale. There, despite all the changes, unionists disputed control in the 1970s, lost it in the early 1980s but regained control in 1989 with a one-seat majority over eleven nationalists.

The method of election

The Government of Ireland Act 1920 extended the use of STV in multi-member constituencies from local government elections, under the 1919 Act, to elections for the Northern Ireland Parliament. In the debates it was described as one of the safeguards for minorities and the unionist minority in the South and West of Ireland seemed to be uppermost in debate. However, northern unionists opposed the method and wanted to retain the same system as in Britain. James Craig had opposed PR and committed the party to abolishing it at the first opportunity. On the other hand, Nationalists favoured the principle but they had only six members at Westminster and their attention was directed against the principle of two legislatures in Ireland rather than their composition and elections.

The method of election to the Northern Ireland Parliament was guaranteed for a period of three years. However, the 1920 Act did not mention local government and on 31 May 1922 the Local Government (NI) Bill was introduced in the Stormont Parliament to abolish PR in local government elections and return to the previous method and electoral units. The six Nationalist and six Sinn Fein members elected in 1921 were pursuing an abstention policy so that the only opposition to the Bill was from a Unionist Labour member, Thompson Donald. Nationalist-controlled councils issued a resolution of protest but the Bill passed its third reading on 5 July. However, as was mentioned in Chapter 1, the Royal Assent was withheld until 11 September.

Various government statements had encouraged the belief that PR would be abolished for Stormont elections as soon as the three-year statutory prohibition ended in June 1924. However, no action was taken and the 1925 election was also fought using PR. After the election, the Prime Minister came under pressure from the Unionist Party to abolish PR and the Party had lost seats to the Labour Party and other candidates.

The principle of PR was extensively debated in 1927 on a Labour Party motion. Labour regarded abolition of PR as aimed at all minorities, while Nationalists considered that they were the prime targets. In a lengthy and detailed speech the Prime Minister said that he believed in the two-party system and the old method of elections would produce 'men who are for the Union on the one hand or are against it and want to go into a Dublin Parliament on the other.' The debate hinged less on the merits of PR than on a disposition to treat the minority well through seat distribution.

PR was abolished by the House of Commons (Method of Voting and Redistribution of Seats) Act (NI) 1929. During the debates the opposition parties expressed diverse views about whom the Bill was directed against. There was less debate on the merits of PR than in 1927 and a greater concern about the consequences of redistributing the seats from the multi-member constituencies. The Bill became law on 16 April 1929 and the 'cross' vote for single-member districts was restored for the forty-eight territorial seats. In the 1929 Northern Ireland Parliament elections thirty-seven Unionists, eleven Nationalists, three Independent Unionists and one Northern Ireland Labour Party member were elected. All the parties previously represented retained representation: Unionists and Nationalists gained over the 1925 results and Labour lost two seats. Apart from an increase in the number of unopposed returns in 1929 there seemed little to choose between the two methods of election. However, the steady increase in the number of independent and unofficial Unionist candidates during the 1930s, culminating in 1938 when more than a quarter of the candidates came from that section, meant that the abolition of PR was aimed at divisions within Unionism over social and economic policy and administrative performance.

The effect of the change to the simple-majority system and single-member constituencies from 1929 to 1969 can be briefly summarized. The two largest parties, the Unionists and Nationalists, both benefited in their share of contested seats and unopposed returns. The Northern Ireland Labour Party and splinter Unionist candidates were consistently underrepresented. Anti-partition Labour candidates consistently benefited from the system after 1938, but this may have been due to the size of the constituencies contested. All other groups were underrepresented in proportion to their share of the votes.

In the post-war period there were motions for the reintroduction of PR in 1947 and 1951. During the Electoral Law Bill debates of 1962 Nationalists sought PR but without success. It was only after 'one man, one vote' had been conceded in the Electoral Law (No 2) Bill 1969 that the call for PR was seriously renewed, to the discomfiture of the government. Every opportunity was taken to press for PR and the issue was debated in March 1971. However, the withdrawal of the SDLP and Nationalists from the House in July 1971 and the suspension of the Northern Ireland Parliament and government on 30 March 1972 terminated the Parliamentary debate. The principle was conceded by the Secretary of State, William Whitelaw, as the means to gain SDLP participation in the District Council and Assembly elections of 1973. The Secretary of State never gave any substantial reason for the change except to say that it was the method that most parties mentioned to him. Several years later he stated that there were expectations that it might enable voters to build up the centre ground in politics. Against a background of party fragmentation the only expected outcome was that the parties would win representation in proportion to their votes and entrench the new divisions.
