Rise of the Moderates

"You had the Unionists with a penny in every pond and the Catholics who simply boycotted everything," declared Phyllis Kerr, a canvasser for Northern Ireland's moderate Alliance Party last week. "There just had to be a day when something came cracking down the middle." That day may finally be dawning in Ulster politics. After four years of violence, more and more people seem to be coming around to the belief that a strong political center--something that has seldom existed in Northern Ireland--could heal the wounds created by religious polarization.

Compared to the militant Catholic supporters of the Irish Republican Army, or the equally militant Protestant backers of the Ulster Defense Association, the moderates now represent a comparatively small segment of organized political opinion. But since the British government presented its White Paper (TIME, April 2), setting the ground rules for elections on June 28, two moderate parties, Alliance and Northern Ireland Labour, as well as a growing number of independent candidates, have been cooperating as never before in an all out vote-getting campaign. Their common aim is to pick up enough seats to capture the balance of power in the expanded regional assembly that will take the place of the old Stormont Parliament.

Their chances are promising. The elections will see a change in voting procedures; candidates will no longer need a straight majority to win but will be chosen by a method of preferential choice known as "proportional representation"--a formula that should not only give the Catholic minority a stronger voice but also help the moderate minority.

"The statistics of terror are on my side in this election," says David Bleakley, a Belfast political science professor who is running for a Labour seat in the assembly. "I will simply be saying: Have you had enough? You've killed 800, you've maimed 10,000. Surely you've made your point by now if you ever had one."

Ulstermen have never taken naturally to the political center, if only because they like a little fire and brimstone from their politicians. Moderates, like Ulster's former (1963-69) Unionist Prime Minister Terence O'Neill, too frequently seemed like moral Milquetoasts, beset by a fatal whiff of goodness. Now one encouraging sign is that both the Alliance and Labour parties have almost equal backing from Catholics and Protestants. Recent Alliance recruits include a number of Ulster's senior political figures, among them Sir Robert Porter, former Minister of Home Affairs, three mayors, five Senators and 70 local councillors. "I came over," explains Senator Millar Cameron, a longtime stalwart of the Protestant-dominated Unionist Party, "partly because I profoundly believe they are doing the right thing for Northern Ireland, partly because it involves the future of my grandchildren and partly because it involves the future of Senator Millar Cameron."

There is another, and rather more characteristic sign that the moderate parties are having some success in Ulster: their members have become targets of extremist violence. While canvassing in Belfast's Andersonstown, an 18-year-old Alliance Party worker was stopped by I.R.A. gunmen, who shot off his kneecaps. A number of other Alliance canvassers--who generally work in ecumenical teams, one Catholic, one Protestant--have been beaten or threatened by extremists on both sides. Under U.D.A. pressure, Alliance Leader Oliver Napier, 37, a Catholic, was forced to move his family from their home in East Belfast. "Six months ago, the terrorists wouldn't have appeared because they didn't think we were a threat," says Robin Glendinning, a Protestant schoolteacher and organizer for Alliance. "Now they are turning on the screw."

The moderate parties have capable leaders in men like Napier and Bob Cooper, 36, Protestant general secretary of Alliance. But they have no spokesman who can match the charisma of William ("King Billy") Craig, dour chief of the extremist Protestant Ulster Vanguard. Moreover, they have no clear-cut policies other than a shared belief in keeping the peace. Nonetheless, many political experts predict that Alliance and Labour could capture 15 to 20 of the 78 Assembly seats, enough to establish a buffer zone between the Protestant Unionists and the Catholic Social Democratic Labour Party and their respective splinter factions. "That at least," says Napier, "would enable us to act in a positive negative way by preventing anything nasty from getting through."

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