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Fermanagh and South Tyrone constituency | |||||||||||||||||||
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| Turnout | 88.6%  1.7pp | ||||||||||||||||||
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The August 1981 Fermanagh and South Tyrone by-election was the second by-election in the same year, held in Fermanagh and South Tyrone on 20 August 1981. It was seen by many as a rerun of the earlier contest in April. The by-election was caused by the death of the IRA hunger striker and MP Bobby Sands.
The constituency, based on the districts of Fermanagh and Dungannon, was created in 1950 and had seen a series of closely fought elections between unionist and Irish nationalist candidates, with several elections being won due to the absence of competing candidates on one side or the other. [1]
The April by-election was a straight contest between Sands, standing as "Anti-H-Block/Armagh Political Prisoner" and the former Ulster Unionist Party MP and leader Harry West, with no other candidates standing. Sands won with a majority of 1446 (with 3280 spoilt ballot papers). [2]
Following Sands' victory and death shortly afterwards, the British government passed the Representation of the People Act barring prisoners from standing for Parliament. [2] [3] As a result, another prisoner on hunger strike could not be nominated. Instead Owen Carron, who had served as Sands' agent in the earlier election, was nominated as an "Anti-H-Block Proxy Political Prisoner". [2]
The Ulster Unionists nominated a new candidate, Ken Maginnis, who had recently retired from the Ulster Defence Regiment with the rank of Major, who was on the liberal wing of the party. Maginnis was unusual amongst Ulster Unionist candidates as he had never been a member of the Orange Order.
The new by-election also saw four additional candidates stand. Seamus Close stood for the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland even though this was traditionally one of their weakest areas. Tom Moore stood for the Workers Party Republican Clubs who were associated with the Official IRA. Two fringe candidates also stood: Martin Green on a "General Amnesty" ticket and Simon Hall-Raleigh as "The Peace Lover." [2]
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anti H-Block | Owen Carron | 31,278 | 49.1 | −2.1 | |
| Ulster Unionist | Ken Maginnis | 29,048 | 45.6 | −3.2 | |
| Alliance | Seamus Close | 1,930 | 3.0 | N/A | |
| Republican Clubs | Tom Moore | 1,132 | 1.8 | N/A | |
| General Amnesty | Martin Green | 249 | 0.4 | N/A | |
| The Peace Lover | Simon Hall-Raleigh | 90 | 0.1 | N/A | |
| Majority | 2,230 | 3.5 | -4.5 | ||
| Turnout | 63,727 | 88.6 | +1.7 | ||
| Registered electors | 73,161 | ||||
| Anti H-Block hold | Swing | ||||
There were 804 spoilt votes. [2]
Compared to the April election, turnout rose by 1.7%, whilst there were over two and a half thousand fewer spoilt papers. Most of these additional votes went to the additional parties standing. [2]
Michelle Angela Gildernew is an Irish Sinn Féin politician from County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. She is the Member of Parliament (MP) for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, having been re-elected in June 2017 after previously holding the seat from 2001 to 2015.
Kenneth Wiggins Maginnis, Baron Maginnis of Drumglass, is a Northern Irish politician and life peer. Since December 2020, he has been suspended from the House of Lords, where he formerly sat for the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP). He was the Ulster Unionist Party Member of Parliament (MP) for Fermanagh and South Tyrone from 1983 to 2001.
The 1981 Irish hunger strike was the culmination of a five-year protest during the Troubles by Irish republican prisoners in Northern Ireland. The protest began as the blanket protest in 1976, when the British government withdrew Special Category Status for convicted paramilitary prisoners. In 1978, the dispute escalated into the dirty protest, where prisoners refused to leave their cells to wash and covered the walls of their cells with excrement. In 1980, seven prisoners participated in the first hunger strike, which ended after 53 days.
The United Ulster Unionist Party (UUUP) was a unionist political party which existed in Northern Ireland between 1975 and 1984.
Mid Ulster is a parliamentary constituency in the UK House of Commons. The current MP is Francie Molloy of Sinn Féin.
Fermanagh and South Tyrone is a parliamentary constituency in the British House of Commons. The current MP is Michelle Gildernew of Sinn Féin.
The by-election held in Fermanagh and South Tyrone on 9 April 1981 is considered by many to be the most significant by-election held in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. It saw the first electoral victory for militant Irish republicanism, which the following year entered electoral politics in full force as Sinn Féin. The successful candidate was the IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands, who died twenty-six days later.
Anti H-Block was the political label used in 1981 by supporters of the Irish republican hunger strike who were standing for election in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. "H-Block" was a metonym for the Maze Prison, within whose H-shaped blocks the hunger strike was taking place.
Henry William West was a politician in Northern Ireland who served as leader of the Ulster Unionist Party from 1974 until 1979.
The Irish Independence Party (IIP) was a nationalist political party in Northern Ireland, founded in October 1977 by Frank McManus and Fergus McAteer. The party was effectively a merger of Unity and the Nationalist Party, as the bulk of activists and councillors from the two movements joined IIP. However several independent councillors also joined the party. It was boosted in the late 1970s by the defection of a prominent Protestant Larne Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) councillor, John Turnley, later the party chairman, who was killed in 1980 in Carnlough, County Antrim, by an attack claimed by the Ulster Defence Association.
Thomas Beatty Elliott is a Northern Irish unionist politician and farmer who was leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) from 2010 to 2012, and has been a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Fermanagh and South Tyrone since 2022, having previously served from 2003 to 2015. He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Fermanagh and South Tyrone from 2015 to 2017. He was a soldier in the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) from 1982 to 1992 and its successor the Royal Irish Regiment from 1992 to 1999. He backed a Leave vote in the 2016 EU membership referendum.
Owen Gerard Carron is an Irish republican activist who was Member of Parliament (MP) for Fermanagh and South Tyrone from 1981 to 1983.
Michael McGimpsey is a former Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) politician who was a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly (MLA) for Belfast South from 1998 to 2016.
Meredith Francis Maguire was an Irish Republican who became an Independent Member of the British Parliament. Born into an Irish Republican family, he was interned during his youth for Irish Republican Army activities; while he later opposed violence, he remained close to the Republican movement. He was running Frank's Bar, a public house in Lisnaskea, County Fermanagh, when in October 1974 he was elected as a unity candidate to represent Fermanagh and South Tyrone. While not an abstentionist, Maguire's attendances at Westminster were infrequent and he never made a full speech, but he did cast some crucial votes to support the Labour government of the 1970s. He is famous for "abstaining in person" in the no confidence vote against the Callaghan government, which brought it down by a single vote.
Events during the year 1981 in Northern Ireland.
The Representation of the People Act 1981 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It creates the provision for the automatic disqualification of an MP if they are imprisoned for over a year, leading to a by-election being held in their constituency.
Robert Gerard Sands was a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) who died on hunger strike while imprisoned at HM Prison Maze in Northern Ireland. Sands helped to plan the 1976 Balmoral Furniture Company bombing in Dunmurry, which was followed by a gun battle with the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Sands was arrested while trying to escape and sentenced to 14 years for firearms possession.
The Ulster Unionist Party held the majority of Northern Ireland seats in most elections for the Westminster Parliament between 1922 and 2001. Since then its representation has been low or non-existent, having been eclipsed by the Democratic Unionist Party. It always had an absolute majority in the Stormont Parliament (1921–1972); since that Parliament was replaced by the Northern Ireland Assembly it has had a substantial minority representation there. Its share of the vote in Northern Ireland local government elections has tended to diminish, so that there too it is no longer the largest party. Finally, the party has always held one of the three Northern Ireland seats in the European Parliament. Its share of the Northern Ireland vote in the most recent elections to these bodies has been between 10.5% and 16.1%.
The 2015 United Kingdom general election in Northern Ireland was held on 7 May 2015 and all 18 seats were contested. 1,236,765 people were eligible to vote, up 67,581 from the 2010 general election. 58.45% of eligible voters turned out, an increase of half a percentage point from the last general election. This election saw the return of Ulster Unionists to the House of Commons, after they targeted 4 seats but secured 2.
The 1979 United Kingdom general election in Northern Ireland was held on 3 May with 12 MPs elected in single-seat constituencies using first-past-the-post as part of the wider general election in the United Kingdom.
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