SF called out on attempt to spin voter update into sinister purge
The party’s boycott of Northern Ireland’s most popular radio show doesn’t mean it escapes scrutiny, writes
IT is a year since a Sinn Féin politician appeared as an interviewee on BBC Northern Ireland’s The Nolan Show.
The programme which led to the boycott by Sinn Féin covered the murder of 21-year-old Paul Quinn — beaten to death by IRA members in a shed in 2007. Sinn Féin supporters went ballistic online and the party has refused to put anyone on the programme since.
Stephen Nolan has broad shoulders, though that doesn’t mean the rest of us have to turn a blind eye to the regular online abuse he has taken from people on what appears, on the face of it, a lengthy online campaign to attempt to force the BBC to cancel the programme.
Full disclosure: I have appeared often as a commentator on Nolan on a range of topics.
I am not the only person who notices the abuse, though. Just last week, the Belfast branch of the NUJ also condemned online trolling of the team. And though Sinn Féin cannot be blamed for every abusive troll, the party approach taken to the programme appears to have emboldened others to target the broadcaster online.
All politicians have fallen out with Nolan at one time or another — the DUP famously boycotted the show after its coverage of the Renewable Heat Incentive inquiry, though it has since relented. In another part of the world, such antics by politicians would attract stringent criticism. Trump’s treatment of journalists, which transcended politics and became personal, is well documented. In the North, Shinners have so far escaped on-record interviews about similar tactics.
Nolan has reported on every scandal to befall political parties for years without fear or favour, and his is the most listened to programme in Northern Ireland. Sinn Féin’s refusal to participate because it doesn’t like his line of questioning sets a dangerous precedent for democracy and is unbefitting of a party in government on one side of this island. Thankfully, its boycott does not mean it escapes the scrutiny applied to other political parties who do engage.
Last week, Nolan covered a recent Sinn Féin internet video accusing the British government of “planning a mass purge of voters in the North”. Retweeted by Michelle O’Neill, the party made a number of baseless claims, among them the charge that a simple exercise in updating the electoral register — legally required every 10 years — was a “blatant attempt to suppress the voice of citizens in next year’s historic assembly election”.
This was accompanied by emotive scenes of medics in Covid wards, and historic images of protesters being hit with RUC batons.
Unusually for the Northern Ireland Office, it hit back at the party on Twitter.
“This is not true,” it countered. “Canvass is not about removing people, but ensuring the register is as accurate as possible. Registering to vote is fundamental to the democratic process, and people cannot remain on the Northern Ireland register indefinitely without refreshing their registration.”
Other political parties weighed in, with Alliance Party leader Naomi Long stating, “Framing this as a purge is inflammatory nonsense”, and DUP MP Gavin Robinson calling the claims something “that would make Donald Trump blush.” First Minister Arlene Foster has now written to Facebook and Twitter to remove the video, calling it a “misinformation campaign”.
On one hand, it is easy to see why Sinn Féin spun a properly legitimate exercise in electoral democracy into something more sinister in order to galvanise its voters to register on the electoral roll. On the other, it opened the party up to ridicule on the internet, and in the media.
Historically, Northern
Ireland has had a problem across the board with voter personation. Former chief electoral officer Pat Bradley was reported in the Belfast Telegraph in 2017 confirming the issue was “a problem here from time immemorial”. Sinn Féin faced accusations for decades that it was a beneficiary of “voting early and often” — though it obviously denies this is the case. Perhaps the funniest response to the party’s video was the tweet: “Voters will be turning in their graves.”
There is a serious side. In 2013, the last time this exercise was carried out, 60,000 people were removed from the updated electoral register, including those who could not be verified, or failed to respond to repeated communication from the electoral office. Voters had the opportunity to take personal responsibility and rectify this by simply registering, and many did so. This year, the public will have until July to update their details.
Sinn Féin has framed the removal of unverified data from the register as denying people the right to vote. It is hard to see how the party can continue to peddle this claim with a straight face.
Notably, Mary Lou McDonald has not retweeted her party’s video.
Does she agree with her Northern counterparts that the British government is engaged in an exercise to deliberately suppress votes ahead of an election? Or rather, that it is vital to democracy that Northern Ireland has the most accurate and up-to-date information on the electoral roll to combat the potential for voter fraud?
What is her view on the media and its role in holding political parties to account in a democracy? Perhaps she could answer by ending her party’s boycott of Nolan and allowing herself to be interviewed. I won’t hold my breath.
‘Notably, Mary Lou McDonald has not retweeted her party’s video’