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| DUP | V/UUUP | UUP | U(P)/UPNI | Oth U | Alliance | Lib | Oth | Lab | WP/RC | SDLP | |
| 84ab | u/o | ||||||||||
| 82a | 16.6%* | 0.9% | 46.3%*** | 0.2% | 24.0%* | 0.2% | 0.5% | 2.5% | 8.9% | ||
| 82wb | 22.6% | 39.3% | 1.3% | 26.9% | 0.3% | 0.7% | 8.8% | ||||
| 79w | 61.4% | 3.8% | 25.0% | 1.8% | 7.9% | ||||||
| 75cc | 8.0%* | 9.0%* | 40.3%** | 11.0% | 21.9%** | 3.3% | 6.4% | ||||
| 74wo | 59.2% | 9.8% | 23.0% | 3.2% | 4.7% | ||||||
| 74wf | 42.6% | 34.9% | 9.9% | 4.7% | 8.0% | ||||||
| 73a | 12.8%* | 6.9% | 44.9%**** | 7.1% | 14.3%* | 1.0% | 5.1% | 1.5% | 6.3% |
Frank Millar (UUP) elected unopposed
The by-election was caused by the IRA's assassination of Edgar Graham of the UUP on 7 December 1983.
| *Martin Smyth MP (UUP) 13,337 David Cook (Alliance) 6,514 Raymond McCrea (DUP) 4,091 Ben Caraher (SDLP) 3,342 Edgar Graham (UUP) 2,875 *Basil Glass (Alliance) 2,493 Cedric Wilson (DUP) 2,111 Thomas Kirkpatrick (UUP) 1,126 Gerard Carr (WP) 933 Philip Moles (UUUP) 248 Barry Bruton (Comm) 168 James Scott (UUUP) 82 William Clulow (One Honest Man, Steadfast) 65 Michael Warden (Liberal) 65 Simon Hall-Raleigh (Peace) 19 |
Votes by party: UUP 17,338 (46.3%) 3 seats (2.8 quotas) best result for UUP in Northern Ireland Alliance 9,007 (24.0%) 1 seat (1.4 quotas) best result for Alliance in Northern Ireland DUP 6,202 (16.6%) 1 seat (1.0 quotas) SDLP 3,342 (8.9%, 0.5 quotas) WP 933 (2.5%, 0.1 quotas) UUUP 330 (0.9%, 0.1 quotas) Communist 168 (0.4%, 0.03 quotas) Liberal 65 (0.2%, 0.01 quotas) One Honest Man, Steadfast 65 (0.2%, 0.01 quotas) Peace 19 (0.1%, 0.003 quotas) Electorate: 66,683 |
* Elected to the 1975 Constitutional Convention
Compared with 1975, South Belfast went down from six seats to five. Alliance effectively lost the missing seat, while the UUP gained the seat won by David Trimble for Vanguard in 1975.
Thomas Kirkpatrick won the last seat with 5416 votes to 4712 for Ben Caraher of the SDLP, after the elimination of Alliance's Basil Glass. On the penultimate count, Glass had had 3293 votes to Caraher's 3741, with Cook's surplus of almost 300 votes still undistributed; if Glass had had 250 more votes, he would probably have been elected on transfers from Cook and Caraher. Warden's candidacy was endorsed without much enthusiasm by the remnants of the Ulster Liberal Party but not by Liberal Party HQ in London.
Martin
Smyth (UUP) 17,123 (39.3%)
David Cook (Alliance) 11,726 (26.9%)
William McCrea (DUP) 9,818 (22.6%)
Alasdair McDonnell (SDLP) 3,839 (8.8%)
John McMichael (Ulster Loyalist Democratic Party) 576 (1.3%)
Brian Caul (United Labour Party) 303 (0.7%)
Jagat Narain (One Human Family) 137 (0.3%)
Simon Hall-Raleigh (Peace State) 12 (0.03%)
Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) majority: 5,397; Electorate 66,219; Turnout: 66.2%
The by-election had been caused by the IRA's assassination on 14 November 1981 of Robert Bradford, UUP (previously Vanguard) MP for South Belfast since February 1974. This was a crucially important election, marking the first setback for the DUP after their success in winning three seats in the 1979 Westminster election, Paisley's triumph in the European election the same year, and their slight but psychologically important edge over the UUP in the 1981 local elections.
Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) majority: 17,130; Electorate: 68,946; Turnout: 68.0% A slight erosion of the UUP vote, hardly surprising where the outcome appeared a foregone conclusion.
| Martin Smyth (UUP-UUUC) 15,061 *Basil Glass (Alliance) 7,961 Jeremy Burchill (UUP-UUUC) 4,230 *Reginald Magee (UPNI) 3,552 Ben Caraher (SDLP) 3,065 *Thomas Burns (DUP-UUUC) 2,529 Jim Hendron (Alliance) 2,499 David Trimble (VUP-UUUC)) 2,429 Raymond Jordan (VUP-UUUC) 1,874 John Houston (UPNI) 1,697 Erskine Holmes (NILP) 1,599 Robert MacNeice (DUP-UUUC) 1,316 |
Vote by party: [UUUC got 27,529 votes (57.4%) and won 4 seats (4.0 quotas)] UUP-UUUC 19,381 (40.3%) 2 seats (2.8 quotas) best result for UUP in Northern Ireland Alliance 10,460 (21.9%) 2 seats (1.5 quotas) UPNI 5,249 (11.0%, 0.8 quotas) VUP-UUUC 4,303 (9.0%) 1 seat (0.6 quotas) DUP-UUUC 3,845 (8.0%) 1 seat (0.6 quotas) SDLP 3,065 (6.4%, 0.4 quotas) NILP 1,599 (3.3%, 0.2 quotas) Electorate: 73,324 |
* member of the 1973 Assembly
The four seats won by pro-White Paper Unionists in 1973 divided three to the UUUC and one to the Alliance Party. The only one of the four who was standing again, Reginald Magee who was now in the UPNI, narrowly lost to Thomas Burns of the DUP on the last count by 6514 votes to 6448. The UUP had almost three quotas, but only two candidates, and their coalition partners benefited from the transfers.
Vanguard Unionist Progressive Party (VUPP - UUUC) majority: 18,401; Electorate: 75,147; Turnout: 67.9%
* sitting MP
A considerable consolidation for Bradford, and to a certain extent for Alliance also.
Vanguard Unionist Progressive Party (VUPP - UUUC) majority: 3,998; Electorate: 74,534; Turnout: 69.8%
* sitting MP
One of the constituencies where a split pro-Assembly vote allowed the UUUC to win; Bradford's majority was less than a third the combined vote for the three smaller party candidates.
| *Basil McIvor (UUP, pro-White Paper)
6,930 *Herbert Kirk (UUP, pro-White Paper) 5,426 Basil Glass (Alliance) 5,148 $Nelson Elder (UUP, pro-White Paper) 4,807 Thomas Burns (DUP) 4,640 Reginald Magee (UUP, pro-White Paper) 3,656 Ben Caraher (SDLP) 3,320 Robert Stewart (UUP, pro-White Paper) 2,850 Erskine Holmes (NILP) 2,684 Grace Bannister (Ind U) 2,538 Marvin Gowdy (Vanguard) 2,434 Thomas Wright (DUP) 2,134 William McCollum (Alliance) 1,294 Stanley Morgan (Vanguard) 1,205 Thomas Rea (Ind U) 1,201 Sean Flynn (Rep Clubs) 783 Jean Graham (Alliance) 743 Sheelagh Murnaghan (Liberal) 548 John Sommerville (Alliance) 380 |
Votes by party: UUP (pro-White Paper) 23,669 (44.9%) 4 seats (3.1 quotas) Alliance 7,565 (14.3%) 1 seat (1.0 quotas) DUP 6,774 (12.8%) 1 seat (0.9 quotas) Ind U's 3,739 (7.1%, 0.5 quotas) Vanguard 3,639 (6.9%, 0.5 quotas) SDLP 3,320 (6.3%, 0.4 quotas) NILP 2,684 (5.1%, 0.4 quotas) Rep Clubs 783 (1.5%, 0.1 quotas) Liberal 548 (1.0%, 0.1 quotas) Electorate: 75,990 |
* Member of
the Northern Ireland House of Commons when it was dissolved.
$ Member of the Northern Ireland Senate
when
it was dissolved.
Murnaghan had also been a Stormont MP from 1961 to 1968 representing Queen's University.
The pro-White Paper Unionists managed to get four seats despite having only a little more than three quotas. They were able to pull in transfers from both the half-quota cast for independent Unionists and the final transfers from Vanguard once the DUP candidate had been elected, and Reginald Magee finished on 6690, far ahead of the SDLP's Ben Caraher on 5038, with another 500 undistributed Unionist surplus votes to be taken into account.
Basil McIvor became Minister of Education in the power-sharing Executive.
See also:
Results from 1973 to 1982 for each seat: East Belfast | North Belfast | South Belfast | West Belfast | North Antrim | South Antrim | Armagh | North Down | South Down | Fermanagh and South Tyrone | Londonderry | Mid Ulster
Other sites based at ARK: ORB (Online Research Bank) | CAIN (Conflict Archive on the INternet) | Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey
Your comments, please! Send an email to me at nicholas.whyte@gmail.com.
Nicholas Whyte, 25 March 2003.
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Disclaimer:© Nicholas Whyte 1998-2004 Last
Updated on
Wednesday, 12-Jan-2005
12:12
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