The Troubles: Ireland's Ordeal 1966–1995 and the Search for Peace

by Tim Pat Coogan

The principle of adult suffrage – that is, one man, one vote – was severely distorted in Six County elections. The electoral methodology employed will shortly be described, but here it should be noted that, bearing in mind the fact that most business and property was owned by Protestants, although long abolished in England both business and property votes still counted in local elections when Austin Currie entered Parliament. The general vote was confined to the occupier of a house and his wife. Occupiers’ children over twenty-one, and any servants or subtenants in a house, were excluded from the local franchise. Austin Currie explained how the system worked and how it affected him as a young MP: Housing was the key to the vote. The vote at local government elections was restricted to property owners and their spouses. Or to tenants of public authority houses and their spouses. I was an MP at Stormont. I could just as well have been an MP at Westminster. I had a vote in general elections to either Stormont or Westminster. But I did not have a vote in local elections to elect councillors because I wasn’t married and lived at home with my mother and father. My mother and father were the only two in our large household who had a vote in council elections. The purpose of the exercise was to ensure that Unionists had continued supremacy in the areas where in fact they were in the minority. Places like Derry, Armagh, Dungannon, Enniskillen and so on. This was the only way in whi...