Standing in front of the bright yellow Alliance backdrop, speaker after speaker emphasises that Northern Ireland was no longer coloured only orange and green.
“We are not the cross-community party, but the all-community party,” says Helena Young to cheers from delegates at the party’s conference on Saturday.
Young is standing for election to Newry City Council in May’s local government elections. If successful, she says, she will “end the drought” that has not seen an Alliance councillor elected in Newry for 50 years.
Alliance finds itself in a place now where it can target seats that would have been regarded as unattainable only a few years ago. The is a clear confidence about the party; to quote one commentator, it has its “tail up”.
The east Belfast hotel where Alliance is gathered on Saturday morning is packed, with many standing at the back of the room so they can follow the biggest conference the party has ever had.
Present are not just delegates and elected representatives, but everyone from children, who play with guide dogs and seek out goodie bags; and youth members; to some of those who founded the party just over 50 years ago. Back then, such success seemed a far-off dream, a long-term aspiration, but since the “Alliance surge” of 2019, that dream is increasingly being realised.
“It felt like a genuine moment, a break in the clouds”, says Michelle Guy, a councillor in Lisburn and Castlereagh.
We have shown that far from being a niche position, nonaligned voters now represent a fifth of the Assembly. Alliance is the third-largest party, the same size as the UUP and SDLP combined
— Naomi Long
That year, three elections – local government, European and Westminster – saw it add 21 council seats; elect its party leader, Naomi Long, as an MEP with 18.5 per cent of the vote; and increase its vote share in the Westminster elections to 16.8 per cent – the third-highest behind the DUP and Sinn Féin.
It has since consolidated this position. In last May’s Assembly election Alliance had a “stunning” result that saw it more than double its representation at Stormont to 17 MLAs – the “Magic 17″ pictured in the conference booklet.
“We have shown that far from being a niche position, nonaligned voters now represent a fifth of the Assembly,” says Long during her conference speech. “Alliance is the third-largest party, the same size as the UUP and SDLP combined.”
Now, the drive is on to capitalise on this momentum in this May’s elections, and beyond, with all those present aware that a good result at council level will lay the groundwork for future growth in the Assembly and at Westminster.
In May the party is aiming to increase its representation in councils where it already has a significant number of councillors, such as North Down and Belfast, as well as expanding further into areas west of the Bann where it has traditionally struggled.
In the next few weeks it will open a party office in Derry, its first since the 1970s, and one is planned for the west of Northern Ireland.
“This is not a dream any more,” says Rachael Ferguson, who sits on Derry City and Strabane District Council. “We will continue to show how committed Alliance is to further growth in the west.”
A particular target is Mid Ulster, the only one of the North’s 11 council areas that has no Alliance representative.
“I’m looking to you Mid Ulster to make the breakthrough and make it a clean sweep,” says Long “As a keen Pokémon Go player, you know my mantra – you gotta catch ‘em all!”
That Alliance will improve on its 2019 position, when it took 11.5 per cent of the vote and gained 21 to take it to 54 council seats, is not in doubt; the question is how many it might add.
It will certainly seek to overtake the SDLP, which lost seats last time round and is only six ahead, and potentially the UUP, on 75. The extent to which it can grow will be dependent on how successfully it can cut into both parties’ votes.
[ All-party talks about reform of Stormont needed to end deadlock, Naomi Long saysOpens in new window ]
Privately, Alliance would like to break into the 70s or even the 80s on a really good day, and in recent times it has been no stranger to these.
Its success has strengthened the party’s call for reform of the North’s political institutions, a point made strongly in Long’s conference speech and something it is understood to be exploring the possibility of challenging through the courts.
Long says that, with 18 out of 90 MLAs now designating as “other” rather than nationalist or unionist, it is no longer acceptable that, under the cross-community system of voting on key issues, those so-called “others” should “count for less than everyone else”.
The growth of Alliance, she says, “simply makes the inherent inequality and discrimination more glaring”.
“Not only is it not acceptable, it might well be unlawful, and we are willing to put that to the test if we have to.”
Reform, she says, will strengthen the political institutions – a long-held Alliance position. “Irrespective of whether the DUP decide that it’s in their own party-political interests to return to Stormont, for we know that’s all that matters to them, the current system of stop-go, up-down, ransom politics needs to end,” she says.
For the meantime, Alliance continues to build; there is a standing ovation for one of the party’s founders, Jim Hendron, when Long announces during her speech that the party’s new offices – due to open shortly in Glengormley – will be called Hendron House.
The message, as articulated by Michelle Guy, is re-emphasised by speaker after speaker: “Please folks, get out there and support our candidates. The base we built in 2019 was the foundation for everything that followed,” says Guy. We need to go again, because as much as we have achieved, it’s not enough ... get out there now, and make sure we get a second surge in 2023.”
