‘This is going to be close’: Sinn Féin’s John Finucane facing tight battle in North Belfast

On Monday evenings John Finucane is usually on a GAA pitch training with his club in Belfast.

“Right now I should be probably be bent over struggling to get a breath after a horrible running session,” the Lamh Dhearg goalkeeper jokes.

Instead, he and his Sinn Féin election team are weaving their way through a maze of houses in a suburban development in the North Belfast hinterland of Newtownabbey knocking on doors and urging residents to vote.

With just three days to go until the Westminster poll, Finucane, the incumbent in North Belfast, is “taking nothing for granted” despite his historic defeat of the DUP’s Nigel Dodds five years ago.

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In Hollybrook Court, a pristine cul-de-sac built in the early 1990s, a young man getting out of a car makes a bolt for his front door when he spots the canvassers.

“I’m not voting,” he says, head down.

Concerns about voter apathy and its impact on turnout have dogged this election campaign in Northern Ireland.

“People in the media are calling it a flat election but I’m not getting it,” says Finucane. “But we’ll see on Thursday.”

The 44-year-old solicitor was just eight-years-old when his father, solicitor Pat Finucane, was shot dead by loyalist paramilitaries in 1989.

Undoubtedly the standout success story of the 2019 general election for Sinn Féin, masking an overall disappointing performance, Finucane has become one of the party’s most high-profile and polished representatives. But in the leafy Hollybrook avenues, he is the first to admit that his winning margin of just over 1,900 votes “is very small in election terms”.

After two more door knocks in an area that has become part of the North Belfast constituency following recent boundary changes, a woman dressed in velour lounge wear assures him she “normally votes Sinn Féin”.

Unaware that she has to go to a different polling station on July 4th, she adds that “she’ll drag her boys out” to vote.

“Drag everybody, this is going to be close,” Finucane tells her.

In the so-called Brexit election in 2019, the SDLP did not run a candidate in North Belfast as part of the pro-Remain pact between the two nationalist parties. However, local SDLP Cllr Carl Whyte is now standing while Alliance is once again fielding Nuala McAllister, who won 4,824 votes in the previous poll.

DUP MLA Philip Brett, who sits on the more moderate side of the party, will be Finucane’s main unionist competition in a constituency criss-crossed by sectarian interfaces in working-class areas.

Walking past neat hedges and front gardens filled with children’s swings and trampolines, a resident runs out of his house and shouts Finucane’s name.

“Sorry John, my young lad didn’t answer the door there, he didn’t realise,” says Harry Gibson.

Stretching his hand out to Finucane, he adds: “You have my vote, mate.”

Gibson is originally from the nationalist New Lodge area of North Belfast and moved to Hollybrook 17 years ago.

“I’ve voted Sinn Féin all my life and want a united Ireland,” he says.

However, he assumes that Finucane’s seat is guaranteed following his ousting of Dodds, who had held the seat for 18 years and was the then DUP deputy leader. But Finucane tells him this isn’t the case.

“Are you serious?” he replies.

Around the corner, 20-year-old Oisín Quinn is getting ready to go to the gym when he answers the door. Dressed in a Kerry GAA top, he admits he did not vote in last year’s council election.

He and Finucane strike up a conversation about the previous day’s clash between Derry and Kerry before talk of Thursday’s poll comes up.

Quinn tells him he’ll vote: “I didn’t vote last year but I’ve been convinced now ... I suppose it’s just the fact that every vote counts. It’ll make a big difference, everyone coming out.”

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