WITH THE LOCAL elections in Northern Ireland only days away, a familiar theme has reared its head among many of the political parties.
There has been a spate of recent incidents of candidate posters being stolen, vandalised, and defaced.
In one instance, Ulster Unionist Party candidate Julie-Anne Corr Johnston had her face cut out from the poster.
“I live in the area and my kids are asking why people want to cut mummy’s face,” the UUP candidate tweeted.
I'm done with this sh*t. I live in the area and my kids are asking why people want to cut mummy's face. I won't be replacing them or putting any more up. pic.twitter.com/1bb64gt2gK
— Corr-Johnston (@JulieACorr) May 2, 2023
Speaking to The Journal, first-time Alliance party candidate Padraic Farrell revealed there’s been several incidents in which his posters have been removed.
Based in Magherafelt in Co Derry, Farrell said of the stolen posters: “Although 90% of the time it’s not personal, it is your face on the poster and it does start to feel a bit, ‘what have I done to deserve that?’”
As a first-time candidate as well, Farrell said it is “disheartening to get your posters taken down before you even start”.
He said the “one good story that has come from this” is that the local GAA team replaced posters on his behalf when some were recently taken down.
“It was nice to hear that parts of the community want to help and want to see representatives out there.”
Farrell has a disability and is a full-time wheelchair user, which makes the removal of posters a more pressing issue.
“As a disabled candidate, it leaves me having to ask other people to place them up again for me, which isn’t ideal,” said Farrell.
“A lot of other candidates, they see a poster down and they can go up themselves to replace it, but I have to wait until somebody comes to help me to put it up, which is just an extra bit of burden when it comes to getting them removed.
“But luckily, I have a nice team behind me and a nice community in Magherafelt that have been more than helpful in getting them back up for me.”
Farrell said it’s a “hassle having posters removed”.
“Where you might have gone to knock on a few doors, you might have to go and fix your poster for 20 minutes.”
The Alliance candidate adds that his family can be impacted by the issue more than he is.
“My family are naturally a bit more protective of me and they have been taking it a wee bit harder than probably even I have.
“Your family sticks by you and I think as a disabled candidate, whenever they see people removing posters, it becomes quite personal to them as well.
“They try not to let it bother them too much, but at the end of the day, we’re all only human and things can get to you.”
While Farrell told The Journal that some of his posters have been removed by people who were “just up to no good”, he warned that “there have been more serious incidents”.
“There have been cases where things have been written on posters to quite clearly tell you why they’ve taken down the poster, because they have disdain for either the candidate or the party.
“More likely, it’s just the party rather than the candidate, although as a candidate it is hard to tell yourself that it’s not really you they are going after, it’s the party.
But I have seen a few different homophobic and sectarian ones for candidates in other areas.”
However, Farrell told The Journal that in Magherafelt, the incidents involving him “seems to be just people doing it out of boredom and antisocial behaviour, rather than anything too malicious”.
English voters went to the polls for their local elections, where poster interference isn’t an issue.
“We in the North seem to be quite desensitised to the abuse,” said Farrell, “which sort of goes to show you just how much there is.
“It shouldn’t be the case that people feel they can, without really any consequences, get away with removing posters or in more extreme cases, doing things such as crossing out eyes and potential threats.”
The SDLP’s Paul Shevlin, a candidate from Coleraine, acknowledged that “toxicity does increase during election seasons, there’s no doubt about that”.
He told The Journal that it’s “symptomatic of issues we still have here”.
Shevlin added it “seems to be a problem in our party in general”.
“I haven’t really publicly posted about it,” said Shevlin, “because in general terms, I take the line sometimes that they are just posters and there is more important stuff going on here and it’s almost like it’s to be expected.
“But what I have personally experienced is a number of my posters have been torn down and dumped.
“A couple have been stolen, one has been ripped to shreds and left on the road in pieces, and then another one was pulled down and my eyes were poked out and a cut was made across my throat in the picture.
“Whenever it’s your face and someone is doing things like that to it, it’s not a nice feeling, but I just try to look at the bigger picture and see that they are just posters.”
Like Farrell, Shevlin told The Journal that the impact on his family has been greater than it has been on him.
“My wife and my family look at that and it makes them deeply uncomfortable and possibly even worried.”
However, he added that it’s “important to keep this in perspective”.
“There’s two parts to this, I suppose,” said Shevlin.
“It’s not something we should have to put up with, but I suppose it’s also important to keep in mind perspective on it as well.
“Nobody likes a personal attack and nobody wants to have a picture of themselves vandalised or destroyed or horrible things written on it, that’s absolutely key here and should be stopped.
“But I would just keep coming back to the idea that while it’s not something we want to see continue, we just need to keep this in perspective as to what it is.
“It’s not nice and it’s a horrible feeling but it’s a piece of cardboard being torn off a lamppost in comparison to some of the political problems we have, with the executive not functioning and the cost of living crisis.”
Shevlin said the issue with posters “can be a bit of a drop in the ocean when we compare it to that” and added: “I’m completely in solidarity with those that are incredibly upset when it happens to them, but I also see the point whenever people note that there are more pressing issues.”
He also noted that “poster placement can also sometimes be politically motivated”.
“I personally believe every party should be able to put their posters anywhere, there should be no ‘no-go areas’ as it were,” said Shevlin, “but I think there’s also some realism that also needs to be injected into the conversations.
“For example, there’s maybe certain areas of Belfast where a certain party wouldn’t put their posters because there would be an understanding that they would not last very long.”
The SDLP candidate also told The Journal that “these problems go far beyond posters”.
“Bottom line, it’s symptomatic of deeper issues that we have and we need to tackle those issues in a different way.
“We can complain about posters all we want, but England for example doesn’t have these problems because they never had the political based conflict that we had here.
“The way to deal with this in general is a continuation of the peace process, continuing the healing process that we need to go through to tackle the deep roots of these problems.”
He added that “a lot of this comes down to our young people and education and providing them with opportunities”.
“I think a lot of young people in some of these areas where posters will be vandalised and torn down, a lot of them get involved in these sorts of activities because there’s nothing else for them to do.
“There’s no opportunities, no jobs, no investment in them, which is something myself and my party wants to do in local councils, making sure that money gets to kids in low income areas in order to prove opportunities and hopefully nip this sort of sectarian development in the bud.”
Meanwhile, both Farrell and Shevlin exhibited an interest in moving away from posters for environmental purposes.
“In general, I’m not a fan of posters even going up in the first place,” the SDLP’s Shevlin told The Journal.
“I’m sure they’re very frustrating and annoying for people in general to look at.”
Shevlin noted that such posters are used because “we have a voting system based on proportional representation and single transferable vote”.
“You could have 15 different parties, and as many if not even more candidates running,” said Shevlin.
“This is the reason they are used, simply to identify candidates in a sea of them.”
However, Shevlin noted that Northern Ireland isn’t the only region to use this voting system and that other countries that use this system have other ways of getting exposure for candidates.
“There’s some countries for example that will have designated spots in certain towns or public places, and there’ll be a wall where political candidates can come and put their pictures and put copies of their manifestos in a specific place,” said Shevlin.
“Those who are politically minded can go to these places and see who’s who and it means the rest of the countryside and the rest of the urban spaces aren’t littered with posters.
“I would like to see us move in a direction where we don’t have to use them because it’s an environmental nightmare and many times, because of the vandalism, they’re being dumped and not found or being thrown into rivers.
“There’s a huge environmental argument, aside from the fact that they are also targets for vandalism and also an eyesore whenever driving along some scenic routes.”
While Shevlin told The Journal that “we’re not anywhere near there yet”, he added that this is something he would raise if he were to be elected.
Alliance party candidate Padraic Farrell also put forth a suggestion of the council “posting a letter to everyone in the electoral area with the names and a little bit of detail about the candidates, rather than putting up posters all the time”.
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