Ulster: Four-way election battle will go to the wire

Sinn Fein’s Fermanagh and South Tyrone candidate Michelle Gildernew has seized upon the IRA hunger striker’s stunning victory in the 1981 by-election as a template for republican success.

‘‘That reminds me a lot of the campaign to elect Bobby Sands,’’ she says, pointing to the vandalised front of the Bobby Sands memorial offices .