One of the biggest political casualties of the Northern Ireland peace process has been one of the two parties that consistently pursued peaceful politics shorn of any paramilitary taint.
The Social Democratic and Labour party (SDLP), along with the Alliance party – unlike the two main unionist parties, let alone Sinn Féin – never flirted with or exploited paramilitarism. Yet, when peace arrived and the prospect of power-sharing became a reality, the SDLP lost thousands of votes to Sinn Féin after the latter shifted towards the former's position of pursuing Irish unity through purely peaceful means. In effect, Sinn Féin engaged in a strategically brilliant form of political cross-dressing and stole the northern democratic clothing of the SDLP.
Sinn Féin is now the dominant party of nationalism in Northern Ireland and it is Sinn Féin that supplanted the SDLP as the voice of nationalists in the European parliament. Sinn Féin's lead over the SDLP appears at present to be unassailable both in the Northern Ireland assembly and the number of MPs each party has.
At present the SDLP is in a precarious hiatus, with the current leader, Mark Durkan, stepping down before the party's conference in February. There are two candidates to succeed him, both of whom face the sisyphean task of rescuing the SDLP's fortunes.
On Tuesday the second of the candidates to enter the fray launched his campaign inside the Old Museum Arts Centre in central Belfast.
Alasdair McDonnell, the MP for South Belfast, pointed out that the building in which his supporters in the party and the media were gathered was just a few doors down from another, where the party had been founded 39 years earlier. The SDLP – born out of the Northern Irish civil rights movement – could be "reborn" again, McDonnell promised.
McDonnell is in a strong position because against the general trend he has been on the winning side for the SDLP. In 2005, a year when pundits predicted the final demise of the party post-John Hume, McDonnell scored a historic first by snatching the South Belfast Westminster seat from the unionists. With a split unionist vote (the Ulster Unionists and Democratic Unionists squabbling with each other), McDonnell seized the seat that had been in unionist hands since the foundation of Northern Ireland.
Given that unionism remains split within the constituency, even more so with the Tory-Ulster Unionist alliance, McDonnell stands a real chance of retaining the seat in the forthcoming general election, which must be held before 3 June.
His only rival to succeed Durkan is also an extremely strong candidate, however: Northern Ireland's social development minister, Margaret Ritchie.
Like McDonnell, Ritchie is based in a constituency where the SDLP is strong and has returned an MP to Westminster since the defeat of Enoch Powell in South Down. In addition, Ritchie has proved her mettle as a minister in the power-sharing executive, especially in her stance in standing up to UDA/loyalist-linked community groups from which she withdrew funding when the terror group re-engaged in street violence.
Ritchie even managed to gain a standing ovation from the Ulster Unionists at their annual conference two years ago, when she outlined her reasons why she was prepared to take on the UDA over their continued involvement in violence and criminality.
McDonnell has one advantage over his only rival – he is not a minister in the devolved government. His supporters argue that being solely an MP he has more time to project the SDLP's message of unity through consent across chambers, parliaments and areas of influence far beyond the relatively parochial Northern Ireland assembly.
They contend that McDonnell can continue the tradition of John Hume, who travelled the world to internationalise the SDLP's message and won support in Dublin, London, Washington DC and Strasbourg.
Yet whichever candidate wins the SDLP's first ever leadership contest the victor faces another long-term dilemma.
Even leaving aside the seemingly immutable position of Sinn Féin as No 1 nationalist party in the north of Ireland, the SDLP has to decide whether it remains a six-county based party or throws in its lot with one of the bigger all-Ireland parties represented in Dáil Eireann. Up until the recession that has crippled the Republic of Ireland's economy, the favoured option of SDLP rank and file was to link up with Fianna Fáil, the dominant nationalist party throughout the island and arguably the most durably successful political movement in western Europe.
Two years ago the Observer polled SDLP delegates at their annual conference about their attitudes to a merger with Fianna Fáil. It found that a large majority backed such a formal coalition.
The problem for the pro-Fianna Fáil faction inside the SDLP is that the former party is no longer the popular force it once was. Over the last 18 months, Fianna Fáil's support in opinion polls and local and European elections has plunged as southern Irish voters blamed the party for wasting the national wealth generated by the now deceased Celtic tiger.
Whoever picks up the baton from Mark Durkan has to make a massive decision on how to reposition the SDLP throughout the island and save the party from being rendered irrelevant.
• A new edition of Henry McDonald's Gunsmoke and Mirrors: How Sinn Féin Dressed up Defeat as Victory is published this month by Gill & Macmillan
Comments in chronological order (Total 1 comment)
29 October 2009 3:09PM
You have to take anything Henry McDonald writes about with a bucket of salt. Didn't good Henry several years ago write about Irish republicans going about the West Bank causing trouble. Even the Israelis discounted that fairytale quickly enough although the British press, led by Henry, lapped it up for a few days.