15 April 1999 Edition
SDLP crash in the fast lane
``Sunningdale for slow learners'' was the quip that the SDLP's Seamus Mallon used to describe the Good Friday Agreement and the Assembly created out of it. As the talks begin again at Stormont this week, it seems that it is the SDLP who never learn. Their support for the Hillsborough Declaration is being shown up as playing into the hands of the Ulster Unionists and the two governments who, rather than actually implement the Agreement, have taken the secondary road of victimising Sinn Féin and magnifying the decommissioning issue completely out of proportion to the other elements of the agreement.
This uneven and biased view of the state of play in the implementation of the agreement was mirrored this week by SDLP senior negotiator and North Antrim Assembly member Seán Farren. Writing in the Irish Times, Farren made the incredible assertion that: ``When progress on the overall implementation of the Good Friday Agreement is measured, it is clear that the only issue on which nothing has happened is the decommissioning of paramilitary arms''.
Where are the all-Ireland bodies, the Intergovernmental Conference, the British-Irish Council, the reform of the RUC, and movement on cultural and human rights, as well as the Executive. These bodies should have been set up last October yet the unionists have dithered and blocked every move towards the implementation of these parts of the agreement. The two governments and the SDLP have facilitated this process by not standing up to the Ulster Unionists. They have as usual bowed to the unionist veto.
If Seamus Mallon and Seán Farren don't want to take on board the advice of Sinn Féin, maybe they should listen to the Alliance Party's Seamus Close. He said this week that the wording of the Declaration had created the potential for the Good Friday Agreement to unravel. Monica McWilliams of the Women's Coalition said that her party had been misled by the two governments on the level of cross party support for the Hillsborough Declaration.
What the SDLP need to do is to recognise the dead end that the Hillsborough Declaration is and that maybe this time the slow learners had it right. Life in the fast lane is not all its cracked up to be.
This uneven and biased view of the state of play in the implementation of the agreement was mirrored this week by SDLP senior negotiator and North Antrim Assembly member Seán Farren. Writing in the Irish Times, Farren made the incredible assertion that: ``When progress on the overall implementation of the Good Friday Agreement is measured, it is clear that the only issue on which nothing has happened is the decommissioning of paramilitary arms''.
Where are the all-Ireland bodies, the Intergovernmental Conference, the British-Irish Council, the reform of the RUC, and movement on cultural and human rights, as well as the Executive. These bodies should have been set up last October yet the unionists have dithered and blocked every move towards the implementation of these parts of the agreement. The two governments and the SDLP have facilitated this process by not standing up to the Ulster Unionists. They have as usual bowed to the unionist veto.
If Seamus Mallon and Seán Farren don't want to take on board the advice of Sinn Féin, maybe they should listen to the Alliance Party's Seamus Close. He said this week that the wording of the Declaration had created the potential for the Good Friday Agreement to unravel. Monica McWilliams of the Women's Coalition said that her party had been misled by the two governments on the level of cross party support for the Hillsborough Declaration.
What the SDLP need to do is to recognise the dead end that the Hillsborough Declaration is and that maybe this time the slow learners had it right. Life in the fast lane is not all its cracked up to be.