15 November 2001 Edition
Same old SDLP
BY FERN LANE
Shortly after newly sworn-in Deputy First Minister, Mark Durkan, told the SDLP conference last Sunday that the party would ensure an end to plastic bullets, the RUC - sorry the PSNI - fired a number of them at a nationalist crowd, injuring an 11-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl in the process. It also emerged that, as outgoing leader John Hume urged young nationalists to join the force and as the SDLP itself happily prepares to participate in the policing board, the RUC was stockpiling some £50,000 worth of plastic bullets for future use. So much for new beginnings.
The SDLP's conference was also heralded as a new beginning for the party, the point at which its ailing electoral fortunes would begin to recover. But the new leadership consists of Durkan, the favoured son of the outgoing leader and entirely wedded to Hume's policies, and Brid Rogers, 66 years old and very much a part of the old guard. Not quite as new and young and dynamic as many, not least within the SDLP itself, were hoping.
While Durkan may have a nice line in cheeky political metaphor ("We never had a hardware counter when we set out our political stall"), such minor facility with words hardly amounts to the kind of radical, solid policies which will begin to attract the voters the SDLP needs to avoid political demise. The party has yet to understand that its core ideology of implicit submission to the demands of unionism, no matter how unreasonable and unjust, and not just as its profile as middle-aged, middle class, is what is alienating great tracts of voters in the Six Counties. In that sense, the new leadership is no different from the old, and having a 41-year-old leader is, in itself, unlikely to persuade the party's absent voters to return.
And as did John Hume, Durkan takes refuge in superficially laudable but essential meaningless platitudes. "The election [of the First and Deputy First Ministers] means that we can now get back to work for all the people of Northern Ireland," he told the BBC. "We can start to move forward. The people of Northern Ireland deserve to have local politicians in the Assembly looking after their needs. They deserve to have a fully functioning executive and Assembly. This week's developments mean that we can get back to the business of local people providing local solutions to local problems." There may nothing much to object to there but that is simply because this statement, like so many others, is rather vacuous. In his desire not to upset or threaten or offend unionists (note the use of the phrase "Northern Ireland"), Durkan actually says nothing.
The status of the SDLP as the acceptable face of Irish nationalism - acceptable, that is, to the British state and its unionist cohorts because it does not present any tangible threat to that hegemony - was confirmed by the appearance at the weekend's conference of Secretary of State John Reid, who used his speech to lavish praise on Hume and Mallon. A further indication of unionism's confidence that the SDLP can be successfully contained is the invitation to Durkan to address the North Down Unionist Association, an invitation which Durkan told his conference he has accepted. Whilst in itself this is not a bad thing, historically the SDLP has had a habit of allowing unionism to set the terms in such exchanges. It is undoubtedly true that almost all approaches from nationalists, whether the SDLP or republicans, are treated by unionists merely as validation of their own righteousness. The hand of friendship is not regarded with a little humility, nor does it give cause for reflection; in the mind of most unionists, such an act simply vindicates their own intractability.
The SDLP has consistently fed this attitude and under Durkan and Rogers will undoubtedly continue to do so, seeing its own role as placating unionism by urging nationalists to modify their own behaviour, rein in their own aspirations, rather than challenging the belligerence and unreason of so many unionists. The party also shows a fatal lack of imagination in its desire, repeated several times over the weekend, to put significant ideological distance between it and Sinn Féin.
Unfortunately - for the SDLP and its die-hard voters, that is - the only way that it can conceive to manage this feat is for the party to become, in essence, wet unionists. Those in the media who have been predicting a speedy end to the party's decline may be speaking too soon.
Shortly after newly sworn-in Deputy First Minister, Mark Durkan, told the SDLP conference last Sunday that the party would ensure an end to plastic bullets, the RUC - sorry the PSNI - fired a number of them at a nationalist crowd, injuring an 11-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl in the process. It also emerged that, as outgoing leader John Hume urged young nationalists to join the force and as the SDLP itself happily prepares to participate in the policing board, the RUC was stockpiling some £50,000 worth of plastic bullets for future use. So much for new beginnings.
The SDLP's conference was also heralded as a new beginning for the party, the point at which its ailing electoral fortunes would begin to recover. But the new leadership consists of Durkan, the favoured son of the outgoing leader and entirely wedded to Hume's policies, and Brid Rogers, 66 years old and very much a part of the old guard. Not quite as new and young and dynamic as many, not least within the SDLP itself, were hoping.
While Durkan may have a nice line in cheeky political metaphor ("We never had a hardware counter when we set out our political stall"), such minor facility with words hardly amounts to the kind of radical, solid policies which will begin to attract the voters the SDLP needs to avoid political demise. The party has yet to understand that its core ideology of implicit submission to the demands of unionism, no matter how unreasonable and unjust, and not just as its profile as middle-aged, middle class, is what is alienating great tracts of voters in the Six Counties. In that sense, the new leadership is no different from the old, and having a 41-year-old leader is, in itself, unlikely to persuade the party's absent voters to return.
And as did John Hume, Durkan takes refuge in superficially laudable but essential meaningless platitudes. "The election [of the First and Deputy First Ministers] means that we can now get back to work for all the people of Northern Ireland," he told the BBC. "We can start to move forward. The people of Northern Ireland deserve to have local politicians in the Assembly looking after their needs. They deserve to have a fully functioning executive and Assembly. This week's developments mean that we can get back to the business of local people providing local solutions to local problems." There may nothing much to object to there but that is simply because this statement, like so many others, is rather vacuous. In his desire not to upset or threaten or offend unionists (note the use of the phrase "Northern Ireland"), Durkan actually says nothing.
The status of the SDLP as the acceptable face of Irish nationalism - acceptable, that is, to the British state and its unionist cohorts because it does not present any tangible threat to that hegemony - was confirmed by the appearance at the weekend's conference of Secretary of State John Reid, who used his speech to lavish praise on Hume and Mallon. A further indication of unionism's confidence that the SDLP can be successfully contained is the invitation to Durkan to address the North Down Unionist Association, an invitation which Durkan told his conference he has accepted. Whilst in itself this is not a bad thing, historically the SDLP has had a habit of allowing unionism to set the terms in such exchanges. It is undoubtedly true that almost all approaches from nationalists, whether the SDLP or republicans, are treated by unionists merely as validation of their own righteousness. The hand of friendship is not regarded with a little humility, nor does it give cause for reflection; in the mind of most unionists, such an act simply vindicates their own intractability.
The SDLP has consistently fed this attitude and under Durkan and Rogers will undoubtedly continue to do so, seeing its own role as placating unionism by urging nationalists to modify their own behaviour, rein in their own aspirations, rather than challenging the belligerence and unreason of so many unionists. The party also shows a fatal lack of imagination in its desire, repeated several times over the weekend, to put significant ideological distance between it and Sinn Féin.
Unfortunately - for the SDLP and its die-hard voters, that is - the only way that it can conceive to manage this feat is for the party to become, in essence, wet unionists. Those in the media who have been predicting a speedy end to the party's decline may be speaking too soon.