Anxieties written on Hume's face reflect a general mood

AN odd sort of conference this one. It was taking place at a time of uncertainty, so there were anxieties - about a renewed IRA ceasefire, the prospect of real talks, the dangers of Northern Ireland sliding back into the morass.

John Hume wandered around the Glenavon House Hotel in Cookstown with all those anxieties imprinted on his face, reflecting a general mood.

This was the third SDLP conference since the IRA ceasefire of August 1994. Delegates at that conference were chipper and buoyant, last year there was still a feel good factor but trepidation at the lack of political progress this year the mood oscillated between hope and dread.

There was concern too over a possible future SDLP Sinn Fein pact - in the event of an IRA ceasefire. It was to have been discussed in private yesterday but Seamus Mallon made a preemptive strike on Saturday to air the vexed issue in public session.

Delegates were in no doubt about Seamus's views the SDLP was different, there could be no pact with Sinn Fein, even if that meant that the SDLP's bete noire, Willie McCrea, held his Mid Ulster seat. Nationalists there have a majority but the vote is split because of SDLP-Sinn Fein competition.

He dwelt on the distinction between the SDLP and other parties. Certainly, on a social level there is no doubting the differences between it and the two main unionist parties. SDLP members are not afraid to enjoy themselves.

Delegates had no aversion to what Ian Paisley calls the Devil's buttermilk - black porter - nor to good Protestant Bushmills whiskey. No boycotts here. The members partied and politicked with gusto and conviction.

On Friday night one delegate complained in the late bar: "This must be a unionist conference, there's only barman."

Even Conor Cruise O'Brien won a round of applause. He wasn't present, naturally enough, but Peter O'Hagan from Lisburn had ferreted out an article he wrote some time ago for the New York Review of Books. A selective extract on the Orange Order and the Apprentice Boys caught the fancy of the SDLP faithful: "Their message is ... `We are your superiors. We know you hate this demonstration of that fact. We dare you say something about it. If you don't you ratify your own inferior status'."

Vincent Currie broke ground by laying a wreath in Dungannon yesterday to mark Remembrance Day. But no poppies were spotted in SDLP lapels in Cookstown.

Roisin Rafferty, during a short discussion mildly critical of the media, objected to the BBC insisting that its presenters wear the poppy. Peter Coll objected to Northern Ireland being described as the "province" and Britain as the "mainland".

"The most considered comments came from Seamus Mallon, who queried what it was in the unionist middle class psyche that made them act in such a populist fashion in and around Drumcree. And what was it in elements of nationalism that they reacted in a similarly dangerous populist manner? He didn't have an answer.