AN SDLP “renewal conference” will be held early in the new year as work begins immediately on transforming the party into a “battle-ready electoral machine”, new SDLP leader Dr Alasdair McDonnell told delegates in his first conference leader’s speech.
The South Belfast MP and Assembly member, who was elected leader on Saturday, called for party unity yesterday and promised a collective leadership and an electoral machine that would win more Assembly seats in the 2016 elections.
During the speech Dr McDonnell had difficulty with television lights shining on his auto-cue, which caused him annoyance and disrupted his delivery. He asked for the lights to be switched off. While the camera lights were turned off BBC Northern Ireland was still able to broadcast live a considerable portion of his speech.
Dr McDonnell referred to how in the last leadership election, when South Down MP and MLA Margaret Ritchie defeated him, one commentator described him as a bull in a China shop.
“I will take the bull analogy as a tribute to my reserves of energy and my passion which, if tempered with wise counsel, can produce much.”
He said he wanted to smash the myth that the SDLP was doomed to fail and die. “All that is wrong with us is that we don’t get enough votes, that’s all. Now I’m a medical doctor and I can tell you this is not an incurable condition, far from it,” he said at the conference in the Ramada Hotel.
“Next I would like to smash the myth that Sinn Féin and the DUP are somehow invincible. They’re not; they are just a bit better than us at getting votes,” added Dr McDonnell.
He said that as party leader he would play to his strengths, and diplomacy was not one of them. “With me what you see is what you get. And what you will get is the action necessary to save this party,” he added.
He said the next 100 days were crucial to beginning the renewal of the party and that everyone had an important part to play in that restoration.
He would form a special expert task force to plan ahead for the conference. He said the SDLP “must be prepared to make sweeping changes and not be hidebound by existing structures where they don’t work”.
Dr McDonnell also said that the Belfast Agreement “has run out of road” under the DUP and Sinn Féin, stating that the two dominant parties in the Northern Executive had “emasculated its spirit and torn out the heart of reconciliation”.
“This is Wolfe Tone’s worst nightmare, a government of Catholics and Protestants but absolutely no dissenters,” he added.
Dr McDonnell said a united Ireland could only be achieved through persuasion. And referring to Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness, he said: “So who are the qualified persuaders? They certainly will not be those who found themselves confronted daily with their ugly past during the presidential election. No – this is a job for the SDLP. And along the way we will not be trying to turn unionists into nationalists.”
Dr McDonnell said that in the run-up to 2016 “there will be a great effort by those who seek to revise and rewrite our recent history – to sweep murder under the carpet – finally and forever. They will not succeed.
“Their effort is of course already under way. But there is plenty of evidence that victims and indeed the broad electorate in the South are not going to buy it, now or in the future,” he added.
The SDLP has 14 seats in the Northern Assembly and holds one ministry.
It is now the fourth-largest party in the North, behind the DUP, Sinn Féin and the UUP.
