Mark Durkan's powerful performance set a high standard for his successor, writes GERRY MORIARTY
SHORTLY AFTER midday yesterday Mark Durkan handed over control of the SDLP as it approaches its 40th anniversary in August to Margaret Ritchie – fourth leader of the party following in the footsteps of Gerry Fitt, John Hume and Durkan.
Ms Ritchie, the SDLP’s sole minister in the Northern Executive running the social development department, has a big challenge ahead – to hold and if possible build on what the SDLP has established at council, Assembly and Westminster level and to reunite a divided party.
Both she and Dr Alasdair McDonnell were hungry for the job. The victor said it wasn’t a divisive campaign but it was. There are fences to be mended and some might remain broken.
Ritchie is an efficient, single-minded politician with a certain air of the school headmistress about her while McDonnell is a blunt and ambitious politician who has rubbed many people up the wrong way, particularly in his own party.
Whichever of them won there was going to be discord.
Ritchie won for positive reasons but rather like Manchester United there was an ABA factor to her victory – Anybody But Alasdair.
One McDonnell supporter had this opinion about the new leader. “This is a suicide note for the SDLP.” Another voice in the Slieve Donard Hotel yesterday muttered about the “Judases that undermined” Mark Durkan, precipitating his standing down as leader. This is a reference to a feeling among many Durkan supporters that while he went voluntarily there was something of a velvet putsch in the timing.
There is considerable bitterness after the campaigning. When the result was announced more than half the conference room in the Slieve Donard Hotel jumped to its feet in delight, the rest remained glued gloomily to their seats until they realised they had better show some unity for the cameras.
Matters are complicated by the whole new dynamic in the party. The new deputy leader is Mid-Ulster MLA Patsy McGlone, a McDonnell supporter. He must develop a working relationship with the new leader.
Her test is to begin the healing process while at the same time trying to inject some organisation to a party that desperately needs reorganisation.
The SDLP leader must sharpen her judgment. She described Friday’s Hillsborough Castle Agreement as a “temporary fix based on a corruption of democracy” which missed the public mood and relief that at least politics was moving on, at last, after all the endless processing at Hillsborough and Stormont.
The South Belfast constituency could be a rallying call for that return to party cohesion. Alasdair McDonnell won the Westminster seat against the odds in 2005 but with the help of a split unionist vote.
Unionism is in such a mess at the moment that it’s impossible to tell whether there will be an agreed candidate or a DUP and Ulster Unionist-Tory candidate running in the election expected in May. Regardless, this battle will be an opportunity for the pro- and anti-McDonnell camps.
Ritchie must also work to help ensure Mark Durkan holds Foyle and that Eddie McGrady is returned in South Down. Three Westminster seats for the SDLP in May would be a great start to her leadership. Thereafter, it’s about attracting new talent and building on existing talent to try to increase the SDLP’s representation in the Assembly – currently at 16 – so that instead of one ministry the party would be entitled to two.
Her task is tough but the hope for the SDLP faithful is that cometh the hour cometh the woman.
Ritchie has a hard act to follow. Mark Durkan would admit his own organisational limitations, but he is a very impressive politician and person – one of the key figures, Taoiseach Brian Cowen said at the SDLP dinner on Saturday night, in shaping the powersharing philosophy of the Belfast Agreement.
Durkan went out with a bang, delivering a powerful, emotionally charged speech that electrified the 400 delegates in the Slieve Donard Hotel. It was also a speech that put up a strong argument for the value of politics, offering vision and telling people – young people in particular – that politicians can do good. It was an argument against cynicism.
A number of times during his delivery Durkan almost broke down in tears. There was a huge moment when he recalled how he battled on behalf of the late Sarah Conlon, mother of Gerry Conlon, one of the Guildford Four, and wife of another innocent man, Giuseppe Conlon who died in prison in England.
His message was worth delivering after two weeks of protracted negotiations that has frustrated, bored and annoyed the public. It pointed to another side to politics and politicians.