Sir, Interviewed by the media in the wake of the shelving by the British government of the main recommendations of the North Report on contentious marches, Seamus Mallon, deputy leader of the SDLP, rightly stated that it was yet another example of Ireland's vital needs being subordinated to political expediency at Westminster. But this and similar statements by SDLP representatives begs the question of why the SDLP made such an obstacle to achieving agreed candidates in mid Ulster and elsewhere of Sinn Fein's attitude to the Westminster Parliament?
Indeed, such a justified reaction by Seamus Mallon begs the question of why the SDLP is still at Westminster? It seems little can be achieved until a British general election and thereafter a large majority amongst the British parties for genuine progress towards a settlement seems inevitable, given the commitment of both the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats to implement immediately and in full the recommendations of the North Report. One may be forgiven for asking just what use is the SDLP at Westminster if it cannot even deliver the recommendations of a Commission that the British government itself set up?
The irony is that by these statements the SDLP has validated Sinn Fein's analysis, of which the fate of the North Report is but the latest vindication, that the subordination of the North of Ireland's vital needs to political expediency in the Westminster Parliament is the source of all the North of Ireland's ills. - Yours, etc.,
Formerly Secretary of the Campaign for the Birmingham
Six (England),
Montague Road,
Birmingham.