The announced speaker this year was the SDLP Deputy Leader, Patsy McGlone, but he couldn't attend for some reason, so his replacement was Alasdair McDonnell, the MP for South Belfast and the defeated candidate in the contest for the Leadership of the SDLP, a contest which took place last year as well. A further intriguing feature was the fact that Sylvia Hermon was said to be attending. Sylvia was there and spoke briefly, saying that she was happy to be “among friends”, repeating a phrase that caused outrage in some quarters last year. Sadly Liam Logan, the local SDLP Chairman, could not be with us because of illness in his family.
I was happy to sit at table with Ian Adamson, now the serving High Sheriff of Belfast (though he didn't wear his chain of office). Other non-SDLP members who attended included Brian Ervine (Leader of the Progressive Unionist Party) and Peter Lavery – these are both members of Ian Adamson's Ullans Academy group – Cllr Ian Parsley (Conservative candidate in North Down in the 2010 General Election, but now independent) and his partner Paula Bradshaw (Ulster Unionist candidate in South Befast in the 2010 General Election, now Alliance). I counted a platform party of 9 with 39 guests, numbers little short of those last year.
In his address, Dr McDonnell MP told us how he had attended Garron Tower, a Catholic grammar school in the Glens of Antrim (a). Then he had studied medicine at University College Dublin and been a hospital doctor at the Ulster Hospital, where he had got to know Ian Adamson. He had become involved in the SDLP from its inception in 1970 and had unsuccessfully contested the North Antrim constituency in the General Election of that year (b), the seat won by Ian Paisley. McDonnell became an MP in 2005 (South Belfast) meaning that his political apprenticeship had lasted 35 years!
Dr McDonnell told us how “The grief is the same, the pain is the same” and mentioned the non-SDLP people present (myself included) at the dinner. He suggested that this was an admirable model for the rest of Northern Ireland. (Ian Adamson is certainly a member of the Ulster Unionist Party in Belfast, but Dr McDonnell ignored the fact that no North Down Unionist was present, not the Mayor nor Deputy Mayor at any rate.) He told us how Sylvia Hermon was “his best friend”, a regard which is evidently returned. A very interesting and happy occasion at any rate.
You can find better versions of my photos in SDLP dinner in Mister Keep Fit.
Notes
(a) Afterwards McDonnell told me how the Catholic church had established Garron Tower in the 1951 as an elite school for the sons of wealthy Northern Catholics, a northern equivalent of Dublin's Clongowes Wood. In his day there were some 150 day boys and 250 boarders, many the sons of expatriates. I asked McDonnell whether he knew Derek Davis (he did), who had attended prep school with me and then gone on to Garron Tower. More recently Davis became a celebrity broadcaster in Dublin.
(b) This was the same election contested by Richard Moore as a Liberal, the father of journalist Charles Moore – see North Antrim (UK Parliament constituency).
Charles Moore has a family connection with Northern Ireland. Moore wrote in the SPECTATOR recently how, about 1970, his father stood as a Liberal in North Antrim against Rev Ian Paisley – a fact confirmed to me recently by elections expert Nicholas Whyte.
– Courage, by Charles Moore, Saturday, May 8. 2010