On the streets of Dublin and Belgrade they’ll be crying out for the men from Co Down

The Mourne men have a date with destiny on the hallowed turf this afternoon. Here is a tribute all the way from Belgrade.

Read In Touch – a new community newsletter for South Belfast

In Touch is a new community newsletter for South Belfast which I have produced. If you live in the Balmoral or Newtonbreda areas you’ll probably get one through your door. All feedback very welcome.

InTouch Web

Campbell’s alternative reality

Gregory Campbell is determined to sit outside the new consensus created by the Saville Report. He will not agree publicly with the PM or his own party leader that the killings were unjustified or unjustifiable.

I have no doubt there are many who wonder why their loved ones could will not get a public inquiry. Why there is no big political campaign to have the truth written about what happened to the brother, sister, husband, wife, mother or father.

Dealing with the past needs to be a part of our today’s here in the Assembly. That’s why the SDLP is calling for the Eames – Bradley report to be revisited. We owe it to the victims to create a process through which the truth can be told and by which revisionists, like those who say the IRA never killed a civilian, can be silenced.

I would very much like Gregory Campbell to stand with me us on that campaign and in the meantime celebrate and rejoice that the truth has been delivered to some of our conflicts victims.

Bloody Sunday like all the deaths in our conflict was unjustified and unjustifiable. That is the foundation on which we should seek out the truth and the reconciliation that will follow for all our people.

SF go to London and adopt tory economic policy

Martin McGuinness emerged from Downing Street waxing lyrical about corporation tax and enterprise zones.

The Prime Minister had agreed to prioritise these after SF demanded them he told the press. Funny that. I remember reading a commitment to both in the Tory Manifesto.

Now Martin like most other leaders here is a late but welcome convert to the case for lower corporation tax. But enterprise zones?

Funny to see a die hard socialist republican drooling over a pretty discredited tory policy from the last century. But maybe these are not the 1980’s zones. Maybe there is a new 21st century version.

We have been trying to some clarity from the conservatives about what is new enterprise zone idea since the election but no detail has been forthcoming. Maybe Martin has been more successful but somehow I doubt it.

Yesterday the Deputy First Minister paid homage to Declan Kelly as the saviour of our regional economy. Today it was the leader of the British Conservative Party.

Wouldn’t it be great if we got some local ideas from our own leaders….

Multi-party runs

I have assembled a motley crew of MLAs to join me at the starting line of this year’s Belfast Marathon.

Don’t worry I’m not asking John McAllister or Barry McIlduff plus a DUPer (Simon Hamilton we know you want to!) to cover 26.2 miles  so we have split it up between us and will be one of the hundreds of relay teams completing in this increasingly popular spring sports for all extravaganza. Concern will be our charity and are providing some very groovy Ts.

Concern also brought Sonia O’Sullivan up the Mary Peter’s track in Belfast this morning to meet some of the Concern marathoners and a group of up and coming local runners who are being coached by Eamon Christie. 

Shortly after nine we headed off for a great run along the tow path, past the Lock Keepers Cottage (yes we told Sonia the story), into Belvoir Forest and back along the South Bank to Edenderry. Took us about 43 min at what I reckon was about a 7:30 pace.

What a way to start the day.

Gerry and his pacemaker

It’s hard to take Gerry Adams seriously these days. The whiff of sulphur has gone and the air of infalbility has been blown away on the winds of child abuse, policy illiteracy and a sense of nation which means little to the vast majority of Irish people.

Last nights speech was high on rebel rhetoric but short on anything except tax the middle classes and kick the brits.

It will be interesting to see if there is any bounce in the southern polls. To date Mr Adams’ “SF is not interested in managing the economy” line has sunk like a lead balloon.

The more I hear from SF the more I hear the old Ireland. Inward looking, anti European and anti business. A party that gets angry but does nothing. That talks equality but is built on inequality. A party of the few and of the past.

Time for a new North

During the political affairs debate at SDLP Conference I called for a new regional politics. Full text below.

Conference.

 I don’t want to be an MLA for the second nationalist party. I want to be an MLA for a renewed SDLP that will speak for the majority who want a new North. For the many who know that we are not as divided as our politics suggests.

 This is the type of politics that made the SDLP great. Working hard, reaching out to communities and breaking new ground to evidence that we can be a party for everyone.

 We know it is time to renew. To bring forward a new generation, energetic on the ground, in touch with workers and families and dedicated to making this region work.

 Friends, people want politics to change and they want our party to change too.

They know the DUP – SF coalition isn’t working. Thousands are loosing their jobs and good companies are being put to the wall.

 My generation never had the chance of a job for life and many of us have started our own businesses. We need MLAs who know this and are willing to support inward investments and business start ups in a real way, harnessing the talent and the energy of this region.

 Those of you who marched with the civil rights movement know power-sharing is based on equality and respect. Well today, equality means a Bill of Rights and respect means strong polices to tackle racism and sectarianism. I want honour your legacy and be a loud and confident advocate for both taking on the DUP in a way SF MLAs have failed to.

Truth is the current coalition is built on inequality.

That a nationalist will never be able to hold the justice Ministry because SF negotiated away their right to do so is not just a denial of the SDLP’s mandate, it is an act of outstanding political and social discrimination, the epitome on inequality.

This inequality is also evident on the streets. It fuels the prejudice that boiled over last summer in naked racism. It’s in the flags that are flown every year on our roads. It was on the streets of Belfast this Christmas and in the internet hate groups.

It’s in the gerrymandering of the constituency boundaries and the privatisation of education.

I will challenge hate and prejudice on our street, speaking up for shared communities and demanding that dialogue take place before tensions rise. I want to now why we still spend £1.5 billion a year servicing sectarianism. That’s ten thousand pounds out of all our pockets to accommodate the bigotry the DUP and Sinn Fein so rely on.

When Sammy Wilson comes looking for water rates or tries to sack healthcare workers we will be on the doorsteps reminding voters that he should be tackling the cost of bigotry not hitting on pensioners and the young.

The North is changing.

Our hand in friendship will always be there to those who want to change too. Opposing those who want to undermine power-sharing does not mean we should not work with parties which support it. 

It’s time to offer the electorate an alternative to the DUP-SF coalition.

Cooperating in the interests of this region is not a denial of identity; it is an expression of confidence and ambition for the North and this island. It’s real patriotism, not partitionism. 

Our mission is not to destroy the North but to make it strong. We are the party of the North. The party that knows we can all be proudly northern and proudly Irish. A stronger north will mean a strong Ireland and a weak north a failed one.

But to do this we must change and we must renew. We must prove to ourselves and to the people that we can build new coalitions.

Today is our opportunity to show that we have a future. We can challenge unionism to come to the table and talk about the issues that matter. Their future is not in Hatfield House talking to English Tories it is her in Ireland talking about how we can make this region and this island work.

If a united Ireland is our tomorrow then a new North must be our today.

Let us support the platform for change and start a new conversation which brings ordinary people into politics again.

That’s what the civil rights movement did and so the time has come for a new generation to pick up the torch which John Hume lit and assert that this region is our future and that we will work that common ground to make it a success.

To bury the politics of the past.

To speak directly to those who are young in age and spirit and tell them that a new Northern Ireland built on equality and respect is possible.

That politics is not about the faith you follow or the passport you carry but the better life you want and the ambitions you hold.

Today we proclaim that this is a party with a future.

For the many not the vested interests of the few.

For a strong North and a strong Ireland.

For a new politics and a new SDLP.

Real change will only come when the DUP & SF start tackling the economy, education, health and sectarianism

I’m on my way back up to Hillsborough this morning. The ball is still with the DUP and SF.  Will both parties commit to this region and its future or will they put party interest first?

I don’t know whether they will make a deal or not today. What I do know is that this is not 1998 and the people really don’t care.

I hope we get to welcome a resolution later but lets be real about it. Change will only come to this region when the big two dedicate the same energy to the economy, the crisis in education and the need to tackle sectarianism as they do to standoff.

Homage to Helen

They have been paying tribute to the late Helen Lewis all week. Fionnuala O’Connor had a lovely piece in the Irish News and Steven Jaffe reminded us how she once had to dance for her life in yesterday’s Belfast Telegraph.

Today I will join the mourners at her final farewell. The Belfast poet and Helen’s neighbour Michael Longley will deliver the eulogy.

This Christmas my old friend Peter Coll gifted me a copy of Longley’s collected poems. His accompanying note a reminder that we are very fortunate in this city to live amongst a great poet.

A LINEN HANDKERCHIEF

for Helen Lewis 

Northern Bohemia’s flax fields and the flax fields

Of Northern Ireland, the linen industry, brought Harry,

Trader in linen handkerchiefs, to Belfast, and then

After Terezin and widowhood and Auschwitz, you,

 

Odysseus as a girl, your sail a linen handkerchief

On which he embroidered and unpicked hundreds of names

All through the war , but in one corner the flowers

Encircling you initials never came undone.

Michael Longley

Happy New Year

Happy New Year.