The SDLP
There are two other political parties in the North of Ireland, who represent more central value systems. The first of them is in fact a social democratic party, a centre left party that has supported non-violence since its inception in 1970. I am a member of this party, and my father was an elected councillor for the party on Derry City Council for 28 years up until May 2005. That party is the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP).
Our philosophy is non-violent, and we believe that idealism – as espoused by Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and John Hume – will change things, not blind rage. We are also part of the Irish tradition founded by Daniel O’Connell in the 1820’s which advocated change through peaceful means. All these inspirational leaders took their own inspiration from Jesus Christ in large part. The SDLP is thus a New Testament party and it rejects the eye-for-an-eye dogma of the IRA and Sinn Fein, led by Gerry Adams, its main competitor for Nationalist/Catholic votes. The SDLP therefore may be said to have a New Testament value system.
The most outstanding of its politicians was John Hume, the man who I regard as John the Baptist, and he has achieved a greatness on the international stage that none of the others quite managed. Indeed he has achieved a greatness that no other Northern Irish, possibly even Irish, politician has managed.
He has won the Nobel Peace Prize, which he won along with David Trimble, the Ulster Unionist leader, the Martin Luther King Junior Peace Prize, and the Mahatma Gandhi Peace Prize all in the last few years. These prizes are a worthy recognition of John Hume’s work for peace in the North of Ireland. There have been many tributes to John Hume’s work:
“In St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (14:19), he admonishes us to ‘follow after the things which make for peace.’ John Hume, whom I am privileged to call a friend, has done just that all his life. And he has done so with a grace, and gentleness, and bravery, and doggedness scarcely imaginable. Last year, the Irish Times wrote that Ireland ‘owes no greater debt than to the man who insisted that living for Ireland is better than dying for it; that it is more challenging of the human spirit to learn to live with one’s adversaries than to subdue them,’ and concluded, ‘John Hume has wrought the very basis of Ireland’s future.’ Truer words have not been written.”
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Thus, coincidentally, there is a choice for Nationalists between New Testament and Old Testament values, between good and evil, and between Christ and Antichrist.