Fermanagh SDLP veterans speak out about party disarray
SDLP Councillors John O’Kane and Fergus McQuillan have spoken out about party problems in Fermanagh.
“It would be no secret that the party in Fermanagh needs rebuilding and re-invigorated. There’s certainly room for improvement.”
Both men openly critical of their own MLA Tommy Gallagher…
“Tommy is a hard man to get on with; he ignores you to a point. I think it’s his personality. He would have frustrated me in the past but it doesn’t annoy me any longer. I’ve voiced my concerns to him and that’s that.”
“There is a general feeling that once MLAs go up into Stormont they become disengaged. They’re scoring points with each other and they’re issuing press releases which nobody reads by the bucket full.”
On Margaret Ritchie…
“Margaret has yet to establish herself. I think she is a better communicator than Mark Durkan. He was good on detail but sometimes bored people to death.”
“I think you must promote your own policies and John Hume was very good at that. You push your own agenda you don’t attack other parties. Dissect and demolish their policies if necessary but don’t attack them. The reality of life is that Sinn Fein is part of the furniture here now and you will have to work with them. If you only want to work with your friends then you join the local golf club, bridge club or football club.”
Calls for closer links with the Ulster Unionists.
“To be credible with the public we need to have some common platform with the UUP and possibly the Alliance Party as we go into the Assembly elections. Pact is a rather unfortunate word but if the Con-Dems can work in England then there’s no reason why we can’t make that type of model work here with the UUP.”
Read the full interview in The Impartial Reporter.
Fairly close to raising the white flag from the Sdlp councillors there.
“It would be no secret that the party in Fermanagh needs rebuilding and re-invigorated. There’s certainly room for improvement.”
Perhaps by saying this the two gents have signed their own P45s; remember how Margaret Ritchie dealt with Declan O’Loan.
SF were given a massive boost by the Tories backtracking on their committment of a candidate in every constituency and that on top of the Tories lecturing the Plain People of Ulster on the perils of tribalism. Well this latest Tory sojourn into tibalism spectaculalry backfired on them (and Unionism) and seems to have sunk the SDLP at the same time.
Shame for the SDLP but it is nice to see hypocricy suitably rewarded.
They’ll never, ever recover from the McKinney debacle, and rightly so. Political suicide on behalf of Ritchie. They’re finished down there. Period. Utterly and completely an endangered species. As one of the SDLP councillors rightly points out, they’ll still get their votes from their golf club buddies, but other than that forget about it.
Billy,
Why would the standing of Fergal destroy the party in Fermanagh??? Fergal was born and bred in Fermanagh served his apprenticeship on the local newspaper.
He never killed anyone, he isn’t a bank robber hasn’t worked for MI5 or taken deals to work for Special branch, on top of that he didn’t have orphan boys hanged in jail or mothers shot in the head and buried on a beach.
Now lets see, does he know anyone related to him that he believes is a child-rapist that he could take out on an election trail and then have his mates get him a job working with children, then publically excuse it as the rapists way of making up for what he’d done to another child????
Billy why would Fergal standing for the party finish them when a blow in that fits all the criteria above is seen as a positive move?
[Text removed - watch yourself, you really don't want to back down that road again - Mods]
The problems in Fermanagh-South Tyrone go deeper than Fearghal McKinney.
They go right back to Unity candidates such as Frank McManus and Frank Maguire, a little local difficulty involving a Fermanagh MLA and the bigger debacle of Bobby Sands.
I lived briefly in FST from 1979 to 1982 and I think the SDLP was never fully embedded.
And they have never fully recovered. Excellent people such as Rosemary Flanagan were denied the political career they should have had.
The first item on the agenda at SDLP meetings for four decades in FST seems to be “do we put up a candidate?” and despite the rights or wrongs of any individual decision, that seems no way to run a political party.
Ive never heard of Cllr John O’Kane but Cllr McQuillan is a name that recurs in Assembly type elections.
But I would say this is as much a generational issue.
These men are veterans….old warhorses…who have fought the good fight as they see it against Sinn Féin for a long time.
Now I am sure that despite the public stance that McKinney did well in May, the party faithful in that part of the world might have hoped for something better. They got a bad result.
But McKinney is now the SDLP Vice Chair and one of the new “professional” politicians like the Conall McDevitt and Pól Callaghan (and a coterie of very impressive young people) which is exactly what the SDLP has been lacking for decades.
Now there probably is a fault line of sorts between the dedicated councillors of 30 plus years record of involvement and the “professional” but clearly a balance is needed. Solo runs and poor team players and a disregard for youth left a vaccuum in SDLP which is only now being addressed.
But a curiousity.
I note that only 18 people stood for election to the 14 person SDLP Executive last month although 28 people (retirements, co-options possibly because of Westminster) attended the 8 Executive Committee meetings in 2009/2010. Thats a curious mis-match.
Oracle ranted,
“Go away and catch yourself on it’s nothing to do with personalities and everything to do with sectarianism, dumb Catholics would rather have a thick murdering money grabbing pedophile protecting lying bastard winning the election than a decent ordinary non nationalist.”
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I trust Mick will quickly remove this vile sectarian rant asap.
Oracle, hope you’ve got a good lawyer.
Meh. Slugger is full of commenters racing to reason that ALL unionists are intrinsically sectarian nutters with oily black blood running through their vasculature. The fact that Oracle has pointed that a vast majority of Catholics in FST voted for a party with a questionable past over a decent fellow like Ferghal, simply because they wanted to keep the prods out is hardly the worst thing I’ve come across here.
Why would i possibly need a lawyer, try reading it again because there is absolutely no lible or slander, just documented facts……. have you no grasp of reality at all.
I stated facts, there was nothing of a rant about it. so try answering the question why would one local candidate in one electoral area be a travesty but a blow in to another area be a positive move???
Barry The Blender,
Correct and even more so because I’m fro the Nationalist community, just can’t stand hypocrites from any hue
Oracle,
Being from the “Nationalist community” I take it you understand that a large percentage and perhaps a majority, based on the fact that they vote for SF, would not share your views on the IRA campaign?
Where is the hypocricy in that?
Would you agree that is hypocritical for the Tories to lecture us Irish(Nationalsits and Unionist) on tribalism and then opt out of FST?
”’Go away and catch yourself on it’s nothing to do with personalities and everything to do with sectarianism, dumb Catholics would rather have a thick murdering money grabbing pedophile protecting lying bastard winning the election than a decent ordinary non nationalist.””
Temper, temper.
The SDLP will lose their one seat in Fermanagh & Sth Tyrone and I for one will take tremendous satisfaction in that.
’Go away and catch yourself on it’s nothing to do with personalities and everything to do with sectarianism, dumb Catholics would rather have a thick murdering money grabbing pedophile protecting lying bastard winning the election than a decent ordinary non nationalist.”
‘pedophile’ You think they love feet? Well if they do plainly not Orange ones.
Mind you a few more posts like this and you will be winning them over.
Although SF are ahead at the moment in FST, the SDLP do have a strong and very positive candidate in Fergahl McKinney. If they can keep being consistent here they can return him as the replacement to Tommy Gallaher, assuming that Gallaher is planning to stand down. I thought Feargahl was very much the kind of generational shift that Conall McDevitt has blogged about; not just younger in years but with a different set of perspectives. I was impressed at his commitment to the shared future agenda, in particular, something that the SDLP are strong on.
Trouble is the rise of SF was given a mighty helping hand by the SDLP been seen to achieve very little, possibly, they were too honest, or too nice. Its all very well unionists been disgusted that nationalists should vote for SF, however if unionists have worked with the ‘nice’ nationalists it might well have been a different story.
But, the story doesn’t end there (or here) there are political groups on the radar which are even less appealing to uninists than SF, possibly theres a lesson to be learned
Actually slug….Tommy Gallagher is standing down and Ferghal will be his replacement. And perhaps that precipitates the headline we see above.
I have no doubt that SDLP will retain the FST seat.
But the party is weak in South Tyrone and will need to shore that part up.
“James” makes the point that SF was given “a mighty helping hand” by SDLP but as Ive said above this pre-dates the Hunger Strikes and SFs direct involvement in politics.
FJH, they seem to have given up here years ago, cant understand why though, they seem to be happy with the one seat in each DEA, even when well over quota, probably if they put in a bit of a fight one of them just might pay off.
FJH, your comments are quite accurate. Incidentally, your comments about the mismatch between 28 members attending SDLP Executive and only 14 elected at Conference is explained as follows:
14 members at large elected at Conference + 6 Party Officers+Leader+Deputy Leader+2 from Assembly Group+2 from Councillors Group+1 from Youth Group+1 from Women’s Group.
While I acknowledge SF are much stronger in Fermanagh than SDLP, Sinn Fein are not without their problems. They only have one treble-jobbing MLA/MP/Minister (Gildernew) and since 2005 have lost four of their nine councillors elected in 2005.
Maybe it’s something in the damp air in the Lakeland county.
SDLP Man,
I fully take your point on ex-officio members but what I was really getting at was that “only” 18 members were seeking election to the 14 Executive seats.
That suggests that people were not enthusiastic. although perhaps some withdrawals and deals but certainly nominating branches seemed not to be widespread.
The quality did appear to be good.
Incidently I was a little surprised to see no press release with the winners listed.
My recollection is that the newspapers used to carry this information.
I think youre probably right about candidate selection being a problem in Sinn Féin and there seems an untidy process of dealing with the component parts of the Party. The decision that Pat Sheehan…..without to my knowledge any apprenticeship at council level ….should succeed Mr Adams seems a bizarre back to the future statement.
A reasonable person might speculate that there is a shortage of suitable second tier candidates.