THE FOUR candidates competing to be the next SDLP leader are this week making their final pitches to the delegates who on Saturday at the party’s annual conference in Belfast will decide who will succeed Margaret Ritchie for the top party post.
All four Assembly members – Alex Attwood, Conall McDevitt, Dr Alasdair McDonnell and Patsy McGlone – have campaigned on platforms of restoring lost party fortunes and reinvigorating the SDLP for the political challenges ahead.
About 355 delegates can vote on Saturday and over recent weeks the candidates have been canvassing them at hustings sessions.
The final hustings will take place on Friday night when the SDLP conference opens in south Belfast, with each candidate given time to appeal for votes.
Paddy Power bookmakers yesterday had the West Belfast MLA and Minister of the Environment Alex Attwood as 11/8 favourite to replace the South Down MP and MLA Margaret Ritchie as new leader. Mid-Ulster MLA Mr McGlone was second favourite at 7/4 while South Belfast MLA Mr McDevitt was 3/1 and South Belfast MP and MLA Dr McDonnell was 6/1.
Those who support candidates other than Mr Attwood were sceptical about these odds. Where there was agreement, was in the recognition that the new leader’s primary task will be to reorganise the party so that it can better compete with Sinn Féin for the nationalist vote.
The most brutally honest of the candidates was Dr McDonnell whom Ms Ritchie defeated for the leadership in February last year. At his manifesto launch he said people still trusted the SDLP but they weren’t voting for the party.
“People see us as indecisive, inconsistent, unreliable and we are no longer distinctive. Our customers are not happy,” he said.
“Anyone who puts forward any proposals for this party which do not involve clear, practical and sensible steps for raising our vote within the North does not deserve to be taken seriously. None of our visions, none of our proposals, not even our values will matter if we don’t get more votes,” he added.
Delegates who vote on Saturday will be fully conscious of the accuracy of this observation. In the heady days after the Belfast Agreement the SDLP won 24 seats compared to 18 for Sinn Féin and Seamus Mallon was appointed deputy first minister alongside David Trimble as Ulster Unionist first minister.
By 2003 there was a complete reversal of fortunes with Sinn Féin winning 24 seats compared to 18 for the SDLP. Since then the decline continued and the party has just 14 seats in the current Assembly, and just one ministry, Mr Attwood’s.
Three of the candidates represent Belfast constituencies while Mr McGlone, known for his thoroughness in dealing with grassroots issues, is the only rural candidate. At 39, Mr McDevitt, a former party press officer and later special adviser to Bríd Rodgers when she was minister of agriculture, is the youngest candidate with the others in their mid-50s or early 60s.
He has been urging delegates to “jump a generation” by electing him. The voting will be by proportional representation and transfers will be vital.
The name of the new leader should be known around teatime on Saturday.
