While the upcoming decade of Centenaries (and a whole industry is built around it) CAN provide an opportunity for a degree of reconciliation ans we bow to the False God of a “shared history”……it also provides an opportunity to properly commemorate a decade of Half Centuries.

For example in the next ten years we will commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the first murder of the modern Troubles (John Scullion 1966), the occupation of a council house in Caledon, County Tyrone to protest housing allocation, the first Civil Rights marches, the “official” outbreak of the Troubles (1969), Internment (1971), Bloody Sunday, Claudy Bomb, Bloody Friday (all 1972). Can we really commemorate so many centenaries without referencing the half centuries?

I was intrigued at the weekend to hear that this decade affords the opportunity to reconcile with “liberal unionists…….such as the Alliance Party” (sic).

In another post today, I wrote about “liberal unionists”. Essentially they are politically naive but mean well. There was a time when people could have said the same thing about the Alliance Party (bankrolled by Rowntree) which has quietly given up paying lip service to the notion of being constitutionally “neutral” and has taken on a more “unionist” attitude…inevitable perhaps with the defection of Harry Hamilton, Paula Bradshaw and presumably Ian Parsley from UUP to Alliance. It would be a mistake to think that these defections of “liberal unionists” to the Alliance Party makes the Alliance Party “liberal”. As we have seen with their votes on welfare reform, there is a nasty streak to the Alliance Party.

The SDLP would be well advised to steer clear of the Alliance Party. Perhaps …..indeed certainly more than any other political party, the SDLP can claim to be the “Civil Rights Party” and a fundamental aspect of Civil Rights was opposing “gerrymandering” and supporting “one man one vote” in the late 1960s. The classic example of gerrymandering was of course the old Derry City Council where minority unionist votes in the gerrymandered wards elected a unionist Council. Albert Anderson the unlamented Lord Mayor is not regarded as a liberal. Yet he had limited ambitions. ….ruling the west side of the River Foyle.

In contrast the Alliance Party have bigger ambitions. They barely exist west of the River Bann. But somehow feel entitled to two seats (from 51,000 votes) in the Norn Iron Executive while the SDLP (94,000) gets one seat and the UUP (88,000) gets one seat.

Fifty years on. Another gerrymander. The SDLP needs to be confronting the Alliance Party. It should not be reconciling.