Speech by Conall McDevitt MLA, SDLP toBritish Irish Association ConferenceOxford, September 11th 2010

I live in a European city, the capital of a region of Ireland and in the UK for as long as the majority wish it to be. It is a place with the power to change itself.

I sit in an Assembly built on the principles of partnership and reconciliation. The great white house on the hill stands out to many of a younger generation as a beacon to a new North and a new Ireland. Yet inside its marble halls many cannot seem to shake off the mistrust of generations.

Sectarianism and the legacy of conflict still linger in the chamber. The politics of division is choking all talk of working the common ground. Despite all the diversity represented on the blue benches we have not found the way of turning it into a shared prosperity.

The young men and women I meet in the great hall do not want a history lesson from a new MLA. They want to know how we are going to build a new North and wonder why they are not as divided as our politics suggests.

The Executive is failing them, its’ failing the business community and the innovators too. Most of all it is failing those who have the least. It is a sad irony that the people who suffered most from the worst ravages of a futile and sectarian war are yet to see a significant dividend from peaceful devolution.

Leadership is about more than just being a gatekeeper for your own community. Protectionism feeds prejudice. It blocks partnership and prevents leaders from envisaging a better future; one which works towards a common goal, which is capable of sharing with respect and which understands that equality and good relations are both necessary conditions for trust and reconciliation.

Yet the predominant parties are trapped in blinkered ideologies which see no common ground because they are in themselves exclusivist. They sell all traditions short and fail utterly to understand the complexity of who we all are and the great opportunities which could lie ahead. We simply cannot build a new

North and a reconciled Ireland whilst stuck in the politics of the old Ulster or the civil war.

This thinking is particularly evident in the proposed Cohesion, Sharing and Integration Strategy from the Office of the First and deputy First Minister, which is currently out for consultation.

The strategy ignores the basic reality that there can be no good relations without equality and no equality without good relations. It chooses instead to offer the prospect of a separate but equal future – in itself a misrepresentation of what equality actually is.

It proposes a bureaucratic maze to cover up the lack of any strategy. At a time when we should be focussed on tackling the cost of division, estimated at over £1 billion a year we are being offered a costly package of new panels, groups, action plans and ‘funders contracts’ .

In fairness to Caitriona Ruane she has offered up some savings. The problem is the only budget she has cut so far is her community relations one!

Ignoring the link between equality and good relations is a denial of the real challenge posed by sectarianism and an abdication of political responsibility for tackling it.

Equally dangerous is ignoring the correlation between areas of social disadvantage and high levels of sectarian conflict. The First and deputy First Ministers’ shelves are creaking under the weight of expensive research into the complex causes, impacts and outcomes of such multiple disadvantages. Yet none of this thinking is evident in the strategy.

This blinkered politics is also evident in the so called ‘dissident’ analysis. They have inherited a set of political dogma which is serving them badly. Their vision of Ireland excludes the very many British people who are part of our nation and have every right to be here. This exclusionist Irishness to which if you do not ascribe you do not belong - the words of John Hume in 1971 – is the same thing again, ascendancy of one tradition over the other. We know today as we knew in 1970, that it will fail because it, too, leads only to conflict and the grave.

The SDLP’s wish is that the people of our island be united. This has been so since the day we were founded. This requires a partnership between both of the traditions in Northern Ireland and between both parts of this island leading to a new situation.

A united Ireland is not simply a case of territorial unity. Our objective must be a completely new definition of unity on this island - unity in diversity.

Too many assume that when we talk about unity we mean the simple assimilation of the North into the Southern state. This will never work. A new Ireland will be built under an entirely new constitution, one which all sections would have a say in drafting, which is rooted in the principles of the Good Friday Agreement, which preserves power sharing institutions, and one which would provide a framework for a pluralist society in Ireland in which the rights of, identity, conscience and religious liberty would be upheld.

To create the conditions where such a debate is possible we must build trust between us in the north and across this island. This means a new nationalism which is capable of seeing Northern Ireland as a region and making it work and a new unionism which is capable of the same. Standing up to the rejectionists and dissidents does not mean we should not seek a new politics in the middle ground. A partnership that believes prosperity can be built out of diversity.

It means a regional government that can see the opportunity in the common ground. One which rejects the idea that nine out of every ten pounds spent on energy leaves our region to fund some Russian oligarch’s bling for premiership football teams by harnessing the real opportunities in renewable sources and interconnection.

An Executive which rejects poverty and refuses to accept that my son may well live ten years longer than a boy born a mile away.

That invests in early years and primary schools and puts a Sure Start centre on every street corner rather then shutting them down as an unaffordable luxury.

That puts jobs at the top of its agenda rather then denying the recession will have any impact on us.

We need a new politics which can unlock the prosperity in our diversity.

Focused on opportunity and wealth creation. Declaring war on want and putting wages in workers pockets.

A new politics which can explore the past 100 years and see the overlaps in history and culture as well as understanding the divisions.

That maximises North – South cooperation because prosperity should know no borders on our island.

Politics which reject an exclusivist future.

Which believes in every generation’s right to make their own history and which understands that prejudice costs.

We may disagree on whether our region’s future is in a new reconciled Ireland or the old union but surely we are capable of embracing the opportunity for local self government in the interests of all the people.

I will be no less Irish, republican, social democratic or free by committing to make this region work as a region of Ireland and with its own right to determine its constitutional status. Let me do so and let me call on the next generation of leaders, catholic, protestant and dissenter to do so too.

In common purpose we can create prosperity from our diversity. We can declare war on prejudice and want. In common purpose we can build a new Northern Ireland and a reconciled Ireland.