Social Democratic and Labour Party

Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), Northern Ireland The majority Catholic party in Northern Ireland, founded on 21 August 1970 by former supporters of the Nationalist Party, the National Democratic Party, and the Republican Labour Party. Its first leader was Gerry Fitt, who was replaced in 1979 by John Hume. The party stands for equal civil rights for all people in Northern Ireland, and a fair distribution of the province's wealth. It supports the eventual unification of Northern Ireland with the Irish Republic, but only if this receives the consent of the majority of people in Northern Ireland. The SDLP withdrew from Stormont in 1971, and in the 1970s it supported initiatives promoting cross-border cooperation. In the 1980s, through its leader, John Hume, it has sought to promote dialogue between all groups in Northern Ireland. From the 1970s to the 1990s, the SDLP received around 20 per cent of the vote in general elections. Ironically, in political terms it suffered from the peace process which it had been so instrumental in bringing about, for this legitimized Sinn Féin and made it attractive to much of the SDLP's core constituency of moderate Catholics. In the 2001 British parliamentary elections, the SDLP was eclipsed for the first time by Sinn Féin as the most popular Catholic party in Northern Ireland. From 2001 the SDLP was led by Mark Durcan (b.1960), who was also Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland.

http://www.sdlp.ie