In an interview with the BBC Red Lines Podcast, SDLP Deputy Leader Claire Hanna talks about how she and others discussed setting up a new party in the event of an SDLP merger with Fianna Fáil. From the BBC:
An SDLP MP has said she and party colleagues discussed forming a new party in 2019.
Claire Hanna told the BBC’s Red Lines podcast the discussions took place against the backdrop of the now-ended partnership between the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) and Fianna Fáil.
The new relationship was backed by the majority of SDLP elected representatives and members but a significant minority remained unhappy.
Many felt it was a precursor to a formal merger between the two parties.
“At that time, in those few months, I did think my time in elected political life was possibly coming to an end if that [partnership] had gone in the trajectory we and others thought it was going to.
“I thought deeply about where I fitted. I didn’t think that I fitted into any of the existing political vehicles that were around,” she told Red Lines.
“I was the only MLA who didn’t support the partnership but I wasn’t the only person. There were quite a few councillors and activists who didn’t.
“We did discuss what something might look like,” she added.
“I genuinely think that something like the SDLP, a party with a history, values and a heritage, should exist,” she told the podcast.
“If the SDLP disappeared into a Fianna Fáil vehicle, then that wouldn’t have existed”, she added.
In September 2022 the party signalled the end of the partnership, with party leader Colum Eastwood saying his party needed to stand on his own two feet.
“Things moved and changed. The institutions came back and the Brexit process jumped us on so, thankfully, that didn’t need to go anywhere but I did have to consider the possibility that my time in the SDLP was over,” she said.
“It was very difficult,” she added.
Ms Hanna said she understood why the party leader explored the partnership.
She said that 2019 was a “very bleak place for the SDLP”.
“We had no MPs. We had no MEPs because we were out of Europe. The Assembly was down. It looked like the institutions of the Good Friday Agreement might never come back. It was a bleak horizon.”
“It was the wrong thing to do but I think Colum Eastwood was trying to do something. It was the route that he thought possibly would take the party out of the place it was in.
“It wasn’t the right route but I can understand the circumstances it came from.”
In the aftermath of the announcement Ms Hanna quit as her party’s Brexit spokeswoman and stopped attending group meetings at Stormont.
She said she would have quit the party if the partnership developed.
“I didn’t think it was something that was going to work electorally and it turns out it didn’t,” she said.
“It’s worth saying this was a thought exercise. It’s just, if the SDLP doesn’t exist, do I have a political home and what they might look like?
Claire is clear in the interview that the idea was not progressed, but it shows the level of disharmony at the time.
Losing Claire Hanna would have been a huge loss. Claire is very popular with voters, she is very personable and an extremely strong media performer.
It is interesting to speculate what the new party would have been, or would they have pushed to be part of Labour. Labour always says they would not set up in NI due to the presence of their sister party the SDLP but in the event of the SDLPs demise would Labour change their position?
The SDLP / Fianna Fáil mash up is now something all involved try to forget. It is like a drunken one night stand Colum might have had with some girl in a night-club in Buncrana in his teenage years. Once everyone sobered up the best strategy is to forget it ever happened and move on. Don’t feel bad Colum, we have all been there.
I help to manage Slugger by taking care of the site as well as running our live events. My background is in business, marketing and IT. My politics tend towards middle-of-the-road pragmatism, I am not a member of any political party. Oddly for a member of the Slugger team, I am not that interested in daily politics, preferring to write about big ideas in society. When not stuck in front of a screen, I am a parkrun Run Director.
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