Abstract
This chapter analyses the politics of life-writing and published narratives in relation to the founding generation of the SDLP, with particular reference to their attitudes towards the outbreak of the ‘Troubles’ and the increasing violence of the conflict in the early 1970s. Hopkins examines attitudes to critical aspects of the party’s past, one of which is the complex relationship of many of the key individuals in the ‘leading group’ of SDLP founders to the republican movement, and its embrace of political violence. He reflects upon the benefits and limitations of ‘life-writing’ as a research methodology, suggesting it is a key element in facilitating a more nuanced understanding of the ‘memory struggles’ which characterise the legacy of the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland.
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- 1.
It is surely not merely coincidence that the role of Protestants in both the civil rights movement and the establishing of the SDLP has not been much discussed, either in the life-writing or the academic analysis of the founding generation. A number of Protestant trade unionists and Communists had been significant activists in the civil rights movement, but the most prominent Protestant in the SDLP was Ivan Cooper, elected as an Independent in Mid-Derry in 1969. He was a founder member of the SDLP, but left the party in 1977; he has not published a memoir of this period.
- 2.
For example, the first leader of the SDLP, Gerry Fitt was 44 in 1970 and Paddy Devlin was 45, whilst Austin Currie was 30 and Paddy O’Hanlon was only 26.
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Hopkins, S. (2018). Ideology and Identity in the Founding Group of the Social Democratic and Labour Party: Evaluating the Life-Writing of a Political Generation. In: Burgess, T. (eds) The Contested Identities of Ulster Catholics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78804-3_13
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