SDLP Youth invited Social Development Minister, Margaret Ritchie to Queen’s University yesterday evening (Monday 30 November 2009) to speak to students about the work her department is doing in delivering a shared future.

There was a healthy mix of students and young people at the event.

Highlighting that 1 in 8 people in the north want to live in a shared neighbourhood, the Minister announced that she is looking at mechanisms that will integrate this public desire into the common selection scheme of the Housing Executive to facilitate this.

Minister Ritchie’s priority on assisting the most vulnerable, in terms of housing and social security, in developing the community’s capacity and in delivering a shared future resonated with a lot of people she was speaking with.

Margaret Ritchie outlined the real need for a dedicated Shared Future Strategy from our government. She rightly highlighted the embarrassment visited upon the north when the DUP and SF both produced their own version of a Shared Future Strategy.

The Minister caught the mood of the room when she said that the public are leaps ahead of the politicians on the need for a shared future. She is right, the public are ahead of our politicians on this, and if the DUP and SF fail to realise that there is a feeling among the public for a shared future, almost organic and innate in nature, then they will suffer the consequences of consistently putting their own party political desires ahead of everything else.

My generation are living a shared future more than any generation in the previous 40 to 50 years; we work, socialise and in many cases study together. So while it is important that government delivers from top down, in terms of shared spaces, legal protections and the like, the people will be building from bottom up on this issue – and our politicians will need to catch up even more.

As Margaret Ritchie said, it’s such a shame that the two dominant parties can’t look past their own selfish interests and put the needs of the people first, particularly on this fundamentally important issue.

As Chair of SDLP Youth (SDLPY) I was part of an SDLP delegation that met with Irish Environment Minister, John Gormley TD to discuss North South arrangements, Climate Change and the SDLPY campaign “The Countdown is on” regarding international climate talks in Copenhagen.

When it comes to the North South bodies, it remains the fact that the DUP are blocking Climate Change being discussed at these meetings. So on the most important issue facing a generation, the DUP are blocking discussion and action.

They really are out of touch.

There is no denying that it still remains encoded in the DUP’s DNA the need to exclude and squeeze nationalists and Catholics, you can see that in how they behave in government, central and local, particularly over how they continually put down pre conditions on policing and justice negotiations.

These pre conditions are usually attacking what the SDLP fought for in the Good Friday Agreement; such as the Parades Commission, Equality Commission, Bill of Rights or North South Arrangements.

Sinn Fein are slow to the game but my party’s been saying that for a long time.

But this is the environment we are talking about, what rational reason can there be for excluding discussion and action on the most crucial issue facing us?

We pushed the Minister to get tough on the DUP on this and get this on the agenda. Time will tell if that will be the case.

SDLP Delegation meet Irish Environment Minister

On Wednesday 9 September the SDLP launched proposals for a radical overhaul of how our youth justice system should work here in the north.

The conference was addressed by a diverse section of people; some within the youth justice system and others outside, including those who felt failed by aspects of the wider justice system.

The PSNI, Youth Justice Agency, Include Youth, Children’s Law Centre, NIACRO and Sarah Holland all took part and gave invaluable contributions and testimonies and for that I thank them.

We all know that there are some serious issues surrounding the whole process of the devolution of justice, including the unnecessary and damaging delay. The SDLP has been consistent in highlighting those issues and challenging those most responsible for delivery. The conference heard in the strongest terms condemnation of those responsible, namely Sinn Fein and the DUP. While they may think it’s fine to play politics and position themselves using this issue, the SDLP believes these issues are much too important to play politics with.

When you hear the failures of the system from the Holland family and how they where let down, and realise that the only plausible way for reform is devolution, it’s time the two parties, if they really are serious about community safety, get their acts together.

Another message really needs to sink in to these parties – while devolution of justice is important, what is equally important is having the right policies in place to reform the system when we do get those powers. Because as it stands the system is simply not delivering to its full potential. The SDLP has outlined our youth justice policy, and we will be rolling out a program of work around it, as well as other key aspects of the justice system over the coming months; we suggest other parties listen up and follow suit. 

A journalist very recently labeled the SDLP the “Social Democratic and Lock ‘Em Up Party” when it comes to tackling justice and crime; claiming we have no consistant policies when it comes to justice. That journalist was invited on Wednesday, but unfortunately was unable to attend. I’d be happy to sit down with him anytime to go over my Party’s consistant positions on criminal justice, and let him have the opportunity to acknowledge his mistake.

Back in Febuary of this year I blogged about the SDLP proposals which are here.

My thoughts and those of the vast majority of people across Ireland and Britain are with the family and friends of the two murdered soldiers, Mark Quincey and Patrick Azinkar, who where killed in cold blood on Saturday night and the murdered PSNI officer, Constable Carroll murdered Monday.

I am the SDLP’s youngest political representative at 23 years old, I am the same age as the murdered soldier Mark Quincey and two years older than Patrick Azinkar. That made me and Mark both 11 years old and Patrick only 9 years old when the last British soldier was murdered here, in South Armagh.

Those that carried these attacks out at the weekend have absolutely nothing to offer this society or our people other than misery and pain and they need to be brought to justice. Any true Irish man or woman, Irish nationalist or Irish unionist, Catholic, Protestant or neither, should recognise this and give any information they have that could bring them to justice forward.

In Stormont on Monday (09-03-2009) a sense of unity unseen before was shown, which was again shown On Tuesday and today, and I’m sure will continue – showing the dissents that they will not destabilise the peace process or the institutions – and this is very welcome, for it defeats what the dissidents set out to achieve.

There is no doubt that my generation owes a great debt of gratitude to the past generation of Hume, Mallon and Rodgers, and others from all parties, for helping secure an end to violence and establishing power sharing institutions – although slow to start.

We owe a great sense of thanks to this present generation for getting the institutions back up and running and enshrining democratic politics above all other forms, however rocky.

My generation, the future generation, have no desire to go back to the horrific and pointless destruction and murders of the past. We have no desire to revisit the heartache and pain that others had to endure.

We grew up at the end of the troubles, as did the murdered soldiers, who at the time of ceasefires where most likely very much like me, interested in football or liked climbing trees, and had no interest in politics.

In fact, not only has my generation no intention to go back, we have every intention to go forward, much more forward than ever before in our history and continue un deterred the process of truly uniting our people. We are ‘ceasefire babies’, less tainted by the violence and divisions of the past and we know peace to be normal.

What these murderers carried out is to us abnormal, sickening and deplorable and they will not prevent my generation from sowing the seeds of the unity of our people and peace for our people. The next generation deserves nothing less and we will not let so called ‘Irish republicans’ stop that progress.