SDLP playpark vote is another sign of their divisive politics

In the heat of the emotion of such an event, it is important that the facts are clearly stated.

Raymond McCreesh was a cause célèbre of ghastly proportions, even in the low standards of the IRA. In 1977, at the age of 20 he was convicted of a stream of terrorist offences including attempted murder.

The rifle McCreesh was arrested in possession with was used in a string of murders, including the Kingsmills massacre in 1976.

At the time of his arrest in 1976, the IRA boasted that McCreesh had been an active IRA terrorists for three years, having joined the organisation at the age of 17.

The Bobby Sands Trust claims McCreesh was, “one of the most dedicated and invaluable republican activists.”

So dedicated to the cult of death was McCreesh, that he starved himself to death in the infamous hunger strikes of 1981. No right-thinking person mourned his passing.

The SDLP boast of their human rights credentials. On their current website they say, “As the party of civil rights, the SDLP is working for an Ireland free from poverty, prejudice and injustice.”

Fine words. But how well have the SDLP lived up to them?

All the polls consistently reveal that few Protestants have ever voted for the SDLP in their history, and even fewer have ever stood for election for this supposed bastion of non-sectarianism.

Ordinary people are not fooled by the double-tongued values that were sectarian in outlook, composition and appeal.

Even many Catholics recognised that they were effectively “Sinn Fein without the armalites” and quickly made the transition from voting for the SDLP to Sinn Fein once the IRA had dumped the guns.

The leader of the SDLP John Hume won few admirers in the Protestant community throughout the Troubles. They found his clichés and hypocrisy nauseating.

Hume made little efforts to reach out to them as a persuader of Irish unity. Few forgot his uncompromising declaration, “It’s a united Ireland – or nothing.”

Even SDLP Founder and first leader, Gerry Fitt felt compelled to resign from the SDLP in 1979 when he witnessed the increasingly sectarian nature of its outlook. He described John Hume as an “inflexible fanatic”

The SDLP were comfortable walking the circuit in Irish America each year to bad mouth those ‘bigoted unionists’ and their ‘British enablers’.

Rarely, if ever, did they utter words of condemnation at the sectarian discrimination of Protestants in the Republic since partition or the ethnic cleansing of Protestants from the border areas by republican murder gangs.

In spite of the thousands of deaths of innocent Protestants in this country, SDLP leaders absented themselves from most of the funerals. There were no marches by them to express outrage at these egregious breaches of human rights. They weren’t the right type of victim!

The support of Sinn Fein in 2006 of the police service and the rule of law was proclaimed as a seismic moment for Northern Ireland.

For most of the history of the Troubles, the SDLP also refused to fully support the security services and the rule of law.

Instead, they sniped at the police and army. No unfounded accusation of collusion or “shoot to kill” claim was too outrageous for them to jump on the bandwagon.

When internment was introduced to stem the sectarian bloodshed in 1971, the SDLP adopted an abstentionist position from Stormont and a campaign of civil disobedience in protest.

The SDLP were quick to work with Sinn Fein when it suited their agenda. Few unionists forget how they withdrew Austin Currie from the 1981 Fermanagh and South Tyrone by-election to allow IRA prisoner Bobby Sands the opportunity to maximise the Catholic vote.

It took till 2010 for an SDLP leader to wear a poppy and attend a Remembrance Day service, when Margaret Ritchie attended one in Downpatrick.

The current leader, Colum Eastwood, carried the coffin of unrepentant terrorist, Seamus Coyle in 2012 flanked by an IRSP paramilitary colour party. When challenged, this new poster boy for inclusion unashamedly described the late Seamus Coyle as a “close friend”.

The SDLP have a record of divisive politics. Now naming a children’s playpark after a sectarian murderer is consistent with their hypocritical boasts to cherish all the children of Ireland equally.

• Rev Dr Paul Ferguson is a lawyer, church historian, and an ordained minister of religion working in SE Asia