Every few months or so his favourite Belfast morning newspaper does a feature on Seamus Mallon in case we should ever think he was no longer with us. In a recent Saturday edition they carried yet another feature. The article referred to Martin McGuinness’s resignation as DFM. Mallon recalls that he too did not receive much respect as DFM when David Trimble was FM. However, he did not have the courage to do what Martin did and take him on. Mallon has a bit of a cheek to be talking about respect. He did not show much of it towards those in the broader nationalist/republican family who differed from him when he was prominent in the SDLP long before the Good Friday Agreement came about in 1998.
I remember being on RTE about 1986/87 doing an interview with Brendan O’Brien on Today/Tonight which had been recorded the day before. During that interview I said I believed it was time for the two main nationalist parties to sit down and talk and look at the alternatives. After my recorded interview Mallon was wheeled in to the studio in Dublin to denounce me and tell the world what an awful man I was and that it was disgraceful for ‘a man of the cloth’ (sic) to come on the TV and not condemn ‘the men of violence.’ Since I was recorded the day before and he was live in the studio in Dublin I had no chance to reply to his silly remarks. He took the opportunity to put himself on the high moral ground –the ‘man of peace’- mar dhea. I was not surprised when, a few years later, I heard that he was less than happy with John Hume for engaging in talks with Gerry Adams. I admired John Hume for having the courage to do this.
On another occasion, about 1987, I was invited to speak at a debate in the Oxford Union on the same side as himself and Kevin McNamara. The topic was about British withdrawal from Ireland for and against. We were for and Brian Mawhinney, Major Farrar Hockley and Rev Martin Smith were against. Mallon studiously avoided me before, during and after the debate. It was as if he might be contaminated by talking to me. Martin Smith, who was no ecumenist, was much more courteous and engaged me in conversation afterwards.
In his favourite newspaper, the Irish News, Mallon was speaking about Martin McGuinness’s decision to resign from the position of DFM thus bringing about the end of the Northern assembly. He could not bring himself to applaud Martin but went into his narcissistic mode of talking about himself and how shabbily he had been treated by Mr Trimble. I don’t know how Trimble put up with him.
According to this great political genius from Markethill the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 was “Sunningdale for slow learners”. Such a stupid and condescending statement! But then, Mr Mallon has over many years made snide remarks about those who did not agree with him.
For showing such antipathy to people in SF and others working to bring about justice and peace, Mr Mallon has always been popular with RTE and with the ‘moderate’ morning paper in Belfast. Won’t be long until we see another tribute to the political genius from Markethill.
Dia duit ar maidin, Fr Joe. I always thought Seamus Mallon was on the greener side of the SDLP ( as opposed to Gerry Fitt, Paddy Devlin inter alia ), going by the interviews and panel discussions on the tv during the 1970s. But he certainly became markedly more outspoken against republican violence when he saw the rennaiscence of Sinn Fein and the future electoral threat it would bring to the SDLP. I, too, was disappointed in his treatment and attitude to John Hume when the latter , in the furtherance of peace, started talking with the republican movement.
Two political geniuses in one small village – Seamus and Willie. ( Frazer) Hard to tell which of them is the more bitter.
Ah the old Mallon chestnut ‘Sunningdale for slow learners’. It can’t be stated often enough that at the time of Sunningdale there was no peace process, internment without trial was in force, the British Army was running riot across the Six Counties and Sinn Féin had been banned in the statelet since 1957.
Aye, and remember too whose side he took when the British Army murdered the wee girl in Ballymoyer.
The GFA with all its faults is a far cry from what the lily livered sdlp signed up to in Sunningdale. Among other things the Sdlp agreed to was an unreformed RUC! No equality legislation either, in fact the word ‘Equality’ appeared in Sunningdale a grand total of ZERO times, I think that’s all we need to know about Mallon’s spurious claims.
History will judge Mallon as a bitter old Nationalist who was always content to ‘suck the hind tit’ of Unionism.
Bitter old man of the past
A school teacher like many others in the SDLP who cannot abide their social “inferiors” becoming involved in politics and beating them at their own game.
Teachers! All a bit full of themselves.