Boosting morale through tempered celebration is the order of the day, writes Dan Keenan
It's a rare enough thing when some of the best speeches made at a political conference are delivered by non-members of the party.
And so it was with the 35th annual gathering of the SDLP.
May Blood, a Shankill Road community worker of 40 years' standing, hushed the opening session of the conference with a vivid portrayal of life in loyalist west Belfast a decade after the paramilitary ceasefires.
Hers was a community gripped by parasitic paramilitary groups and paralysed by a false conviction that there were no grounds for hope. For some nationalists who cling to a belief that it is unionism that must be defeated and the "wayward patriots" of the IRA that had to be accommodated, it must have been a sombre experience.
The Blood analysis holds that the nearest thing to a working-class Shankill resident is the working-class Falls resident just over the peace wall.
The trouble is, one community is confidently on the rise and the other is racing with equal velocity in the opposite direction.
Denis Bradley, still visibly scarred from an assault in September, spoke with a simple yet eloquent passion that almost threatened to - but didn't - upstage the leader of the party which had invited him to its podium.
Like Mark Durkan, he received a standing ovation before he spoke, as well as after.
He wasn't afraid to warn his hosts not to get too hot under the collar about community restorative justice - a key and as yet unresolved policing issue.
Some in the party fear such a scheme could turn out to be little more than a legitimising of unofficial, local justice enforced by former paramilitaries.
A few muttered afterwards about Bradley's conclusions, but all in a packed conference hall commended him warmly.
As with all such rallies, this gathering was part celebration, part political conference, part morale-boosting exercise.
Of course there was celebration, especially with the victories of Durkan and Alasdair McDonnell in Foyle and South Belfast.
Yet it seemed to be tempered with the knowledge that the low point for the party after the last Assembly poll was admittedly very low indeed.
There was open political debate, but some discussions were sparsely attended and less than riveting.
Of course there was a concerted effort to boost morale. Video clips with up-tempo soundtracks replayed the triumphs of last May's Westminster election.
Yet there was a whispered acceptance that what this party has won, apart from three Westminster seats, is more time to fight back.