Ritchie: First woman elected to lead SDLP

MARGARET RITCHIE is only the fourth leader of the SDLP, which was founded 40 years ago this year

MARGARET RITCHIE is only the fourth leader of the SDLP, which was founded 40 years ago this year. She is the first woman to lead it and the first to be elected directly by delegates to the party conference.

She was born in Downpatrick, Co Down in March 1958, but did not join the SDLP until 1980 when she was 22. A graduate of Queen’s University, Belfast, she worked for the Open University at its offices in the city. She was elected to the then SDLP-dominated Down District Council in 1985, became its vice-chair in 1992 and its chair in 1993.

Following the victory of her close party colleague Eddie McGrady over veteran unionist MP Enoch Powell in the 1987 Westminster election, she became his full-time parliamentary assistant.

She was central to the party’s organisation in the South Down constituency and played a full role on the SDLP ruling executive committee becoming the party’s international secretary. She also served as an alternate member of the European Committee of the Regions in Brussels.

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She was elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2003, when she took over 9 per cent of first preferences in the six-seater constituency.

Following this she was elected by colleagues as deputy chair of the SDLP Assembly group.

She was one of the SDLP’s two representatives on the Assembly’s Programme for Government Committee which prepared for the restoration of devolution in 2007. She had also been a member of the party’s negotiating team at Leeds Castle in Kent in 2004, and also at St Andrews in October 2006 when the Stormont Assembly was in suspension.

She increased her share of the vote in the 2007 Assembly election winning more than 12 per cent. She has served on the Assembly’s health committee and was nominated by her then party leader Mark Durkan for the Northern Ireland Executive on May 8th, 2007.

She took the post of social development minister and, thanks to the Assembly mechanism for sharing out ministerial positions, is currently the only member of her party with an Executive seat.

She stood down from Down District Council in 2009.

She established a reputation as a single-minded minister when in 2007 she withdrew £1 million of public money for a loyalist conflict transformation initiative after UDA-led violence in Carrickfergus, Co Antrim and Bangor, Co Down. She was fiercely opposed in doing so by DUP leader Peter Robinson, who accused her of breaking Executive rules.

A High Court judge later ruled she was wrong to do so, because she had not followed the proper procedure, and quashed the decision.

However, the controversy earned her significant credit within her own party and laid the foundations for her party leadership bid.

She became the first SDLP minister to address an annual conference meeting of the Ulster Unionist party in 2007 when, because of her stance on the UDA, was given a standing ovation by that party’s delegates on her arrival.

She told that conference she only had two words to say to those who opposed her stance on the funding issue: “No surrender”.