Introduction To Politics
During the sixties he was involved in the civil rights movement, especially in his native Armagh. In 1979, when John Hume went from being deputy leader of the SDLP (under Gerry Fitt) to leader, Mallon became deputy leader. He was elected to the first power-sharing Assembly in 1973, and to the Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention in 1975 representing Armagh. Between May and December 1982 Mallon was appointed by the then Taoiseach of the Republic of Ireland, Charles Haughey to the Republic's upper house, Seanad Éireann.
In 1982 he was elected to the new Northern Ireland Assembly, set up as part of then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, James Prior's rolling devolution. However due to his membership of the Seanad he was disqualified. Under legislation of the time, no elected member of a British parliament or regional assembly could serve in a parliament outside the United Kingdom without losing their British seat. That restriction was removed with regards to the Oireachtas by the Disqualifications Act 2000.
In 1986 he was elected to Westminster as an MP for Newry & Armagh, a seat he held until 2005. He won the seat in a by-election to replace Jim Nicholson, who had resigned his seat in protest at the Anglo-Irish Agreement, along with all the other Northern Irish unionist MPs. Nicholson was the only MP to fail to be re-elected.
Famously, Mallon asserted that the Good Friday Agreement was "Sunningdale for slow learners", referring to the 1973 Sunningdale Agreement.
Read more about this topic: Seamus Mallon
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