Foundation and Early History
The party was founded in August 1970, when six Stormont MPs and one Senator, former members of the Republican Labour Party (a party with ties to the Irish Labour Party), the National Democratic Party ( NDP, a small nationalist party that dissolved itself after the foundation of the SDLP), individual nationalists, former members of the Nationalist Party and members of the Northern Ireland Labour Party, joined to form a new party.
The SDLP initially rejected the Nationalist Party's policy of abstentionism and sought to fight for civil rights within the Stormont system. However, the SDLP quickly came to the view that Stormont was unreformable, and withdrew from parliamentary involvement.
Following the abolition of the Parliament of Northern Ireland, the SDLP emerged as the second-largest party, and the largest party representing the nationalist community, in elections to the new Northern Ireland Assembly established in 1973: the party won 19 out of 75 seats. The SDLP was one of the parties involved in the negotiations that resulted in the Sunningdale Agreement, which in turn resulted in the establishment of a power-sharing executive in January 1974. Gerry Fitt, the SDLP party leader, took office as Deputy First Executive, taking government alongside the Ulster Unionist Party (led by Brian Faulkner) and the Alliance Party. The Assembly and Executive were short-lived, however, collapsing after only four months due to sustained opposition from within the unionist community, and it was to be 25 years before the party sat in government again.
Read more about this topic: Social Democratic And Labour Party
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