For over forty years Seamus Mallon has been a central figure in Irish politics North and South. Deputy Leader of the SDLP throughout the worst days of the Northern troubles, he has been a lifelong advocate of reform, civil rights and non-violence. His election to the office of Deputy First Minister in 1998 after the Good Friday Agreement remains his crowning achievement. However, the road to peace in Northern Ireland has been paved with adversity. In this profile documentary for RTÉ One television, Seamus Mallon talks candidly to John Bowman about his life and career: his childhood growing up a Catholic in the predominantly Protestant town of Markethill in South Armagh; the influence of his nationalist parents; his almost accidental route to political representation. He remembers witnessing murder first hand in the town where he was reared, the Republican posters that accused him of being an informer and the dangers his family endured during his years as a Westminster MP.
Seamus Mallon also recalls his role as Deputy Leader of the SDLP during the darkest period of the Troubles; his sometimes fraught relationship with SDLP party leader, John Hume; the tense negotiations leading towards the Good Friday Agreement; and the bitter tragedy of the Omagh bomb. For three years Seamus Mallon was also the first Deputy First Minister of the Northern Ireland Executive alongside First Minister David Trimble of the UUP. It was a working relationship that had Mallon wondering ‘what the fates had against me’.
Mixing in-depth interview with compelling archive, For the Record: Seamus Mallon is a revealing look at the man behind the pivotal political figure that is Seamus Mallon. It is also a partial snapshot of Mallon’s view of recent Northern history, including his hopes for the part of Ireland he’s called home for over seventy-seven years.
Quotes from Seamus Mallon:
On his childhood:
“You knew you were different. It was no place for us. My memories are of myself and my sister peeping out the window and watching a drumming march right in front of our house…the sounds of war…”
On Unionism:
“I have more in common with my fellow Loyalist than I have with someone from say, Cork or Kerry…”
On Republicanism:
“I don’t concede Irish Republicanism to Sinn Féin or the IRA. When we [the SDLP] entered into discussions with Sinn Féin, we handed the baton on…it was a big sacrifice to make and not be reciprocated.”
On death threats he received from the IRA:
“I know those guys and in their hearts they are cowards. They would have shot some creature who had no voice. But the irony of it is, every time I went to a police station in those days was to make representations of behalf of one of their organisations who had been lifted, arrested or ill-treated.”
On SDLP leader John Hume:
“John was a remarkable genius: very talented, very able…[but] never wanted to let the right hand know what the left was doing, not to talk of letting anybody in his party know…”
On his relationship with then-First Minister David Trimble:
“With David Trimble it was a roller-coaster ride: highly-intelligent man, under tremendous pressure politically. A man of great potential badly treated by his own party and badly treated by the Unionist community”
On the current political situation in Northern Ireland:
“The North of Ireland is a political contrivance…you have two power blocks and their objectives are to look after their own. It is getting to a point where the two governments can’t stay out any longer, they have to fulfil their role as guarantors. You should never wait until things get to a serious point…’
Interview: John Bowman
Executive Producer: Anne Roper 087.231.7380