The first leader of the SDLP, Gerry Fitt, died today after a long illness.
The 79-year-old peer, who served as MP for West Belfast for 17 years, had been cared for by his daughters in England. He had been in declining health for several months and had been suffering from heart trouble.
Gerry Fitt pictured in London in 1989
A committed socialist, Mr Fitt was a leading figure in the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland during the 1960s.
With other civil rights leaders such as Ivan Cooper and nationalists such as John Hume and Austin Currie, he founded the SDLP in 1970.
After the Sunningdale Agreement was forged by British Prime Minister Edward Heath and Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave, he served in 1974 as deputy chief executive in the North's first power sharing government alongside then Ulster Unionist leader Brian Faulkner.
The administration lasted only five months and was brought down by a loyalist strike that crippled the North.
Lord Fitt was a fierce critic of the IRA, denouncing the Provisional movement not only for the murders it carried out but also for its involvement in robberies and extortion.
He left the SDLP in 1979 after the party turned down an offer by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's first Northern Ireland Secretary Humphrey Atkins to participate in talks. The SDLP's objection was that the talks agenda was too narrow and should have contained an all-Irish dimension. He was succeeded as SDLP leader by John Hume.
In 1983, Lord Fitt lost his West Belfast seat in the general election to Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams. He was appointed a peer later that year. For much of his career, Lord Fitt was critical of the SDLP, claiming it had become too nationalist.