Analysis: Mark Durkan's powerful and witty keynote address set SDLP pulses racing, writes Gerry Moriarty.
How does a party compete with a movement? And in the face of that debilitating and perplexing question, how do you maintain party morale? Those were the stiff questions for Mark Durkan to answer at his first full SDLP annual conference as party leader.
Everyone in the bright, modern Armagh City Hotel at the weekend was conscious that even above the current political crisis, the most pressing issue facing the SDLP is how to ward off the electoral threat from Sinn Féin.
A rocky road ahead politically, certainly; but there was a general consensus in Armagh that, despite the upheavals, the foundations of the Belfast Agreement will hold, and that sometime down the line the institutions will be restored.
Sinn Féin was the ghost at the conference. The matter was barely alluded to in the conference chamber for the obvious reason that this is the private reserve of the backroom strategists.
But in the halls and bars, members chatted fairly freely about Sinn Féin. There were no ready answers to how the SDLP might prevent it becoming the undisputed political leader of nationalism. The SDLP's organisation is improving but it is very difficult to withstand a rampaging green machine, to resist a republican movement with a Social, Democratic and Labour Party.
Late on Friday night, one bewildered SDLP veteran queried how so many people could vote Sinn Féin when it was linked to the IRA, which has caused such death and destruction. He was forgetting that Sinn Féin is now viewed as standing in the same centre field as the SDLP, although with an attractive whiff of sulphur about it.
It was important therefore that Mr Durkan steer members away from any sense of despair. His brief was to animate the delegates and maintain confidence in the party's core principle of consensus politics. Sinn Féin might appear to have the upper hand at the moment, but if the party could keep faith then who knows what would unfold when and if the Assembly election comes along.
John Hume was in the hotel for the weekend, but kept a low profile, while Seamus Mallon was in Pittsburgh picking up an award, and there was no sign of that other venerable, Eddie McGrady. So Mr Durkan was in no danger of being upstaged by the old stagers.
He was allowed a free run to galvanise the 600 delegates, and in difficult circumstances he did it well. If he hadn't pursued a political career, Mr Durkan could have made a living as a gag-writer; but for some reason since assuming the leadership 12 months ago, instead of delivering one-liners, he tended to the verbose.
There was concern that his keynote speech on Saturday would fall flat and that the members would return to their constituencies and branches equally deflated. Instead they headed home with some fire in their bellies.
There were few surprises in Mr Durkan's address but the aspirational and exhortational elements of the speech worked well. He spoke with great power and conviction. It was also finely epigrammatic and humorous at a time when SDLP members needed to laugh and be lifted. This was a nice change, because while John Hume was always visionary he was seldom funny.
A couple of examples. Who could disagree with this depiction of David Trimble's commitment to the Belfast Agreement: "When leaders claim to defend that which they assault, it causes confusion among their own supporters and consternation among ours." And Mr Durkan's dig about Martin McGuinness admitting he was in the IRA but Gerry Adams insisting he wasn't, greatly enthused the conference hall: "Martin was in the IRA, but Mitchel \ didn't know. IRA men in Florida were buying guns, but the IRA didn't know. Sinn Féin had a representative in Cuba, but Sinn Féin didn't know." Then the punchline that had them howling: "Now Gerry does know that he wasn't in the IRA. It's just that nobody else knows."
The visionary stuff, as in, "Walk with me, and in this new century we will reach a new country - SDLP lead on", could have been embarrassing but actually worked well, and the audience loved it. The rousing applause at the end of the speech was long, loud and genuine. The SDLP heart was beating again.
Almost as long and loud was the applause for Mr Durkan's soundbite, "I am 100 per cent for a United Ireland," which certainly stirred the nationalist sentiments of the SDLP gathering.
It was more muted when he added that he was also 100 per cent for the agreement, that he knew others who were 100 per cent for the Union and also 100 per cent for the agreement, and that neither view "diminishes nor qualifies the other".
He said that if a majority in the North ever voted for a united Ireland then, in accordance with the principle of consent, a united Ireland would follow. But, trying to provide assurance for unionists, he said should that ever happen the Assembly, Executive, institutions and central consensual tenets of the agreement would remain.
"The SDLP believes that the rights, protections and inclusion that nationalists sought within Northern Ireland, while it is in the United Kingdom, must equally be guaranteed to unionists within a united Ireland." The unionist initial reaction might be to scoff, but this was a commitment of substance. Mr Durkan was reiterating that there is no alternative to the agreement but pledging that as far as the SDLP was concerned - whether in the context of the UK, joint sovereignty or a united Ireland - the cross-community philosophy of the agreement would continue to apply equally to nationalists and unionists.
As for the latest crisis, Mr Durkan's pragmatic argument was that if the two governments drove ahead with policing, criminal justice and other uncompleted aspects of the accord, the IRA would find it difficult not to heed Tony Blair's appeal to the organisation to retreat into the mist.