Mark Durkan – the Hot Press interview

here is no one more worthy as a successor to John Hume and Seamus Mallon than Mark Durkan. It isn’t going to be easy, but there is one advantage to following a giant, and that is when you stand on the shoulder of a giant you can reach even higher.”

Thus spoke Northern Secretary Dr. John Reid when Mark Durkan took over the leadership of the SDLP. But he also could have said that when you stand on the shoulder of a giant, you have a longer distance to fall.

And there is no denying that despite the monumental achievements of SDLP giants, John Hume and Seamus Mallon, the political party that Durkan inherited has recently been battered in both local and Westminster elections. Which might make one wonder if Durkan has inherited something of a poisoned chalice.

These, then, are some of the difficulties the forty one year old, Derry born Mark Durkan faces as he heads into his future as leader of the SDLP and Deputy First Minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly. And into what, arguably, may be one of the most epoch-changing periods in Irish history.

This may be Mark Durkan’s first interview with hotpress but he has reason to know the magazine well. In the mid-’80s, an interview given to us by Gerry Adams was seized on by John Hume as being significant in terms of what came to be known as the Hume-Adams talks. “I can’t tell you how many time the hotpress interview was on my desk and in and out of the reference tray,” says Durkan. “The photocopy of that interview was well-thumbed through”.

Mark Durkan’s own hotpress interview took place in Dublin Castle following the first British-Irish Council Summit in two years – and on the day the news broke of the death of George Harrison.

Joe Jackson: Tony Blair said today that the Beatles provided the soundtrack of his youth. Is the same true of you?

Mark Durkan: Yeah. That is what the Beatles represented to me. When I think of my childhood and the sort of music my older brothers would be listening to, and the music coming through on radio, the Beatles dominated all that. But George Harrison to someone of my age, born in 1960, would have been one of the less visible Beatles.

And less politically involved than either Lennon or McCartney, both of whom even wrote songs about Northern Ireland.

Yes. And that emerged in the post-Beatles situation, obviously, when George Harrison got involved in matters more religious, became more reflective. Whereas some of the others became more expressive in relation to political issues. But I do think it is one of those big punctuation marks for a generation when George Harrison passes away.

You’ve been aware of death since a very early age, given that your dad died when you were a baby.

I was very confused about death. Obviously, I didn’t know my father but my older brothers and sisters would have been talking about him when families sit together. They’d say things like “do you remember the time we did that with daddy” and I couldn’t share those memories. But in terms of understanding what death meant, the fact is that, as a child you’re watching TV and you see people getting shot in one movie and then appearing in another. It was like when you were playing cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians and when you were hit you just counted to twenty five, or whatever, and you were alive again!

So growing up I had this notion – because a lot of the counselling to me was “your father has gone to heaven with the angels” – that somebody could come back from being dead. So I thought he would. And I remember one time in primary school we were asked to draw pictures of our fathers and I sat there wondering what do I draw? And I asked the teacher what to do. She said “draw what you think he would look like or what you think he would be doing.” And as so many people were drawing their father at work, I’d no way of depicting that. I knew he was a policeman so I just drew a man wearing a police cap, cutting a hedge!

Was that sense of his absence a strong feature in childhood?

I remember at the time of my Holy Communion we all made wee thank you cards to our parents and I did a card. But I remember feeling it would be wrong not to address it to my mother and father. Yet I knew from my mother’s reaction to the card that this wasn’t a case of him being somewhere and going to walk back into the house. So there was that sense of absence, yes.

How did your dad die?

A car crash. He was driving. And because the car ended up roof down in water he drowned.

How old was he?

I’m now older than he was, so his death does strike me as having happened when he was relatively young.

You talked about George Harrison’s death defining generational lines but do you agree with those who say the events of September 11th in New York had a seismic effect on the world in general and in Northern Ireland in particular?

I do think it was one of those defining moments, yes. There are lots of things that happen that we describe as ‘shocking’ but that really was totally shocking. And no matter how many times you saw it on TV that first day you couldn’t believe it. I was in Stormont, having a meeting with officials about a Draft Budget, and somebody came in and said the World Trade Centre had been hit. So we put on the TV. Meaning there was the double shock of taking in this news and taking in these pictures. Then someone said there was a second plane. And then there was the image of the building crumbling. Your emotions just felt pummelled and you wondered ‘what next?’ Because you were left with the feeling there are no limits, no givens and no protection when something like that can take place.

You also talked earlier about relating death to games like cops ‘n’ robbers but that response must have changed when you hit your teens and the Troubles became a reality.

The Troubles probably started when I was eight so I was conscious of people being killed, at that level, from that age. Then as I got older and other deaths occurred and I learned more about death, the violence of the Troubles had a chilling impact on me. I can’t say I was ever tempted to be involved in violence, or support violence, so I’m not one of those people who thinks “there but for the grace of God go I.” I’ve always had an instinctive anti-violence outlook. And I regard myself as lucky to have that because I’ve had friends – people I was at school with – who did see things differently and took a different course.

Joined paramilitary groups?

Yes. I’m lucky that I didn’t. I never felt any urge or pressure to do that. Yes, I felt angry, yes I felt disgusted and yes, I would feel all the mixture of emotions that any young person would feel dealing with such issues in times of such change, conflict and confusion but I never, ever, found myself condoning even an act of violence. Even on the school bus when people would be spitting on the backs of soldiers – that’d disgust me. I don’t have anything in me that wants to see, or likes to see, any harm being brought to anyone else.

So there is a legitimate reason for you to have that picture of Martin Luther King on the wall of your office. He obviously, was an advocate of non-violence.

Martin Luther King was a great figure. I’ve read most of his writings, most of what’s been written about him and made a point of visiting the Martin Luther King centre in Atlanta. There are all the obvious quotations people read but when you read some of his less significant writings you see so many different ideas and expressions for any age. You’d even think they were written for our circumstances. Martin Luther King is timeless, in that sense. And I don’t have many heroes – I don’t go in for that kind of stuff – but he was a huge figure in my life.

It’s said John Hume groomed you to take over as leader of the SDLP starting twenty years ago but did he originally inspire you politically?

When I was growing up in Derry, John Hume dominated the political landscape. From the late ’60s on you were very conscious of that. But I’m someone who would have taken for granted the worthy contribution he was making. It was logical and sensible but it wasn’t particularly exciting. You knew it was good and he was good at taking on people who needed taking on. And you knew he stood for good principles. Yet, as a young person, there are different issues that interest and motivate you.

And I wasn’t just interested in our own immediate political situation. I always had an interest in current affairs, in general. And World Development issues. That’s what I was involved in, in school. And outside. Even the budding environmental issues that were starting to emerge. But in college I was as good a critic of the SDLP as anyone else! They weren’t green enough, they weren’t red enough! But the point is that I could afford to carp and criticise because I was taking for granted what the SDLP were doing.

When did that student carping change?

During the hunger strikes that polarised a mixed group of friends I had and polarised the student population in Queen’s. The emotions I felt, and my friends felt, were being exploited by different Republican groups setting themselves up under different names and disguises but with a clear, dedicated Provisional Sinn Fein agenda - the phrase that was used at the time. I also saw how some of the emotions on the other side were being exploited by more extreme unionist elements.

So in that context I was very struck by the fact that the people who were trying to provide reason in dealing with these sorts of issues, and not work on the basis of rage, were the SDLP. And there was a group of students in those very unpromising circumstances who tried to re-establish what had been a defunct SDLP branch in Queens. They were harassed and attacked but I was very impressed by their attitude and commitment so that moved me off my barstool. Or perch. And I began working for the SDLP in any election that came along. For the party. I do like canvassing for a party, I don’t like canvassing for myself.

Is that because you are shy – though it has been suggested that shyness quickly evaporates when you have to take a stand on issues.

I do feel that, as a public representative, there’s a job I do on behalf of the public and, like everybody else, there are other parts of my life and they belong to me, my family, my circle of friends. I don’t see myself as a personality or celebrity so there is an element of shyness but I don’t think it’s a bad thing not to be trying to just promote and project yourself all the time.

Was there, then, a coded criticism of Hume and Mallon when you said you hope that when you leave the SDLP people are talking about the party and not you, personally. You have admitted there is the public view that the SDLP ended up being perceived by some as a support group for John Hume and Seamus Mallon.

I did say we, as a party, have to become known as more than just a support group. But we are in a different environment now, because of the Agreement. For those institutions to work the SDLP needs to be there at many different levels, with many different representatives. It’s very important that people understand that party politics now in the North is very much a squad system. It was different for a lot of the time when John and Seamus were working within the absence of that political process. They were working to actually create that process and had to go in very individual ways to try and lobby and get people interested in our situation. But there has been a graduation, a change that the SDLP has done more than anyone else to create. Yet the party itself has had to move to make sure that – having been the first to drive and create that change – it doesn’t make the mistake of being the last to respond to its implications, within the party itself. But the SDLP is in good heart. We’ve taken the wake-up call we got in the elections earlier this year so we know we’re down in that sense. But at our party conference there was no question of us being down and out. There is a vibrancy, an enthusiasm and an energy.

But some would say you were given a kind of poisoned chalice after those election losses

Given the historical context, for me to turn around and imply that John Hume and Seamus Mallon were giving me a poisoned chalice by allowing me to be leader of the SDLD – when we have an agreement agreed, institutions working, and by the time the take-over happened, decommissioning starting – would be a lie. To say the least. I’ve taken over in far more proficious circumstances than John Hume and Seamus Mallon did. That’s not to deny the fact that we’re in a much more competitive electoral environment. And that proved itself in the elections. We have to set out our own agenda more, sharpen our elbows on both sides because all the other parties have moved onto our ground

How?

The entire territory that is now the Agreement was mapped out first by the SDLP. So that area has become crowded and we need to push out to the front again and find the path forward from here. It’s what the Party did for the last generation and we are going to do it for the next.

On a more personal level, you once joked that despite John Hume going on and on about “new relationships” the only one he could claim credit for was the one between yourself and your wife.

We used to slag him for that and this is what provoked him to go away and do the Peace Process. But, yeah, Jackie and I met in John’s office when I went to work there in 1984. She’d started as his secretary in ’83 so she takes great delight telling everyone she was there before me. And if you were interviewing Jackie she would be very quick to say it was not love at first sight from her side! And very quick to declare that ties in with another of John’s phrases about how “relationships can build and develop.” Maybe Jackie and I can provide a parable for all that!

Does Jackie support your career advances within the SDLP? Particularly in the context of you becoming leader of the party and Deputy First Minister?

Having worked for John Hume and worked with me during the different political involvements I’ve been through she’s very conscious of what was going to be involved in terms of home life. But I have tried very hard, for example, to keep as many weekends as possible for us. I was able to do that when I was Minister of Finance and Personnel. Partly because people aren’t asking the Minster of Finance and Personnel to many functions and events! But it is going to be difficult for us now because, as Deputy First Minister, there are all those demands. And a lot Party meetings tend to be at weekends. So it’s going to be harder for us to find time for ourselves. And we are going to have to learn some new disciplines in that sense. Maybe even if it means getting more selfish and turning off the mobile phone in the hours we have together.

Getting back to the Peace Process, is there a part of Mark Durkan that instinctively distrusts the likes of Gerry Adams. Do you have to fight that tendency all the time?

In dealing with most people of different outlooks you find your emotions channel-flicking from one to the other. Obviously I have a deep disgust of everything the IRA did and was involved in. And I recognise, fully, the complicity of many people in Sinn Fein in the whole IRA programme down the years. In supporting and not condemning and so on. But I also recognise that very significant movements and developments have been taking place. So while I’m not blind to any of the things I fear about people, suspect about people and, in some cases, even know about people, I also find it easy to find good things to think about people. And say about people.

Do you think it was that attack on the World Trade Centre and America’s subsequent “war against terrorism” that finally led to the start of IRA decommissioning?

In politics context is all important. So the aftermath of September 11th presented a context that maybe persuaded some people that doubted the relevance or benefit of decommissioning. But I would like to believe it wasn’t September 11th that brought about decommissioning. In the sense that I argued all along that decommissioning should happen and would happen under the Agreement. I’ve been saying that all along so I’m not going to make a liar of myself by saying it happened because of September the 11th.

Where do you stand in relation to the deadlines for decommissioning being imposed by the UUP?

The February issue arises as a function of the legislation that permits decommissioning schemes to provide amnesties for people moving weapons etc. Whenever the British Government brought in that legislation there was a time limit on the legality of that scheme. That time limit is February. It’s not that De Chastellane’s remit runs out in February. So the sensible thing to do – if that scheme was brought in to achieve decommissioning and sufficient decommissioning hasn’t been achieved – is to legally extend that scheme.

Those who are trying to impose deadlines are, at one level, trying to abort the decommissioning process because if you say “no more scheme for decommissioning beyond February” then there is absolutely no possibility for decommissioning. The context you need for De Chastellane to operate would be legally defunct. And their aim is not just to abort decommissioning but to abort the Agreement itself so I would hope those Unionists who are encouraged by how the institutions are working and who rooted for the Agreement – and are still absolutely determined to get decommissioning – don’t fall into the trap of abandoning the Process with an ill-timed demand.

The Dublin/Monaghan bombings of 1974 were raised at today’s press conference. Do you agree with those who say that the British Government is not coming forward with documentation and evidence the independent inquiry needs?

I can’t say I know the details of exactly what did or didn’t happen in Dublin and Monaghan. That’s one of the reasons we need an exercise that properly explores and examines and establishes what did happen. But if people, who have relevant knowledge and relevant information, are saying that must be withheld and are trying to ignore lawful and legitimate requests, it can only be because there is a truth they know about that they want to remain hidden. What other conclusion can you draw?

So, by extension, are you saying that the British Government must have been involved in the Dublin-Monaghan bombings? Particularly if Tony Blair isn’t helping to get this information out?

If information is being suppressed or withheld then a couple of questions arise. Either there was direct involvement by people who, at whatever level, were acting on behalf of the State or some British force or service. The other question is that it wasn’t people acting directly on behalf of the State but that people acting on behalf of the State had sufficient knowledge of what had happened. Either to prevent it or to make sure that people were brought to justice for this terrible atrocity. And didn’t. But we do need to know once and for all.

Where do you stand on the issue of Sellafield?

I want to see it closed. Not just because of the MOX plant. That’s always been my position. One thing that is a part of my life I’ve never made public is that I’m been a long-standing member of Greenpeace. I don’t necessarily agree with every tactic they engage in but I have had this long-standing interest in environmental matters. And I said today, at the British-Irish Council, that there was a debate recently in the Assembly and the concerns about Sellafield cross party lines just as they cross borders in Ireland. And the reason I made that point was because I was very annoyed to hear Brian Wilson, a British Minister, trying to dismiss the Fianna Fail advertisement (against the MOX expansion at Sellafield, taken out in British newspapers such as The Times) by saying “this is southern Irish party politics.” I wanted to emphasise the point that these concerns cross party lines North and South.

Also, people who, in the past, have felt comfortable with the nuclear industry are now feeling “maybe we shouldn’t feel so comfortable with it.” Particularly following September 11th and fears of what might happen in the future. I think there is an awareness tide turning.

When you say ‘what might happen’ you mean, presumably, the fear that terrorists could crash a plane into Sellafield? Though some dismiss that idea as a comic book fear.

I think people stopped believing in comic book fears after September 11th. They know these sort of things can happen. And who’s to say that it can’t, or won’t? That’s the big difference made by September 11th. It really has reconditioned what our concept of possibility is. What may have been fantasy is now more in the realm of fears people have. Certainly people I didn’t expect to hear talking about a plane being deliberately crashed into Sellafield, are now doing so. And these are some of the people who defend the Sellafield operation. Now they’re saying this is an issue we have to address.

Another issue of concern to many people is drugs, another subject raised at the British-Irish council today. Where do you stand on the subject of paramilitary groups trading in drugs in Northern Ireland?

The way to approach this issue, now, is rather than try to accuse and blame each other for the problem as we have it, try see what we can do to deal with that problem. And I don’t believe in these high-and-mighty sweeping political initiatives. It’s not all on the enforcement side. It isn’t all on the treatment side or the education or awareness side, but it includes all those things. I’m certainly not into using the drug problem to batter or beat anyone. It’s too big a problem to be reduced to that.

But surely part of the drug problem in Northern Ireland are the “punishment beatings” of drugs offenders, dealers trying to muscle in on paramilitary turf, whatever.

One of the differences between Sinn Fein and the SDLP is that we are in the business of solving problems and we’re even in the more boring business of avoiding problems. Whereas Sinn Fein, in many ways, exploit problems. Many people may have believed that a form of rough justice, the “cudgel posses”, were going to deal with the drugs problem but they don’t. Just as the most effective policing system doing everything by due process isn’t going to solve the drug problem.

We need to understand the whole drugs problem and respond to it in a way that meets the needs and circumstances of those suffering from the ground level up. And beating peoples’ limbs isn’t a way of doing that. That’s not treating or helping anything. It might satisfy the mood in some areas in a short term way but it definitely hasn’t brought anyone release from the drugs menace as we know it. And it won’t.

On a lighter note I can head towards the end of this interview by referring back to where it started. Belfast singer-songwriter Andy White once told me that when he was growing up there were rumours John Lennon sent a suitcase full of drugs to “radicals” in Northern Ireland to “help” the “revolution.” Ever hear that story?

No. And I wouldn’t have been part of it even if I had heard! Then again during the talks we started to speculate – because all of a sudden a lot of painting appeared in the talks building – that this was part of Mo Mowlam’s attempt to “civilise” us. And we began to speculate that, between her and George Mitchell, they were going to start putting aromatherapy into the ventilation system. And then Mo said, “well it wouldn’t be aroma therapy, I’d be putting into the ventilation system!”

It would be dope, right, which she admitted to smoking!

Yeah. And she said we’d need that to lighten up!

John Reid, when he talked about you being a worthy successor to John Hume and Seamus Mallon, said Hume’s song would probably be ‘The Impossible Dream’, Mallon’s would be ‘My Way’. What would be yours?

‘High Hopes’!