Party’s political self-harm over abortion issue has seen groundswell of support for burgeoning Aontu

IN recent weeks and months Aontu has received hundreds of enquiries and dozens of new members from the SDLP, who have expressed dissatisfaction with the abortion campaigning nature of the current SDLP leadership.

Aontu is not even two years old, but in that short time hundreds of people have left Fianna Fail, Sinn Fein and the SDLP to join our new movement.

We have received over 50,000 votes and now have six elected representatives, from Derry to Wexford. Denise Mullen, our high-profile Fermanagh South/tyrone councillor, was the first SDLP councillor to leave the party over their flip-flop on the right to life. A key breaking point for many of our new members from the SDLP has been the complete abandonment of the right to life by the SDLP leadership.

The SDLP leadership lobbied Westminster over a year ago to impose an extreme abortion regime on the north against the will of the people, and just recently actively voted for the legislation in the British Houses of Parliament.

What’s happening in the SDLP is very similar to what happened in Fianna Fail: the leadership has ignored the will of the membership and gone from supporting human rights to voting for the ending of life by the state right up until birth.

The hungry, ambitious middle management in the party has seen what way the wind is blowing and is following suit. Remaining within a party that is doing damage to your core human rights values is a form of political selfharm. Being loyal to a party that opposes your desire to protect the weakest in society is not logical.

These people have not left the SDLP. The SDLP has left them.

PEADAR TOIBIN

Leader, Aontu