The British Irish Ulster Forum held its launch event at the Houses of Parliament on 11th November 2009. During the discussion, entitled ‘Building bridges, breaking ties: looking ahead at Stormont’, politicians from the Ulster Conservatives and Unionists New Force, the SDLP, and the Labour Party denounced sectarian politics and outlined their vision of a modern and mature Northern Ireland polity.

The event was chaired by Margaret Gilmore, a former senior BBC correspondent and Senior Research Fellow at RUSI, with forty people in attendance, ranging from Peers to members of the general public.

Alasdair McDonnell MP, currently standing for the leadership of the SDLP, expressed his hope for the future of the institutions at Stormont, calling for “better Government that focuses on people needs”. Dr McDonnell, the Deputy Leader of the SDLP, lamented the “thirty years of Cold War” that marked the Troubles and reiterated his belief that both “communities need to listen to each other”. Dr McDonnell contrasted the work he has done in South Belfast since his election in 2005 to that of Sinn Fein and the DUP who, he said, are either “oblivious or too frightened to engage” in real cross-community engagement.

Cllr Ian Parsley, Conservative Councillor and potential General Election candidate in North Down, talked of the huge positive difference politics can make to society – but put an open question to the Forum as to whether Northern Ireland, in line with the rest of the UK, could come to suffer from “a new generation of bland politicians”.  He told the audience that in the summer he drove from Belfast to Dresden for a holiday and contrasted the freedom of movement he had with that of his father, who was a teenager when Dresden was heavily bombed during World War Two. He noted that his was the last generation who remembered restrictions on freedom of movement even within Northern Ireland itself – “such political gains should not be forgotten”. He pointed out that this reflected the progress that was possible when the political will was strong and that “politics needed to be less about identity, and more about ideology”.

Chris Ruane MP, PPS to David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, produced a detailed booklet of statistics, explaining the work he has carried out through the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly. He talked of “neglected communities in Northern Ireland” and emphasised that Northern Irish politicians need to “look at facts, look at figures, and hear evidence” before coming to decisions. He warned that Northern Ireland risked creating a cohort of children who left school with few or no qualifications and were effectively unemployable. He urged “politicians at Stormont to move on from the old divisions, by looking outward to best practice wherever it may be found North, South, UK mainland or beyond.”