SDLP Decides On Principle Not To Attend St Patrick’s Day Celebrations At The White House in the US
SDLP Leader Claire Hanna MP has set out the SDLP’s position regarding attending the White House on St Patrick’s Day.
Traditionally since the Good Friday Agreement, parties were invited to attend St Patrick’s Day in the White House with the POTUS (President of the United States), however, the SDLP has taken a principled stance of a number of key issues and declared it will not be attending the dinner with President Trump.
This has always been a major day in the Irish-American calendar, and the SDLP has rejected the political, social and moral rationale of many of Trump’s actions and that of his government.
Claire Hanna said: “We are the first party in the North to take this principled stand.
“The jamboree over Gaza and the continuing demolition in Palestine, the role of ICE and their repressive actions, Trump’s daily attacks on women, and the lingering shadow of Jeffrey Epstein hanging over politics in the US and beyond are reasons why we are not attending.”
The SDLP Leader said that her party were not making a judgement on the United States as such but on Trump’s actions and behaviour. She added that she was encouraged to see resistance to Trump’s ideology emerging and democratic socialism making a stand.
She clarified that the St Patrick’s Day celebrations in the White House should have been about Irish values and added: “We cannot lend our Irish values to Donald Trump.
“We look forward to returning in brighter days ahead to the White House dinner.”
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Trump has shaken the established world order in many ways including demanding that Canada becomes a US state, and Greenland owned by Denmark should also be part of the US ‘for security reasons’. He has also threatened Mexico and Cuba, and recently invaded Venezuela and imprisoned their president. He was also threatened other South American states such as Columbia.
But his most significant action in allowing Russia’s President Putin to continue to devastate Ukraine thus splitting NATO and creating ripples of fear and instability across Europe that Russia will not stop at the Donbas in Ukraine. Trump now appears as an unreliable ally in NATO.
Further, he has presided over an important nuclear arms treaty lapse allowing Russia, China and rogue nations a free hand in a new nuclear arms race.
Listen to SDLP Leader Claire Hanna speaking on the decision not to attend the White House Dinner on St Patrick’s Day here.
