Seamus Mallon, from the village of Markethill in County Armagh (where he still lives) was Deputy Leader of the SDLP from 1979 to 2001, and party spokesman on policing and justice. He was Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland from 1998 to 2001, an MP for Newry and Armagh from 1986 to 2005, as well as a member of Seanad Eireann in 1982. He was the SDLP’s chief negotiator in the talks that led to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, and the main driver of legislation in the House of Commons, ensuring that the Patten Commission’s recommendations on the radical reform of policing in the North were fully implemented – one of the major success stories of the peace process.