Memorial service held for Lord Fitt

A memorial service is to be held today at Belfast City Hall for Lord Gerry Fitt.

Family members, friends and politicians are expected to attend the ceremony, which will honour the former SDLP leader, who died last August at the age of 79, after suffering from a long-term heart condition.

Gerry Fitt is renowned for being the first nationalist MP for west Belfast and co-founder of the SDLP. In the 1960's, he was one of the main voices for nationalism in Northern Ireland, and remained an advocate for nationalist interests throughout his life.

In 1968, he became known throughout the world when he was pictured after receiving a beating from police during a civil rights march.

After the formation of the SDLP, he managed to win seats in Westminster, the Stormont assembly and the Belfast Corporation.

He then continued to forge political links and was instrumental in forming the short-lived power-sharing compromise following the Sunningdale agreement in 1974.

He quit as SDLP party leader in 1979. However his implacable opposition of IRA violence and criticism of the hunger strikes campaign caused him to lose favour with voters at a time when there was a growing militant political backdrop in Northern Ireland. He lost his Westminster seat to Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams in June 1983.

Forced from his home in Belfast which had to be fortified against regular attacks by militant Republicans, Gerry Fitt reluctantly took his wife Anne and three girls to England and caused further controversy by accepting a peerage.

Lord Fitt, Baron of Bell's Hill, said that his heart was always in Northern Ireland, but he died in England in August 2005.

(EF/SP)