Member of Parliament for Belfast South
What was the position of Alasdair McDonnell from Mar 2007 to Mar 2011?
Alasdair McDonnell Alasdair McDonnell ( born 1 September 1949 ) is an Irish politician who is a member of the Social Democratic and Labour Party ( SDLP ) , and was its leader from 2011 to 2015 . He was the Member of Parliament for Belfast South from 2005 to 2017 and also a Member of the Legislative Assembly of Northern Ireland for Belfast South from 1998 to 2015 . Political career . McDonnells first involvement with politics came when he joined the National Democrats and stood as the party candidate in the 1970 election in North Antrim and lost to Ian Paisley . McDonnell first won election to Belfast City Council in 1977 , representing Belfast Area A which included the Short Strand and Upper Ormeau areas . He lost his council seat in a surprise result in 1981 but returned in 1985 and served as the first Catholic Deputy Mayor of Belfast in 1995–96 . He first stood for the Westminster constituency of South Belfast in the 1979 general election and subsequently contested the constituency at each subsequent general election , though not in the 1986 by-election ( caused by the resignation of Unionist MPs in protest at the Anglo Irish Agreement ) . He was also elected from the constituency to the Northern Ireland Peace Forum in 1996 and the Northern Ireland Assembly in 1998 and 2003 . In 2004 he became his partys deputy leader . In the 2005 general election McDonnell generated one of the most sensational results in Northern Ireland when he won South Belfast , primarily due to a split in the unionist vote . He received 10,339 votes while the Democratic Unionist Party ( DUP ) candidate Jimmy Spratt received 9,104 votes and Ulster Unionist Party candidate Michael McGimpsey received 7,263 votes . He was then re-elected by an increased majority in the 2010 general election . On 5 November 2011 , he was elected leader of the SDLP at its conference in Belfast , succeeding Margaret Ritchie . In a 2012 interview with The News Letter , McDonnell criticised Sinn Féin . He said the party were run along Soviet style lines where there was a military structure and where former terrorists were being placed into positions of power . He also claimed many people voting for Sinn Féin were doing so as an act of defiance . As SDLP chief , McDonnell described the terms of the Sixth Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies , a seemingly blocked plan to reduce the number of MPs in the House of Commons by 50 ( including two from Northern Ireland ) to 600 , as a bureaucratic numbers game initiated by the Tories for purely party political advantage . In June 2013 , the SDLP abstained during the vote on the Civil Service ( Special Advisers ) Bill in Stormont , ensuring its passing . This led to claims from Sinn Féin that the SDLP was endorsing a hierarchy of victims agenda and abandoning the principles of the Good Friday Agreement . Despite the reported claims from Sinn Féin that it was inevitable that someone would mount a legal challenge to what republicans view as a discriminatory law no such challenge has since emerged . In the 2015 United Kingdom general election he stood again in Belfast South and was returned on 24.5% of the vote , the lowest ever vote share recorded by a successful MP in any part of the UK . On 14 November 2015 , McDonnell lost the leadership contest held at the SDLPs annual conference . His successor as leader of the party , Colum Eastwood , won with 172 votes to the 133 that McDonnell received . On 9 June 2017 , McDonnell lost his South Belfast seat to Emma Little-Pengelly ( DUP ) in the 2017 general election . External links . - Official website - Profile , stratagem-ni.com - Profile , Guardian.co.uk - Maiden Speech : House of Commons – 15 June 2005