For a people who spend so much of our time commemorating this anniversary or that, it was strange that there was little more than a perfunctory nod in the direction of the SDLP this week on the 30th anniversary celebration of the party's founding.
A few half-hearted cliches here and there, no real warmth, no recognition of the sheer size of the SDLP's achievement, and that was that. Make no mistake about it, the SDLP is out of fashion.
Not that it was ever very fashionable. But today it's next to impossible to read about the SDLP without coming across phrases about "a party in crisis", "a party facing an uncertain future", "an ageing party bound to be passed out by the growing inevitability of Sinn Fein domination".
Drapier begs to differ but let him first salute the SDLP. The SDLP has never been a trendy or particularly well-organised party. It has always had a homely, small-town air about it, with none of the slick professionalism or media jargon of other parties.
The words which come quickest to mind when writing about the SDLP are decency, courage and tenacity. Its decency is the unfashionable decency of middle Ireland; people who get on with their lives, believe in their community and respect their neighbours. It is a decency that is neither flash nor threatening, and which makes space for other people to live their lives in their own way.
The courage of the SDLP over 30 long years is one of the examples of real heroism in our time. It was not easy or fashionable to preach the message of politics, of peaceful constitutional consensual politics, in the face of British stupidity, unionist intransigence and official indifference all these years.
But the SDLP never wavered. More than that, it was inventive in seeking new ways of shaping the constitutional message, and it is one of the ironies of modern politics that the settlement that has now been accepted by most groups in Northern Ireland was based, to a great extent, on SDLP thinking.
The courage of the SDLP was not just moral, it was also, in a very real sense, physical. Virtually every leading member of the SDLP has had to endure intimidation and harassment. Senator Paddy Wilson was murdered. Gerry Fitt was driven from his home. Anita Currie, the brave wife of Austin Currie, was brutalised, Seamus Mallon, Brid Rodgers and John Hume have all been subject to hostility and intimidation as have many of their colleagues.
The third great quality of the SDLP has been its sheer doggedness and endurance. Over the long barren years when there was little hope, or little to hope for, the SDLP kept faith with its democratic message, preaching an unfashionable creed in a climate that was hostile and unreceptive. And in Drapier's view, that endurance is going to see it through the next 30 years as well.
It has become fashionable to say the SDLP will go the way of the old Irish Party, which fell beneath the Sinn Fein onslaught of 1919. Drapier takes a very different view. There was nothing inevitable about the defeat of the Irish Party, or about the victory of Sinn Fein.
A different electoral system would have seen the Irish Party win sufficient seats to guarantee its survival, just as a different electoral system would have saved the British Liberal Party from the near-extinction that visited it in those days.
That different electoral system is now present in Northern Ireland. It will ensure that a party the size of the SDLP can survive temporary electoral setbacks and live to fight another day.
But the SDLP's survival will be based on more than technical or mechanical factors. The SDLP has many of the ingredients for success in modern politics. First of all it has a tradition and a record of achievement to sustain it at difficult times and to inspire its members to new efforts.
Nor is it the one-man party people sometimes talk about. Seamus Mallon is an inspirational leader, while Mark Durkan, Brid Rogers and Sean Farren are getting down to the serious business of running their ministries.
Drapier is a great believer that voters are essentially fair, and he believes the integrity of the SDLP politicians, their hard work, dedication and consistency, will persuade a majority of nationalists and perhaps some outside nationalism to keep it as the major nationalist party.
In addition, unlike Sinn Fein, the SDLP has given few hostages to fortune, it does not have to kowtow to any paramilitary organisation and its agenda is open and above board. It is precisely because the Northern electorate know that with the SDLP what they see is what they get, that the party's appeal will grow, rather than diminish.
Drapier knows that such sentiments are unfashionable. Some sections of the media and some academics, especially those from outside the country, like the sense of danger, the whiff of cordite, associated with Sinn Fein, and while Drapier accepts - and is pleased - that Sinn Fein is a formidable electoral force with a ruthless electoral machine, he believes that with the onset of peace and normality it will be the prosaic everyday qualities of the SDLP which will carry the day with an electorate which has had more than its share of excitement.
Not that the events of the past week are any harbingers of a settled future. The evidence of Mafia-style activity, with protection rackets, drug-dealing and contract killers, is not just confined to the loyalist areas of Belfast, where it reached frightening proportions in recent days.
We saw it in Dundalk, too, in the brutal murder of a young publican who refused to comply with gangster demands and in the assassination later of his alleged killer. This is the type of behaviour few would have thought possible a decade ago.
Now it is a commonplace, and in spite of ever stronger powers and as much new technology as they can use, gardai are increasingly frustrated in their efforts.
It all makes a hollow mockery of John O'Donoghue's zero-tolerance bluster of yesteryear, but it is more serious than that, and a constant reminder that, in spite of the comforts of the Celtic Tiger, we live in a society more violent than at any time since the 1920s. For the most part the official reaction appears to be one of complacency rather than concern.
And so August winds to an end. It was not the wicked month so many feared, and there was, if truth be told, much of a silly season about this year's activities. But not totally. The inflation figures continue to niggle, the undercurrent of violence in the North is worrying, especially with so many issues of substance still outstanding. And while the tribunes have been silent these past few weeks, they have not gone away. Far from it.
Real politics will start soon enough and we can all look forward to a hectic autumn.