It was an emotional weekend for the SDLP faithful as they bade farewell to John Hume and Seamus Mallon and welcomed Mark Durkan and Br∅d Rodgers to the leadership. Two valedictories and two debuts constituted the bulk of the SDLP annual conference in Newcastle, Co Down, at the weekend. The old order changeth and the party turned out in force to mark the occasion. There was much nostalgia, self-congratulation and backslapping, and also some tears.
And why not? This was a momentous occasion in the 31-year history of the Social Democratic and Labour Party. The tribute brochure on sale at the conference described John Hume and Seamus Mallon as "two giants of Irish politics" and there wasn't an SDLP man or woman in Newcastle who would disagree.
The 500 delegates spent Friday and Saturday saying thanks and bidding fond farewell to Mr Hume and Mr Mallon. Not much politics was done. In fact, the political debate, normally the key session of the weekend for the ordinary punters, never got off the ground.
Yesterday, though, the party looked to the future. Mark Durkan and Br∅d Rodgers were welcomed aboard as the new leader and deputy leader.
Sundays are normally hangover days for the SDLP faithful. That's when many delegates creep away to nurse their self-inflicted wounds. So attendances at the Sunday sessions are usually pretty pitiful. But astonishingly - and this must be an SDLP conference first - the hall was almost as packed yesterday morning for the speeches of Mr Durkan and Ms Rodgers as it was the previous evening for the Hume/Mallon laudations.
Mr Durkan in his first address as leader focused the party on the challenges ahead. But to look forward the SDLP first had to look back. And it did so with gusto, style and emotion.
There wasn't much objective comment from SDLP people when it came to Mr Hume and Mr Mallon. There was a genuine outpouring of warmth to the two warhorses, a genuine sadness that they were finally leaving the stage, and also a realisation that now was the time.
But Northern Secretary Dr John Reid - the star turn of the weekend - was probably as close to an impartial voice as one could hear in Newcastle when it came to analysing their role and place in Irish politics and Irish history. And he made an interesting comment.
He reflected that Enoch Powell said that all politics ended in failure but that Mallon and Hume had confounded that maxim. They entered politics through the hopeful and fervent days of the civil rights movement in the late 1960s and toiled in SDLP politics through the violent, troubled years of the 1970s and 1980s, emerging into the decade of the peace process, the paramilitary ceasefires and the Good Friday agreement.
Mr Durkan described Mr Hume as the architect of this process, Mr Mallon as its engineer. It's still a shaky enterprise but no one can gainsay that Mr Hume and Mr Mallon were absolutely crucial figures in helping shape the relative political hope and stability we have today. Their careers have not ended in failure.
Mr Hume and Mr Mallon have travelled a long, difficult, historic road together. It's fair to say they weren't exactly best mates, but they stuck to the task even in the worst of times, of which there was no shortage. At the weekend there was a real sense of the pair burying past differences, of a weight being lifted.
At other conferences you might see them at opposite ends of the bar with their rival Derry and Armagh retinues. But not this time. Mr Hume and Mr Mallon, comrades through hard times, were happily singing in the bar until 3 a.m. on Saturday morning.
It was the same on Saturday night and into the wee wee hours of Sunday morning, Hume rendering We Shall Overcome and The Town I Love So Well, Mallon delivering The Bard Of Armagh.
The trick now, according to Mr Mallon, is for them to stay off the stage and leave next business to Mr Durkan and Ms Rodgers. At the weekend they conveyed a willingness to be the elder statesmen of the party, prepared to offer advice when requested, but otherwise happy to remain in the wings. We shall see.
Mr Durkan couldn't have asked for a fairer wind from the party. There is a fairly well-known Derry-versus- the-rest rivalry in the SDLP that springs from Hume and Mallon, but there was no sign of it yesterday. He received thunderous applause and a heartfelt reception from the delegates, as did Ms Rodgers. While Mr Durkan represents the younger wing of the party, the new deputy leader is firmly of the original regime.
In the election for the post she comfortably saw off the challenges from leading SDLP members such as Alban Maginness, Sean Farren and Denis Haughey.
Delegates did not see any incongruity in Mr Hume and Mr Mallon shuffling off the stage while a colleague of the same vintage would even aspire to the deputy position. Their view was that Ms Rodgers had fought a courageous if unsuccessful fight against Sinn FΘin's Pat Doherty in the Westminster election, and that her performance as Minister of Agriculture, particularly during the foot- and-mouth crisis, was to the credit of the SDLP and justified her winning the position.
They face two main challenges: to make politics work and to compete with Sinn FΘin. Mr Durkan and Ms Rodgers are obviously better at the first than the second. As senior figures in a party that designed the blueprint for the Belfast Agreement, they have already demonstrated political ability.
They both spoke with conviction and passion yesterday. Mr Durkan is witty and droll but he has a tendency to extend good sound bites to infinity and beyond.
His speech, though, was well crafted and had the delegates cheering loudly and confidently.
He portrayed the SDLP as "the masters of persuasion" whose "only force is the force of our argument". He spoke movingly of the suffering of the victims of the Troubles and said he wanted to reach out to other parties and to listen to other views. As a measure of that, Mr Durkan revealed he had accepted an invitation to speak to the North Down Ulster Unionist Association shortly. This, he said, was "possibly unprecedented" in the history of the SDLP.
But how do Mark Durkan and Br∅d Rodgers mark Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness? That's the serious test.
Mr Durkan's strategy at the weekend was to depict the SDLP as the party of ideas that leads, and Sinn FΘin as the party that follows. Expect some good scraps as the SDLP and Sinn FΘin joust for the nationalist vote.
If Mr Durkan and Ms Rodgers are to succeed they must now build on the momentum, energy and goodwill that was so evident at the conference. Certainly the delegates succeeded in firing up Mr Durkan and Ms Rodgers for the challenges ahead.
But the weekend was the easy bit. The hard work starts now.