of the Council election defeat, he decided to join the Northern Ireland Labour Party. In 1967 Devlin was elected Chairman of the NILP. In the Northern Ireland elections held in 1969, Devlin stood as the NILP candidate and beat Republican Labour's Harry Diamond for the Falls seat in Stormont. From 1968 through 1969, Devlin was very involved in the Northern Ireland civil rights movement. The heavy handed response by the RUC and the B Specials to civil rights marches resulted in widespread rioting. The confrontations descended into sectarian violence as Catholic areas, especially in Belfast, came under attack from Loyalist gangs with many families being burnt out of their homes. Devlin’s relationship with the NILP became more strained as he detected a “deafening silence” with “no statements condemning the horrors of the summer, no assertion of the non-sectarian socialist principles we had tried to promote … the NILP in fact tended to disregard the existence of the civil rights movement”. Devlin believed that the NILP working in alliance with the civil rights movement could have changed the situation and reduced the sectarian tensions. Instead, what he deemed to be the party's inadequate response in the summer of 1969 led to his drift away from the NILP. Devlin started discussing with other Labour activists, civil rights leaders and moderate nationalists the possibility of launching a new party. In response to these discussions, the NILP terminated his party membership in August 1970. Devlin then went on, with Fitt, John Hume, Austin Currie and others to found the SDLP in 1970. The Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) brought together politicians and activists from Labour, civil rights and moderate Irish Nationalist backgrounds to form a party committed to achieving a united Ireland by consent and to working within the Northern Ireland political structures for constructive local cross-community politics. At the time of the SDLP's formation, Devlin believed “the basic party philosophy was to be socialist and democratic and work for the unity of Ireland by consent”. He was later involved, at the request of William Whitelaw, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, in ensuring safe passage for Gerry Adams for talks with the British government in 1973. He was a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly, 1973 and Minister of Health and Social Services in the power-sharing Executive from 1 January 1974 to 28 May 1974. The power-sharing Executive was a cross-community