The SDLP has rejected suggestions that John Hume colluded with arms manufacturer Raytheon to mislead the public about the nature of the company's operation in Derry.

If the party is telling the truth, a remarkable conspiracy has been afoot to misrepresent the Peace Prize winner's position on the arms trade.

The suggestion of collusion arose last week when the Londonderry Sentinel published a July 2003 memo from a senior official of Invest Northern Ireland (INI) to then industry minister Ian Pearson. The memo had been released to the paper under the Freedom of Information Act.

The memo recorded a meeting between Raytheon managers, INI officials and Mr Hume, at which the company explained that the viability of the Derry plant depended on winning work from the Ministry of Defence. The SDLP's public position was of implacable opposition to Raytheon's presence in Derry if the company undertook defence work at the local facility.

The memo quotes Mr. Hume approving the company's intention to take on defence work in Derry and advising that, ‘in describing the work in a public arena reference should be made to government contracts rather than MoD contracts, since the latter can be emotive’.

The SDLP now says: ‘Had this memo been shared with us at the time, we would have challenged it.’

The sole topic of the memo is the company's proposal for defence production in Derry and Mr Hume's reportedly positive response.

However, this is not the first time apparent contradictions have emerged regarding Raytheon, arms production and the SDLP.

Two years ago, William Allen, then editor of the North West edition of this newspaper, published documents — again obtained under the Freedom of Information Act — relating to aspects of the Raytheon operation in Derry, including the circumstances of the company's arrival in the city.

On February 9, 1999, six months before the announcement of the Derry plant, the Industrial Development Board, forerunner of INI, wrote to Mr Hume saying that Raytheon was ‘still very focused on the MoD programmes’ and warning that there might be ‘no project in Northern Ireland if Raytheon's competitors are awarded the MoD business’.

The MoD business was the Airborne Stand-Off Radar (ASTOR), a surveillance system now in service on Sentinel R1 reconnaissance aircraft in Afghanistan.

Raytheon was handed the ASTOR contract in June 1999. The Derry plant was announced in August 1999. In October, NIO Minister Adam Ingram thanked all who had influenced the award of the contract, singling out “extensive lobbying by the Secretary of State and myself, together with local politicians including David Trimble, Seamus Mallon and John Hume”.

In April 2004, the Derry News carried an interview with two ex-Raytheon employees confirming that they had worked on the ASTOR project at the Derry factory.

At the next council meeting, SDLP leader Pat Ramsey moved the suspension of standing orders so he could propose a motion demanding that Raytheon “immediately clarify the nature of their work in Derry.”

If the workers' ASTOR allegation proved true, declared Ramsey, “this would be in breach of an assurance given by the company”. In that case, the SDLP would want the council's support for Raytheon to “change”. Sinn Fein endorsed the SDLP position.

The company, possibly bewildered by the SDLP's hostile attitude to a contract which the company believed the party's leader had helped secure, seems to have ignored these exchanges.

Four months later, on August 23, 2004, Raytheon and INI representatives met to discuss another hi-tech military project, the Joint Effects Tactical Targeting System (JETTS). A minute drawn up by an INI official recorded: ‘Key issue for (Raytheon) on this contract will be the attitude of the council’. Work on JETTS went ahead, the Derry plant working closely with the MoD's secret production facility at Warminster in Wiltshire. Senior Derry employees commuted to Warminster to work alongside armed forces engineers.

At the next Raytheon/INI meeting, on January 27, 2005, according to Telegraph man Allen's FoI documents, Raytheon's Derry manager ‘reported that he had a positive meeting with the Mayor of Derry [Gearóid Ó hEara of Sinn Féin] re. the relationship with Raytheon and Derry Council’.

Over lunch at Deane's in Belfast on April 27, 2005, according to another INI minute, a senior Raytheon representative ‘thanked Invest NI for its support during this period, including our input to the Derry Council situation. It appears that the current mayor (Sinn Féin) is very supportive’.

There is nothing complicated, on the other hand, about the attitude of the DUP or of the sole Ulster Unionist city councillor, Mary Hamilton.

They take the view that it's been clear from the outset that Raytheon would be and has been producing defence equipment for British and other forces at its Derry plant, and they do not find this in any way troublesome.

Many might see this as, all things considered, a somewhat more moral position than that of their nationalist counterparts.