DAVID McNarry reported directly to Tom Elliott about what went on in secret UUP-DUP talks, the “betrayed” former UUP assemblyman has said.
In an interview with the News Letter the veteran UUP member said that Mr Elliott and other unnamed senior party figures attended the inter-party meetings.
The Strangford assemblyman warned that if his integrity continues to be questioned over secret UUP-DUP talks he will produce evidence of what took place.
Mr McNarry — who dramatically resigned from the UUP Assembly group on Friday night after being disciplined by Mr Elliott — said that he feels “abused” and said that a note book which records the meetings may become public.
“I took notes in my own handwriting, in the one book. They follow consecutive dates and are just reports of what was taking place,” he said.
“When Tom wasn’t at a meeting I reported to him what had happened.”
Speaking of Friday’s swift demotion, he said: “I felt abused; I felt that somebody had trespassed over me here and I felt that unless Tom is prepared to tell people what has been happening it makes it very difficult for me because I’ve been protecting him.
“The notebook protects my integrity and at the moment my integrity is under the microscope. If it continues to be under the microscope then I will have to consider where I am.
“I had the utmost respect for everybody who was involved in what was going on.”
Speaking earlier yesterday, Mr Elliott said that he had disciplined Mr McNarry by removing him from the £5,677-a-year position as deputy chairman of the Stormont education committee because of the “content” of an interview with the Belfast Telegraph last Monday.
Over the weekend support emerged from several senior UUP MLAs for Mr Elliott’s firm line, which came after a week of mounting pressure from his MLAs.
The UUP’s former deputy leader, Danny Kennedy, who is one of those closest to him in the UUP Assembly group, gave his public support to Mr Elliott’s actions.
The UUP’s sole executive minister said that Mr Elliott had the right to exercise party discipline and added that he had learned of Mr McNarry’s decision to leave the UUP group “more in sorrow than in anger”.
However, last night Mr McNarry said: “Danny Kennedy and I are unionists from the same oak and I appreciate the public position he has taken. But it is not what we have talked about in private.
“I’ve had support from other MLAs by telephone and text message. I’ve gone for honesty and transparency and I’ve been kicked in the teeth.”
On Saturday UUP assemblyman Basil McCrea said that as Mr McNarry had resigned from the UUP Assembly group he should now be considered to have resigned from the party.
Mr McCrea told the BBC: “If you leave one, you have, in effect, left both.”
Asked for his view on Mr McCrea’s comments, Mr Elliott said yesterday: “That’s a matter for the party officers to look at but I wouldn’t comment on that.”
Mr McNarry was rather blunter about the Lagan Valley assemblyman: “This is just another indication that Basil McCrea is running the UUP.
“I made my intentions very clear to Tom that I’d be leaving the group but I remain a fully paid up member of the UUP and have been since I was 15.”
And, laying bare some of the underlying tensions among UUP MLAs, Mr McNarry said that at last week’s emergency meeting of the party’s Assembly members he had been told by Mr McCrea to “stop referring to the group as ‘us’ because you are not one of us”.
He added: “His remark has stayed with me because I think it was his wish that I wouldn’t be in the group.”
Mr McNarry said that he had been consulted about the letter which Mr Elliott sent to party members on Friday confirming that talks had taken place with the DUP but playing down their significance.
“My opinion of the letter was sought from a couple of senior members and I said: That should do the trick; that should put things to bed. I was told ‘you’re right, that’s the intention’.
“If you analyse that letter it doesn’t specifically mention any other party but in light of the author of the letter and others who knew about it, it’s very clear that talks have been ongoing and I’ve been involved. I’ve never been to one of those meetings on my own.”
Recalling his telephone conversation with Mr Elliott last week where he had been disciplined, he said that he had been told by Mr Elliott that the article in which he revealed the secret inter-party talks had done the UUP leader “immeasurable harm”.
“I asked him to repeat it because up to that point we’d had a very Tom-David conversation. It came like a bolt of lightning.
“I gave him a few home truths and informed him that he would not be removing me as deputy chairman as I was resigning from the group.”
Mr McNarry said that Mr Elliott had been aware of his interview ahead of it happening and had arranged for the UUP press office to give him a document giving him “lines to take” during it.
“Tom said to me: ‘Do your best and you have the lines to take, haven’t you? At no stage prior to that did Tom say ‘Don’t do the interview’.
“After the story was published I read it and read the comment in the editorial and I phoned Liam Clarke [who wrote the story] and said: I haven’t complaints about your article but who on earth wrote that editorial?
“But nobody said anything to me on Monday when the article was published. We had a group meeting on Monday and nobody said a dickey-bird.”
Mr McNarry said that at an emergency meeting of UUP MLAs called the following day to discuss the inter-party talks — where several sources say that he received virtually no support — he had felt gagged because he didn’t know whether he could speak about the secret talks.
“I found myself in a very difficult position because I reported only to the party leader.
“He was involved in the meetings but he seemed rather reluctant to say that. If I’d said anything I would have been exposing him so I sat and basically said the minimum that I could.
“I had a couple of meetings with Tom during the week after that and those are private meetings. The last thing I was expecting was what I got on Friday night.
“I know in my own self I have been loyal party member so to receive a call from someone while driving...I have always had frank and lively discussions with Tom and stood up for him and went into ditches for him and defended him against some very nasty remarks.”
Asked whether he would sit with the DUP or the TUV and independents today in the Assembly, Mr McNarry said that he would have to sit with the independents as he could only sit with the DUP if he took the DUP whip.
Speaking to the News Letter before Mr McNarry’s interview last night, Mr Elliott said that he had not spoken to Mr McNarry since the phone call on Friday night in which he informed him of the disciplinary sanction.
Mr Elliott said that he was surprised by Mr McNarry’s reaction: “I by no means took him out of the group. I was changing his position from being deputy chair of the education committee.
“There are a lot of people in the group who have no position at all.”
Mr Elliott confirmed that he had disciplined Mr McNarry as a result of last week’s interview and said that it was the “content of the interview” which had led to the sanction but would not expand on what exactly he had taken exception to.
However, East Belfast Ulster Unionist assemblyman Michael Copeland cautioned his party against bitter public squabbling.
“Like many of my colleagues, I spent most of yesterday with a 46-year-old disabled woman who has had no central heating since January 12,” he said.
“I spent a substantial proportion of today on the phone with the family of woman whose car was stolen at knifepoint in broad daylight on the Newtownards Road.
“I dealt with dozens of emails and telephone calls.
“All of those involved in Stormont need to re-focus all of their attention on the people who sent us there.”