THIRTY years ago the Ulster Unionist Party’s press officer privately told the Government that the party should think seriously about “co-operation” with the Alliance Party, newly-released records reveal.
Speaking to an NIO official in 1982 after Orange Order Grand Master Martin Smyth was elected in South Belfast, Frank Millar privately warned that it was “the last time the Orange card will be played successfully in Northern Ireland’.
Mr Millar went on to suggest that what Northern Ireland really needed was a left of centre pro-Union party led by someone like the then UUP deputy leader Harold McCusker.
The papers also reveal future UUP leader David Trimble’s surprise that the DUP had indicated that he might be a ‘unionist unity’ candidate in that by-election, called after the IRA murder of the MP Robert Bradford in late 1981.
In the end, Mr Smyth, who was Orange Order Grand Master, was chosen and won the seat with a majority of 5,400.
The Alliance Party candidate, founding member David Cook, performed strongly, coming second with 27 per cent of the vote, while the DUP’s William McCrea was in third place with just over 22 per cent of the vote.
Mr Millar met NIO official Stephen Leach two months after the by-election. The NIO official described Mr Millar as “an acute and mildly disaffected member of the Glengall Street [the then UUP headquarters] team”.
A detailed three-page note of their lunch said that Mr Millar believed the party had “drawn the wrong lesson from the South Belfast result, believing smugly that it showed that the old automatic allegiances were as reliable as ever among grassroots unionists”.
In fact, the by-election had been “the last time the Orange card will be played successfully in Northern Ireland”, Mr Millar had said.
He told the NIO official that Mr Smyth had won the by-election “not because he was the head of the Orange Order but because [William] McCrea was seen as a carpetbagger”.
Pointing to the performance of Alliance in the by-election, Mr Millar said that the UUP “should realise the implications of David Cook’s increased vote and start thinking seriously of future co-operation; whereas in fact Molyneaux and Smyth were saying privately that there was ‘no chance’ of any sort of coalition with Alliance in the Assembly”.
In an aside, Mr Millar also told the NIO official that “what the Province really needed was a left of centre unionist party, shorn of the Orange connection and led by someone like McCusker. This could concentrate on ‘real politics’ and provide a home for the many Catholics who were happy enough to remain in the UK provided that they got a fair deal.
“However, he did not believe that the UUP was capable of transforming itself in this direction: the dead weight of inertia and timidity was too great.”
Mr Trimble, who would go on to become a hate figure for the DUP after signing the Belfast Agreement, was then a rising figure within the UUP and a Queen’s University law lecturer.
He, along with Austin Ardill, another leading member of the UUP devolutionist pressure group the UDG, met NIO officials David Blatherwick and Stephen Leach in early 1982 to discuss the candidate.
A note from the meeting said: “Following [David] McNarry’s public row with Molyneaux before Christmas ... the UDG were adopting a somewhat lower profile. Although they still wanted to oust Mr Molyneaux, the did not want to be accused of causing a public crisis over the leadership.”
It added: “On the South Belfast by-election, Trimble believed that the DUP were genuinely anxious to reach an agreed candidate with the UUP and professed surprise that the DUP had indicated they might well find him (Trimble) acceptable. However, he was not eager to stand since even if he was the agreed candidate this time round, the DUP might oppose him at the next election and win the seat. He would then have little chance (in the present climate) of getting back into university teaching.”
It added: “Both Ardill and Trimble believed that McCusker was behaving erratically, and would end up either ruining himself or becoming leader of the party.”
A January 8, 1982, note from Mr Blatherwick refers to the debate about unionist unity in South Belfast: “Mr Molyneaux is trying to fend off a DUP appeal for the selection of a ‘unity’ candidate acceptable to both the DUP and UUP.
“It is likely that Mr Paisley had expected this response, and was in any case eager for the DUP to fight the seat; but he has succeeded in winning a political point at the UUP’s expense.”
Mr Blatherwick met Mr Trimble again in late January 1982 who told him that “Martin Smyth was almost certain to get the UUP nomination, which would be disastrous for the UUP.
“If Smyth then won the by-election, Molyneaux’s integrationist and ‘do nothing’ supporters in the party would be able to say there was no need to go down the devolutionist path.”