Earlier this month, I celebrated my 65th birthday. On 1st September 1977 on my 18th birthday, I became the third generation of my family to join the UUP when I signed up to the North Antrim Young Unionist Association.
I have been a card-carrying member of the party ever since through thick and thin politically.
My late dad, Rev Dr Robert Coulter MBE, was a former North Antrim UUP MLA from 1998 to 2011 when he was succeeded by Robin Swann, the current South Antrim Westminster MP. My dad also served as Party Chief Whip from 1996-98 in the Assembly’s forerunner, the Northern Ireland Forum for Political Dialogue.
He also served as a councillor and alderman on the old Ballymena Borough Council and was Mayor of Ballymena from 1993-96. Put bluntly, given my family background, Ulster Unionism has been a major part of my political DNA so I feel that gives me a credible position to express my view on where the UUP should now travel.
The UUP now needs to return to its traditional Right-wing roots and abandon the electorally disastrous liberal woke agenda it has been sucking up to for years. The UUP needs to reconnect with apathetic Unionism and loyalism which have lost confidence in the ballot box.
To do so, it will have to reform the old United Ulster Unionist Council, or Unionist Coalition, affectionately known as the Treble UC, which existed in the early 1970s and represented three Unionist parties - the UUP, DUP, and Vanguard Unionist Party. In the February 1974 Westminster General Election, the UUUC showed its electoral muscle by winning 11 of the 12 Commons seats, and coming within just over 2,000 votes of unseating SDLP boss Gerry Fitt in his West Belfast bolthole.
Instead of chasing after the Alliance vote or the mythical so-called middle ground like some lost whining puppy, the UUP needs to reconnect with the pro-Union community which no longer sees the value in voting.
Likewise, it must swallow some bitter political medicine and set aside petty squabbles and form a new UUUC with the DUP, TUV and other Unionist and loyalist groups and organisations, such as the Loyal Orders and the marching band fraternity. Unionist unity must no longer become a convenient sound bite - it must become a practical reality otherwise Unionist parties, and especially the UUP, will continue to lose votes and seats to the pan nationalist front of Sinn Fein, the SDLP and Alliance.
Voters, who in a border poll, would vote pro-Union, now vote Alliance because it is a convenient liberal woke party of protest. Alliance is now a soft ‘R’ republican party; it is no longer the soft ‘U’ Unionist party it once was under the leadership of my schoolboy chum from Ballymena Academy days and fellow Presbyterian minister’s son, John Alderdice.
As a life-long Ulster Unionist, it dismays me when I see pundits and people wanting to write the electoral epitaph of the UUP with daft suggestions on social media that the UUP should be disbanded, jump into bed politically with the SDLP, or move even ideologically closer to Alliance.
What has triggered the electoral damage to the UUP has not been party organisation, but ideological direction. While the late David Trimble was a visionary, he moved the party too fast through the peace process.
He knew where he wanted the UUP and Northern Ireland to go in a post Good Friday Agreement era, but he tactically failed to bring the UUP grassroots with him.
This was later to be followed by the equally electorally disastrous policy of ‘Vote Mike, Get Colum!’ This was misinterpreted as a plea for the Unionist grassroots to transfer to a republican party rather than to other pro-Union candidates.
Another disaster was the formal link with the Tory Party under the ‘New Force’ banner which saw many pro-Union voters from the Christian church and socially conservative community walk away from the party because of the then Tory party’s liberal woke agenda.
The UUP needs to learn from its opponents in Sinn Fein. Look how the republican movement has been able to successfully eat into the electorally lucrative Catholic middle class - the bastion of the SDLP - without losing support in its traditional working class hardline republican heartlands.
Put bluntly, Sinn Fein brings its grassroots with it as it moves forward. The UUP needs to follow a similar strategy in the pro-Union community. The Right-wing has been making gains in elections in Great Britain and across Europe. For the UUP, the liberal woke bandwagon has lost its wheels and it is stuck in the mud politically.
Since 1994, I have pushed the Right-wing ideology of Revolutionary Unionism, which can be summarised as one party, one faith, one Commonwealth.
Practically, this means pro-Union parties working together as a cohesive unit to unite behind the best party candidate capable of winning the seat and ensuring that Unionist voters from all parties transfer to other pro-Union parties.
In spite of the spin from the secular society, the church vote is still an important community within Northern Ireland. The UUP needs to reach other more practically to that community.
Brexit is now a reality, so the Commonwealth and especially the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, which represents some 50 plus national and regional parliaments across the globe, must become the major new economic community for Unionism.
This is the practical way forward, but what about Right-wing policies which the UUP should now adopt and become the bedrock of a new UUUC for all pro-Union parties to sign up to?
It must be a policy of putting people first; practically, putting pupils first, putting patients first, putting pensioners first, and putting the police first.
If you are to be a citizen of Northern Ireland, you must make a contribution to society. The days of Ulster being a ‘benefits bonanza’ must end.
The UUP must restore pride in the ballot box and campaign for Australian-style compulsory voting.
Prison time should be a deterrent for any wanna-be criminal, not a holiday camp. Convicted prisoners should be part of chain gangs to assist with the cleaning of our roads so that the pothole plague is eradicated.
There must be an iron fist approach to drug dealing with all assets seized and ploughed into NHS services for the rehabilitation of addicts.
National Service will be introduced for all citizens lasting a minimum of two years during which everyone will also be taught a trade.
Cross-border agreements with the Dail will be reached so that folk can complete their National Service with the army, navy, air force, or emergency services on either side of the border.
Capital punishment must be restored for criminals convicted by the courts of child murder, drug barons who pollute our communities with their illegal drugs, and the most serious cases of first degree murder.
This is merely a starting point for the Right-wing rebuilding of the UUP. The end game is to ensure Northern Ireland’s place within the Union. Who has the courage to take the first step?
Remember, in the republican movement, someone took the first step in 1981 to contest elections to promote the IRA and INLA hunger strikes and look where Sinn Fein is electorally today.
The bitter political cyanide capsule we life-long UUP Right-wingers don’t ever want to have to bite is that we see the party continue on this worthless liberal woke agenda as it continues to fade electorally and we have to ask ourselves the serious question - are we still in the correct pro-Union party?
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| Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter Listen to commentator Dr John Coulter’s programme, Call In Coulter, every Saturday morning around 10.15 am on Belfast’s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM. Listen online. |
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