I’m a third generation Ulster Unionist. My late grandparents on my dad’s side as well as my parents were party members. I joined the North Antrim Young Unionists, the party’s youth wing, as a teenager in the Seventies. I will soon clock up half a century as a UUP member.
As a political commentator, I am on the radical Right of the pro-Union ideology as the readers of The Pensive Quill, and The Blanket before that, know full well.
Whilst any one of the candidates who put their hats in the ring to replace Colin Crawford as North Antrim UUP MLA would have made an excellent Assembly member, each with their own personal attributes, at least the selection panel has recognised the uniqueness of the North Antrim constituency.
It is perhaps one of the most socially conservative of Northern Ireland’s 18 constituencies and liberal woke Unionism has always had a ‘crash and burn’ reputation in North Antrim. Unfortunately for the UUP, liberal ‘wokery’ has polluted the party for far too long and what is needed to cure this political malaise is a very clear Right-wing agenda and direction so that voters are not asking the question - will the real UUP please stand up?
In Jon Burrows we will hopefully get that direction and he will not become politically smothered by those who want to see the UUP rebranded as Alliance Lite, or the reincarnation of the now defunct, ultra-liberal Unionist Party of Northern Ireland.
Then again, perhaps the bitter pill which folk like me who are on the Right-wing of pro-Union thinking need to swallow is that we are in the wrong Unionist party and the movement we joined - many of us as teenagers - has changed so radically that it is virtually unrecognisable.
Even if we take North Antrim as a sounding board, liberal Unionism has always been, and will always be, a political disaster for the Union.
In June 1970, I was a primary school pupil finishing my P6 year at Clough Primary School located in the heart of the north east Ulster Bible Belt and a key village in the then North Antrim Westminster constituency.
Only a few weeks earlier in April, a Stormont by-election in Bannside - also located in North Antrim - had rocked the liberal Unionist ‘Big House’ tradition when a certain Rev Ian Paisley won the seat standing as a Protestant Unionist.
For the Commons showdown, the defending MP was Henry Clark for the UUP, also a liberal Unionist. Rev Paisley was again standing for the Protestant Unionists, hoping to replicate his Bannside victory.
His secret in taking on the established liberal Unionist UUP mentality was to create a shotgun marriage politically between two supposedly silent voices - fundamentalist Christians and the loyalist working class.
Whilst I was too young to join the party, I still had a role in that election. The Presbyterian Manse became an unofficial headquarters for UUP canvassers in the overwhelmingly Protestant Clough locality. My job was to serve the salad sandwiches to Henry Clark after a canvass.
As I entered what was affectionately known in 1970 in the Manse as ‘the wee TV room’, I could smell cigarette smoke. I knew that was unusual as my dad had never smoked.
Sitting at the table were three people. In the middle was Clark, puffing heavily on his cigarette. On either side was my dad, Rev Dr Robert Coulter MBE (later a UUP Assembly member for North Antrim), and leading Orange cleric Rev John Brown. Both were trying to calm Clark.
The Paisleyites had earlier confronted the UUP election team in Clough bringing the canvass to a rapid halt and a retreat to the Manse. The conversation was about anti-UUP graffiti which had been daubed on the wall of a house in the village. I had seen the graffiti on the way to school.
Clark asked what it was. Dad replied ‘Shoot Clark’. Clark’s face went as white as the large white painted graffiti and not even my offering him the delicious salad sandwiches could calm his nerves that day. Paisley won the Westminster seat with a majority over Clark of more than 2,500 votes.
While the UUP was to later see success at council, Forum and Stormont levels, the North Antrim Westminster seat has always alluded the party since 1970.
After the Paisley defeat in 1970, liberal Unionism has suffered setback after setback. In the June 1973 Northern Ireland Assembly election, liberal Unionist leader Brian Faulkner could only scrape a handful of elected members compared to the Right-wing opposition in Unionism from UUP members within his own party, the DUP, Vanguard Unionists and the West Belfast Loyalist Coalition.
The following year, the two Westminster General Elections saw the Right-wing United Ulster Unionist Coalition, or Treble UC, wipe the ground electorally with the liberal Unionist pro-Sunningdale Pro-Assembly candidates. None of the liberals won.
This thumping defeat for liberal Unionism was again replicated in the 1975 Convention election, when Faulkner’s liberal Unionist Party of Northern Ireland (UPNI) could only gain five seats compared to the UUUC’s tally of 47. By the early 1980s, the UPNI had been confined to the dustbin of history.
Ulster Unionism was to further fragment in 1998 following the signing of the Good Friday Agreement into the Yes and No camps, as moderate Unionism lost ground to the DUP, finally being overtaken by the Paisley party at Stormont in 2003 and Westminster in 2005.
Two liberal UUP MLAs John McCallister (South Down) and Basil McCrea (Lagan Valley) later tried to form their own liberal movement, NI21, but it too ‘crashed and burned’ before it even got off the ground electorally.
The real problem with the UUP is that it lacks both direction and policy. During the Brexit campaign, whilst pro-Union voters knew where the DUP and TUV stood on EU membership, the UUP was sending out mixed messages - a fault that was to eventually cost the party its European seat.
The UUP then thought the direction was to compete with Alliance for the so-called middle ground, not realising that Alliance had opted to abandon its image of being a ‘soft U’ Unionist party to throwing its lot in with the pan nationalist front to become a ‘soft R’ republican party.
The dilemma for the UUP, which once governed Northern Ireland for decades since the formation of the state, is that the party hierarchy seems to want to take the UUP towards Alliance whilst many in the grassroots want it to retain its traditional Right-wing roots.
Put bluntly, the UUP will have to re-engage politically with roots who feel abandoned or ignored - the Christian Churches, the Loyal Orders, the marching band fraternity, the loyalist working class, and especially the pro-Union community who have turned their backs on the ballot box.
He may only be one person, but Jon Burrows provides a spark of hope that the UUP can become a significant force in a more co-operative pro-Union family rather than plunge headlong towards more liberal ‘wokery’.
As for the current UUP leadership, either they will start listening to the Right-wing grassroots, or they will implement a British Labour Party-style silencing of anyone who dares to question their liberal ‘wokery’. We Right-wingers in the UUP have plenty to ponder in this summer Stormont recess.
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| Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter John is a Director for Belfast’s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM. |
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