Vanguard Unionist leader William Craig has been hailed in the past week as a 'courageous and sincere man' by the British and Irish press, the SDLP and Alliance parties, and southern Irish politicians. he is the only leading Loyalist politician with a 'sensible plan that could have been a step towards bringing majority and minority closer in the province, as the Belfast Newsletter put it.
Craig's plan' amounted to holding out the possibility that the SDLP might one day be invited to participate in an emergency coalition government at the discretion of a Loyalist Prime Minister in a Loyalist-dominated Northern Ireland Parliament. At a meeting of the United Ulster Unionist Council coalition on Monday 8 September, Craig argued that his proposal might well be accepted by the SDLP and the Labour Government thus ensuring the return of a Stormont Parliament and putting the SDLP 'in the position of having to accept Unionist Policies. His colleagues in the UUUC rejected this argument, and Craig was the only one to oppose a motion put forward by Paisley which categorically rejected power-sharing with the SDLP under any circumstances.
Craig's opposition to the Paisley motion has however been misrepresented by the media as a vote for powersharing', which is patently absurd. Craig founded his Vanguard party with the precise objective of frustrating the Assembly and 'power-sharing Executive headed by Faulkner and Fitt in 1974; he has always been totally opposed to any concessions being made on Loyalist domination, and indeed has been the foremost advocate of UDI in the North of Ireland. Last February he said in a speech at a Loyalist rally: 'If this Parliament (Westminster) decides to put us out of the United Kingdom, they will not be putting us into a united Ireland but into an independent Ulster.' And in the very month that the Convention elections took place, Craig thundered: "The idea of any power-sharing with republicans is as dead as a dodo. According to Craig's admirers, integration. significant is Enoch Powell's reappearance at Loyalist meetings, and it is said that his intervention at Monday's meeting was decisive in swaying many of the Loyalist backwoodsmen behind Paisley.
Powell has always been an advocate of total integration of the Six County statelet into the UK, and in the past has had support for this line from both Paisley and the UVF. Powell rejects independence because it would remove the base he hoped to use as a spring: board back into British political life. But only a few weeks ago he clashed with all the Loyalists, including Paisley, over his claim that loyalty to the Westminster Parliament was fundamental to 'Unionism'.
This evoked the response from Paisley that: 'It is now evident that Ulster Loyalists will have to look to Ulster alone in the coming days for a clear expression of their principles and an unswerving defence of the same.' He went on to remind everyone that Loyalists had resisted the interference of the British Parliament in the past 'by force of arms. This placed Paisley firmly in the camp of the independence supporters, and it is the keystone of the UUUC manifesto that a Stormonttype administration would be restored in the North of Ireland. Nothing has happened in the past week to suggest that Paisley or the UUUC have now opted for roads. rodus.
With the SDLP involved in - even more Given responsibility