Contemporary British History Party versus order: Ulster Unionism and ...

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Party versus order: Ulster Unionism and the Flags and Emblems Act Henry Patterson

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University of Ulster , Jordanstown Published online: 25 Jun 2008.

To cite this article: Henry Patterson (1999) Party versus order: Ulster Unionism and the Flags and Emblems Act, Contemporary British History, 13:4, 105-129, DOI: 10.1080/13619469908581562 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13619469908581562

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Party versus Order: Ulster Unionism and the Flags and Emblems Act


HENRY PATTERSON The Hags and Emblems Act has been seen as symbolising the sectarian and antinationalist essence of the Northern Ireland 'police state'. In fact the Act was introduced against the advice of the Inspector General of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. The pressure for it came from the fears of Sir Basil Brooke's government that an 'anti-appeasement' campaign by loyalist ultras was threatening Unionist party hegemony in Protestant politics. The basis for the campaign was the fact that Brooke and his Minister of Home Affairs, Brian Maginess, had attempted to accommodate the new challenges of a welfare state and an international environment seen as more sympathetic to anti-partitionism.

The 1950s remain a comparatively under-researched decade in the history of the Northern Ireland state, particularly if compared with the out-pouring of books and articles on the period since the mid-1960s. Yet until it has been more deeply researched many of the conclusions that have been drawn about the 'Troubles' period must remain provisional since they are based on assumptions about the 1950s which may turn out to have shaky foundations. One of these assumptions is that the decade was a period when 'for the first time unionism was in a position to use the chances of post-war changes to improve life in the province substantially and thereby, however indirectly, make a positive case for Stormont rule'. But, it is argued, under the leadership of a rigid and sectarian prime minister, Sir Basil Brooke, it was a decade of social change but political stagnation.1 The following account of the political background to the Rags and Emblems Act will question this analysis by highlighting the conflicts within Ulster Unionism over how to respond to the challenges of the post-war world. The undoubted rigidities displayed by Sir Basil Brooke at the end of the 1950s may well have been influenced by the strength of Unionist party and loyalist resistance to attempts made at the beginning of the decade to moderate and modernise the image of Ulster Unionism.

Henry Patterson, University of Ulster, Jordanstown Contemporary British History, Vol.13, No.4 (Winter 1999), pp.105-129 PUBLISHED BY FRANK CASS, LONDON

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An Unnecessary Act The Flags and Emblems Act which was passed by the Stormont parliament in 1954 has been seen as a prime example of the repressive and sectarian nature of the Northern Ireland state in its relation to any manifestation of the national identity of its Catholic minority. In his influential analysis of the policing forces of the state, Michael Farrell describes the Royal Ulster Constabulary as 'an armed paramilitary force playing a highly political role... Throughout the 1950s and 1960s it was deployed to enforce new laws (the Public Order Act and the Flags and Emblems Act) which were used to ban nationalist parades and force Orange marches through Catholic areas.'2 The legislation was denounced at the time by nationalists as clear evidence that Northern Ireland was a 'police state'.3 However, as Bob Purdie has noted, although the Act gave the police a wide area of discretion 'they seem to have used it with remarkable inconsistency'. 4 This inconsistency in the use of the Flags and Emblems Act had been anticipated in the severe qualms which the Inspector General of the RUC had expressed about the draft legislation and these misgivings at the core of the state reflected a tension between public order and the dynamics of Unionist rule. In their discussion of the legislation Lucy Bryson and Clem McCartney note that 'The Act is less than two pages long and has only five sections, yet it has become the focus for much of the opposition to the Stormont administration among nationalists.'5 Section One of the Act made it an offence to prevent or threaten to interfere by force with display of a Union flag by someone on his or her lands or premises. Section Two permitted a police officer to require the removal of any emblem whose display might cause a breach of the peace, or to enter and remove it himself if the person responsible was unwilling to comply or could not be found. The Act specified that 'emblem' referred to any flag other than the Union Jack. Bryson and McCartney note that the Act did not refer directly to the Irish Tricolour and that the Minister of Home Affairs, George B. Hanna, in introducing the proposed legislation, said he could not ban the Tricolour outright as this was a matter of foreign policy reserved to Westminster. A Unionist with whom they discussed the Act and who had read the Northern Ireland cabinet papers on the subject argued that this approach to the Tricolour showed that the Act was a 'moderate and sensible measure. From his reading of the cabinet papers on the subject he understood that the main concern of ministers had been to avoid giving the police too extensive powers and they had been reduced at each discussion.'6 Bryson and McCartney clearly have problems accepting this reading of the government's approach to the Act. In particular they ask why Section Two was necessary at all: 'Prior to the act, action could be taken under the


ULSTER UNIONISM AND THE FLAGS AND EMBLEMS ACT

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existing public order law where the display of a flag might cause a breach of the peace.'7 The cabinet papers support their qualms as they do nothing to vindicate the Unionist's analysis. The concerns expressed were not in fact about excessive powers for the RUC but rather the belief of two ministers that the decision to introduce the legislation 'might be considered to be yielding to the agitation of extremists'.8 Rather than there being a political concern with giving the police too much power the only reference to the RUC in the discussion was a report by the Minister of Home Affairs that Sir Richard Pirn, the Inspector General of the RUC, 'was not happy about some of the proposals because he felt it would place on the police the onus of affording protection to Union Jacks wherever they were flown and that this would be an impossible task'. The Minister was dismissive describing Pirn as 'unduly apprehensive' ? Pirn's opinion of the proposed legislation was in fact more fundamentally critical than Hanna's report to the cabinet revealed. He had sent a seven-page dissection of the proposed bill to Adrian Robinson, permanent secretary of the Ministry of Home Affairs. A copy of this with typed responses by Robinson in the margins can be found in Ministry of Home Affairs documents recently released by the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland. It provides a fascinating insight into the conflict between Pim's commitment to the values of public order and a Union flag which was not a crude symbol of partisan identity and a senior civil servant's willingness to subordinate both to the political necessities of a government which perceived itself to be under siege by loyalist ultras. Pim denied the need for the legislation: It is my considered opinion and one that is shared by senior officers of great experience that the proposed legislation, in so far as it relates to the Union Flag is unnecessary .. .it is unnecessary because, by virtue of their common law and statutory powers, the police are already in a strong position to cope with any circumstances, including those involving flags, which are calculated to lead to a breach of the peace. Robinson's comments were dismissive of the Inspector General's failure to appreciate the constraints that hemmed in the government's approach: 'This ignores political necessity. Police and civil servants, very properly, avoid politics as much as possible, but it is not possible to do so altogether if we are to keep our feet on the ground.'10 The Inspector General did in fact raise an important political issue by arguing that the legislation would provide nationalist opponents of the government with a powerful propaganda weapon: Speaking not as Inspector General but simply as a loyal Ulsterman,

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the idea of singling out the Union Flag for special mention in an Act of Parliament does not appeal to me. I feel it would be liable to create, particularly in the minds of those outside the Province, the entirely erroneous impression that the Union Flag cannot be flown in Northern Ireland except under the protection of an act of parliament and the police are at present powerless to deal with any interference with i t . . . such an act would provide all those opposed to the Government of Northern Ireland with a powerful propaganda weapon. Robinson's comment combined a simple reiteration of the primacy of Unionist political concerns with a punitive approach to potential opposition: 'It is politically impossible to defend any suggestion that a man may not fly the flag of the country on his own property whenever he wants to. If the other side are not disposed to exercise that amount of tolerance, the penal clauses of the Act will provide means of teaching them to do so.' The dismissive tone of the official's response to Pirn's criticism of the bill and the cabinet's almost unanimous endorsement of it, reflected the degree to which the government, and the Prime Minister in particular, felt threatened by the most serious manifestation of intra-Protestant conflict since the 1930s. The immediate focus of this conflict was the outbreak of communal tension produced by the celebrations for the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in June 1953. As Bryson and McCartney note, 'this was an occasion for the display of the Union flag in greater profusion and by many people who did not display the flag during the Orange celebrations and other more local events.'" Throughout the north Coronation decorations began to be erected from the beginning of May and had given rise to serious tension in some areas. In Belfast, where the IRA sent a number of incendiary devices to various government departments, they also posted notices in nationalist areas urging a boycott of shops carrying Coronation displays.'2 The police had been put under great pressure from Protestant enthusiasm to manifest loyalty to the Crown even in the heartland of nationalist Belfast. Pim had used an extract from a report by the Belfast City Commissioner to illustrate the difficulties created by the promiscuous display of Union flags: The strength of the 'B' District (Falls Road area) is 136 all ranks. ...its effective patrol strength is less than half that number and still less when allowance is made for sickness. From 1st May when coronation decorations began, well into August, Union Jacks were flown in large numbers in mixed and border-line areas of this police district, 46 men were employed exclusively in guarding these flags from interference. There are about 120 business premises in the Falls Road area under Unionist management, besides buildings like the Library and Baths as well as parks and play centres. This takes no account of houses


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occupied by families. Hitherto police representations have mostly succeeded in preventing the display of Union Jacks from business premises. Such flags have been removed by nationalists from the Library and the Baths on several occasions, from Mackies Foundry and from individual houses and, indeed, houses flying these flags have been attacked. Rioting was averted only with the greatest difficulty on numerous occasions.13 However, the success of the police in defusing potential explosions of communal bitterness led to charges of 'appeasement' of nationalists. Thus in Derrymacash, near Lurgan, three Protestant families put up Union Jacks and the next day found that there were 11 Tricolours erected on each of the houses of their Catholic neighbours. When the police arrived they persuaded the Protestants to take down their flags and the Irish flags were then removed.14 This police approach infuriated Protestant ultras and was given potentially disruptive significance for the Unionist party by events in the County Derry village of Dungiven on Coronation day. Local Protestants in this predominantly Catholic village had created a Coronation committee which proposed to hold a children's fancy dress parade accompanied by the Boveva flute band, a well-known Orange band. Nationalists threatened to oppose the presence of the band. The police had advised the committee that they could not guarantee the safety of the children if the band accompanied them and after protesting the invitation to the band was withdrawn. Although the day passed peacefully, subsequently there emerged claims that 700 nationalists had come into the village on Coronation day and 'occupied' it to prevent the entry of the band.15 More luridly some local loyalists spoke of the IRA taking over the town for the day and the parish priest telling the members of the parade that they could not carry any Union flags. What was noticeable about the creation of loyalist concern over Dungiven was how clearly manufactured it was to assist the campaign of a group of Independent Unionists who planned to stand against the Unionist party in the Stormont elections held in October 1953. Thus the diary of the Prime Minister, which showed a normally acute sensitivity to the demands and concerns of the loyalist grassroots mentions Dungiven for the first time over three months after it occurred when it was raised at an Executive Committee meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council to discuss the election campaign. It was, as he put it, 'the first time I have heard of it'.16 The Independents would exert themselves with some success to link the Dungiven events to the broader question of the 'appeasement' policies supposedly being followed by some government ministers. The central figure here was Brian Maginess, Minister of Home Affairs and acting Minister of Finance. The most liberal member of the government


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and one of its few figures of substance, he had become highly unpopular among some loyalists for a decision to ban an Orange march from parading along a road in a predominantly Catholic area of County Down in 1952. The 'Longstone Road' became with Dungiven a major issue for the Independents in the election and they concentrated their efforts in trying to unseat Maginess who was MP for the County Down constituency of Iveagh. The Prime Minister had to campaign personally on his behalf, recording of a meeting at Dromore, 'I pulled out all the stops and said I was unlikely to let Ulster down having done what I could to build her up and that Maginess was my right hand man."7 His support reflected in part a long-standing political friendship which went back to Maginess's role in the moves to force the resignation of the Brooke's predecessor John Andrews in 1943.18 However, it also and more fundamentally indicated the degree to which Maginess, and Brooke, were aware that the post-war developments in Belfast's relation with London, while strengthening the position of Ulster Unionism in important ways, did also contain important challenges to those aspects of the functioning of the state with a clearly sectarian dynamic. Labour, Nationalism and the Welfare State 1945 saw the emergence of a more coherent and active form of northern nationalism with the creation of the Anti-Partition League. The League looked hopefully to the new Labour administration in London to reopen the constitutional issue. It had sparked an apprehensive response from Unionists." A concern with the joint threat of 'socialistic legislation' and a Labour government with nationalist sympathies fuelled the support for Dominion Status - a loosening of the links with the United Kingdom which developed strongly in the Unionist party in 1946 and 1947. Although Brooke and the party establishment eventually came out against Dominion Status, largely because it was seen to endanger Protestant working-class support by threatening the newly acquired benefits from the British welfare state, there remained a powerful reservoir of support for the idea.20 It got particular support from Unionists in border areas who feared that the welfare state was a magnet attracting migrants from the south who would help nationalist voting strength in areas where the two communities were finely balanced. It was pressure from this sector of the Protestant community that led the government to introduce the controversial Safeguarding of Employment legislation in 1947. This made it illegal for southern workers to take up employment in Northern Ireland without a permit from the Ministry of Labour. Despite this Brooke's diaries continued to register a string of complaints that too many 'disloyalists' were being granted permits.21



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Brooke was well aware that many in the party resented the fact that all citizens of Northern Ireland received the benefits of the welfare state whatever their political allegiance. At the first Orange celebrations of the 12th of July since 1939 - the parades were not held during the war - he had boasted of the government's heavy programme of legislation which 'would be of permanent benefit to all sections of the community. The government is determined to develop still further its progressive policy.'22 He alerted his audience to the fact that the next month would see the beginning of family allowance payments to 100,000 families in Northern Ireland. But it was precisely the fact that such benefits went to 'disloyalists' that infuriated some of his supporters. At the County Deny Orange demonstration at Garvagh the Unionist MP, Dehra Parker, while declaring that Unionists would not deny justice to those of a different faith, reminded Catholics that they enjoyed all the material advantages that loyalists enjoyed and a higher living standard than they would have in the Free State: 'All we ask in return is that they should respect our constitution... But what is happening? These people who are protected under our laws are turning around and biting the hand that feeds them and are trying to blacken Ulster's good name at home and abroad.'23 The MP for North Tyrone, Thomas Lyons, a prominent supporter of Dominion Status, told Orangemen at Fintona that their nationalist opponents were showing 'a capacity for patience and shrewdness. The electoral registers for counties Tyrone, Fermanagh and Deny were swinging definitely against Protestant interests.' Nationalists were using various methods ranging from 'infiltration' from the south to buying up Protestant property.24 While Brooke did not capitulate to the campaign for Dominion Status he did periodically echo the resentments and demands of border Unionism. Thus in February 1947 in a speech to City of Derry and Foyle Unionist Associations he applauded a fund that they had set up to prevent Catholics buying Protestant property.25 Communal defensiveness which had been initially stimulated by fears about the intentions of the Attlee government might have been reassured by the increasing evidence in 1946 and 1947 that Attlee and his Home Secretary, Chuter Ede, had no intention of responding to the interventionist demands of the backbench 'Friends of Ireland' group.26 However the defeat of Fianna Fail in the Irish general election of February 1948 and its replacement by a coalition government which included the rhetorically more strident republican party, Clann na Poblachta, frustrated the hopes of those liberal unionists like Jack Sayers of the Belfast Telegraph, who hoped that good relations with Atlee and the material advantages of the welfare state would soften the edges of sectarian conflict. In his regular column in the Round Table he described a shift in the balance of forces within Unionism:


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One result of the last three years has been a certain realignment of the Unionists themselves. The lessening of the threat of constitutional change which so long strengthened the right wing has enabled the party to regain more of the liberal tradition. The Prime Minister has not deferred to the older and more die-hard element in going ahead with social reforms. It is too soon, perhaps, to see the effects of this broadened outlook on relations with the minority, but notably in the new educational system, inspired by the Butler Act, Unionist dissidence was safely risked in order to make concessions to Roman Catholics.27 In fact the Education Act of 1947 which had amongst other things increased the capital grants to voluntary schools, the majority of which were Catholic, from 50 to 65 per cent had been denounced by a range of loyalist opinion as 'appeasement'. The minister responsible, Colonel HallThompson, was forced to resign when, in 1949, he tried to introduce a bill which would have provided for the government paying a share of the National Insurance contributions of teachers in voluntary schools. His successor, the ex-Labour politician Harry Midgley, was more attuned to the Protestant critics of 'appeasement'. He suggested to the cabinet that the 1947 Act be reviewed and that the 65 per cent grant be continued for a specified period after which if voluntary schools did not accept 'Four and Two' committees of management including two representatives of local authorities, the grant be cut back to 50 per cent.28 This was a demand which had the support of many at all levels of the party. However Brooke was aware of the politically embarrassing consequences outside Northern Ireland which a confrontation with the Catholic Church on education would cause and he and a majority in the cabinet refused to consider the proposal. The result was a major internal challenge to the government over Midgley's Education (Amendment) Act of 1951 when six Unionist MPs defied a threeline whip and voted against the government. Brooke had waged a vigorous internal campaign with special meetings of the parliamentary party and the Ulster Unionist Council to discuss the issue. At the first Midgley produced figures to show that while 37 per cent of the north's school children were Catholics, the expenditure on their education was 29 per cent of the total: 'Therefore the accusation that we were favouring the Roman Catholics against the Protestants is complete nonsense.'29 At the Council meeting he dealt with a range of issues that had been the source of complaints of 'appeasement'. Apart from education another sore point was the policies followed by the Housing Trust. This body had been set up in 1945 to provide for public housing on a province-wide basis in part to compensate for the very poor record of local authority provision in the



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inter-war period. However, the Trust's policy of allocation on a points system was seen as threatening local structures of Unionist power in areas like Derry and Fermanagh where housing allocation was clearly determined by the need to preserve a Unionist voting majority in particular areas. Brooke was forced to defend both his government and the Housing Trust from criticism at a meeting of the Grand Lodge of the Orange Order in December 1950.30 The Grand Lodge itself was under pressure from Portadown and Fermanagh Orangemen who thought it not vigorous enough in pushing loyalist interests with the government. Brooke argued that to concede to such pressures would simply strengthen the nationalist propaganda campaign against the northern state. At the Unionist Council meeting in February 1951 he was forthright in his attempt to educate his listeners in the need to avoid identifying the Unionist cause with narrow Protestant parochialism: I told them that the Convention on Human Rights compelled us to be fair and I insisted we must be fair to the minority, that I was not going to be responsible for discrimination. I finished up by saying that if they wanted another administration who could perhaps solve these domestic problems from a new point of view, and if they thought we were not handling the Socialist government right and wanted a government which would discriminate against Roman Catholics they could do so. I would not take on the job.31 There is, of course, some irony here given Brooke's own earlier articulation of support for exactly the sort of discriminatory policies which he was now disowning. Most notorious was a 12th July speech in 1933 when he had criticised Protestants who employed Catholics adding that he 'had not a Roman Catholic about his own place...' 32 His biographer has noted that he later expressed regret for outbursts like this and adds that the remarks should be seen as a response to a particular situation: 'It should not be deduced that the distrust of the minority that he then expressed proved as enduring as its place in popular recollection.'33 Although there is some evidence that Brooke may have come to share the belief of Brian Maginess that the welfare state had produced a pro-Union shift amongst a section of the Catholic population, the dominant calculation on his part related to the challenge presented to his government by a new, American dominated noncommunist world which provided a range of international and supranational forums within which Irish nationalists could raise the partition issue. From the time, in 1946, when Brooke had been informed that the British government would not oppose an Irish application for membership of the United Nations he was very concerned about possible Irish use of the UN to embarrass the British government over Northern Ireland. He pressed


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for an Ulster representative on the British UN delegation to ensure that the expected anti-partitionist assault was effectively dealt with.34 Although the idea was received with some horror in the Foreign Office he continued to press it up until the Republic's eventual admission in 1955. There were similar concerns about possible Irish NATO membership and the use of the International Court of Justice at the Hague.35 Clearly if such attacks were expected - and they did come, especially when Sean McBride, a former Chief of Staff of the IRA and member of Clann na Poblachta, was Minister of External Affairs during the 1948-51 coalition government - Brooke desired to minimise the amount of material on Unionist 'misrule' which anti-partitionists could exploit. However, such attention to the international dimensions of defending the Union and the instrumental moderation which accompanied them was not well received by those members of the party whose horizons did not reach the other side of the Irish Sea, let alone of the English Channel or the Atlantic. Ulster Unionism and Public Order The tensions within the Unionist party over the welfare state and its implications for strengthening opponents of the state, which had in part fuelled the Dominion Status campaign, were also manifest in intraProtestant conflicts over the issues of marching and flags. Brooke had been influenced here by the belief that, although the Labour administration could be relied on to defend the status quo in Ulster, as it did most demonstrably with the Ireland Act of 1949, the existence of a substantial back-bench bloc of anti-partitionist sympathisers in the parliamentary Labour party at Westminster provided a sounding board for nationalist attacks on the 'police state' nature of his regime. Nationalist critics were also able to raise issues like discrimination and the Special Powers Act in Europe at meetings of the Inter-Parliamentary Union.36 The use of the Special Powers Act to ban parades or to prevent the carrying of Tricolours was a potent symbol of the abnormality of the situation in Northern Ireland for its critics. In March 1948 the government had banned a proposed Ancient Order of Hibernians anti-partition demonstration in Deny. Hugh Delargy MP, a leading member of the Friends of Ireland group in the Labour party, had been supposed to address the demonstration and put down a motion in the House of Commons to amend the Government of Ireland Act to prevent such a ban being imposed.37 When Maginess became Minister of Home Affairs in 1949 he was concerned to lessen the occasion for such criticism. He began to withdraw many of the regulations made under the Special Powers Act and in 1950 came to the cabinet with a proposal to repeal the Act in its entirety. He was



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particularly concerned that the Council of Europe would soon ratify a convention on human rights and that this would present major opportunities for critics of the Act. He argued that a Public Order Act, similar to the British one of 1938, would provide the police with adequate powers to deal with meetings or processions. Although his cabinet colleagues did not oppose the proposal, with Harry Midgley referring to the Act as a 'continual source of embarrassment', the police were reluctant to give up some of its emergency provisions due to the continued existence of an IRA threat.38 However, more significant than the views of the RUC was the pressure from sections of the Orange Order and grass roots Unionism for a tough response on any public manifestations of 'disloyalty'. Brooke had explained to the Grand Lodge of Ireland that 'where possible' he would want to allow nationalist parades 'so as to deprive them of a propaganda weapon'.39 Yet such a calculation was often over-subtle for the loyalist grass roots. Within a month of his attempt to educate the Orange leadership he and Maginess had to receive a deputation of the County Antrim Grand Lodge complaining that a Hibernian procession had been permitted through a Protestant area of Rasharkin on a Sunday. Although Brooke thought the police 'unwise' he pointed out to the Orangemen that 'the stopping of processions was good for propaganda'.40 The strength of Brooke's argument that conflicts over marches would only assist the propaganda of the government's opponents was soon revealed in the Ulster courts. In August 1950 the Dungannon Irish National Foresters' Band was travelling to a gaelic football match in Magherafelt. The police had been notified and a constable in uniform from Dungannon accompanied the team on their bus. On the outskirts of Cookstown the band decided to march and play through the town and when they arrived in Oldtown, a unionist area, they were attacked by a large crowd of loyalists. The local police, who had not been expecting the attempted parade, eventually restored order by baton charging the loyalists. Subsequently court proceedings were taken against a number of the loyalists including the local commander of the 'B' Specials who had played a prominent role in organising the attack and subsequently incited the crowd against the police.41 Although Pirn acknowledged that policing arrangements had been in adequate and proposed disciplinary action against one member of the police in Cookstown, local loyalist opinion was inflamed and unanimous in blaming the band for violating 'the ancient custom which has been in being for fifty years' that loyalist and nationalist processions did not enter each other's area. No mention was made of the attack on the band and the police were pilloried for baton charging 'the Loyal inhabitants of the Oldtown district'.42 For a significant sector of loyalist opinion the fundamentals of public order were ultimately to be guaranteed by unofficial means if the security


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forces of the state were seen to be too ready to compromise with the 'enemies of Ulster' This aspect of the loyalist mentality would continue to frustrate efforts of liberals like Maginess to soften the harder edges of the state. Neither was he helped by the Anti-Partition League which, frustrated in unrealistic hopes in the Atlee administration, saw in the public order issue a continuing potential for embarrassing the northern administration. In April 1951 James McSparran, leader of the Nationalist party at Stormont and a barrister, was successful in an appeal to the High Court against a decision of magistrates in Armagh to convict a nationalist of unlawfully displaying a Tricolour under regulation 24c of the Special Powers Act. The wording of the regulation referred to flags with green, white and yellow stripes whilst the appeal, successfully exploiting the letter of the law, established that the stripes in the flag carried in Armagh were green, white and orange.43 Almost immediately Brooke was finding it necessary to reassure some of his followers that he would not allow nationalists to exploit the decision to multiply the display of 'disloyalty'. Together with Maginess and the permanent secretary of Home Affairs he received a delegation from the Protestant 'loyal order', the Apprentice Boys, who were 'naturally very anxious about the display of Eire flags and the painting of the walls of Deny (with a Tricolour)'.44 Since the banning of the Hibernian demonstration in 1948 there had been periodic conflicts between the police and nationalists in the city. A month before the High Court decision the police had broken up a nationalist demonstration, led by Eddie McAteer, MP for Mid-Derry and five nationalist councillors, which had attempted to carry a Tricolour in the city centre. Two of the councillors were arrested.45 Later in the month Derry loyalists were reported to be 'outraged' by a Sinn Fein Easter commemoration march in which Tricolours were carried guarded by men carrying hurley sticks. The night before a Tricolour had been attached to the flagpole on the monument to Reverend George Walker, Governor of the city during the siege of 1689.46 The successful resistance by Protestants in Derry to the Catholic army of James II started with the closing of the gates of the city by apprentices. Through the remembrance of the siege Derry assumed iconic significance for the wider Protestant community determined to maintain the city's integrity as a loyalist bastion and made its 'defilement' by any public manifestation of nationalism a particular affront. The deputation of Apprentice Boys clearly anticipated an upsurge of such nationalist effrontery and while Brooke recorded that they were 'reasonable' and were aware of the 'danger of supplying the other side with propaganda' they also spoke of their 'wild men who would have to be looked after'. The Prime Minister asked them to be patient: 'I hoped we should have something which would satisfy them.'47 He was referring to the



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Public Order Bill which Maginess was preparing to deal with the problems created by the court decision. The bill made it obligatory for organisers of parades which were to use 'non-customary' routes to give notice to the police and allowed the police to re-route processions to preserve order. Crucially in its third clause it created an offence of 'provocative' conduct as the most effective means of dealing with the Tricolour.48 In his speech introducing the bill Maginess gave clear expression to his optimistic liberal Unionist assumptions about the effects of post-war economic and social developments on the Catholic community. The bill he claimed was aimed at a 'small extremist faction' who were set on disrupting the process by which the government 'are steadily winning the respect and even the affection of many of those who were formerly its opponents.' He claimed that recent years had seen 'a better understanding and a greater spirit of co-operation among all sections of the community.'49 Maginess firmly believed that Catholic attitudes to Northern Ireland were increasingly influenced by the advantages of inclusion in part of a social democratic state. The welfare state strengthened the Union by providing an increasingly clear material basis for reconciling Catholics to the existence of the northern state. As he put it in a letter to Brooke, 'we are weakening the anti-partition movement which is fading visibly. The number of Roman Catholics who are gradually coming to have faith in us, our permanent constitutional position and our fair administration, would appear to be increasing considerably, and if we can wean a sufficient number then the border issue will become if not defunct at least moribund.'50 In the Westminster election campaign in 1951 Brooke echoed this analysis claiming that 'even in Nationalist areas electors are beginning to realise that life in British Ulster is to be preferred to existence in a Gaelic republic'.51 However the very assertion that Catholics were reconciling themselves to partition cut at the basis of the ideology of embattlement which for many loyalists defined their Unionism. For loyalists like this Catholics would simply take the benefits of the welfare state and the concessions on education as signs of weakness whilst continuing with their opposition to the state. Their sentiments were articulated by the MP for Antrim, Nathaniel Minford, who finished a speech in support of the Unionist candidate for West Belfast in the 1951 Westminster election, Tom Teevan, with the cry of 'God save the King and to hell with the Pope!' The reaction to the speech illustrated the degree to which attempts to present a more moderate image of Unionism, whether genuine or instrumental, could be easily embarrassed by the continuing power of anti-Catholicism in the party. The outburst lost the party the seat which Teevan had won in a by-election from Jack Beattie of the Irish Labour party in 1950. Beattie's narrow victory in 1951 - by 25 votes - was explained by Unionist party headquarters at Glengall Street as


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a product of a maximum Catholic turnout combined with a loss of some liberal Protestant support, both in reaction to Minford's speech.52 Brooke thought the speech 'very unwise and very harmful' and recorded that Glengall Street had received many letters of complaint.53 The leaders of the three main Protestant churches had asked for a meeting at which they criticised the choice of candidates like Minford and Teevan, and Brooke ensured that a meeting of the Standing Committee of the Ulster Unionist Council passed a resolution condemning Minford's outburst.54 Teevan himself was well known for his strong Protestantism when he first fought West Belfast in 1950. From Limavady in County Londonderry, his Unionism had a raw Orange flavour. His election literature emphasised his activism in 'Orange and Protestant affairs' and he was a member of the three main loyal orders.55 He had been a vociferous and lurid exponent of the view that the loyalist position was being undermined by immigration from the Republic, telling a Unionist audience in Deny that 'the great danger is the enormous increase in the Roman Catholic population of Northern Ireland. If fewer houses and jobs were given to Roman Catholics the position could be remedied. It is due to the treacherous policy of allowing farms, houses and jobs to go to our opponents that we find ourselves having to fight for our lives today.'56 Brooke's problem was that those policies which would do most to reconcile Catholics to the Union and strengthen the Unionist cause outside of Northern Ireland antagonised not simply the loyalist extremes but also a substantial sector of his parliamentary party. This became evident when W.F. McCoy, Unionist MP for South Tyrone and a proponent of Dominion Status in the immediate post-war period, returned to some of the central themes of the campaign in a 12th July speech in 1951. He voiced a continuing distrust in the Labour government and the strength of opposition in the business class to the agreements worked out with the Treasury to support the extension of the welfare state to the province: 'For an illusory mess of pottage we have sold our constitutional birthright and obligated our Parliament to accept and adopt Socialist legislation. It would still be bound to adopt more extreme Socialist legislation if introduced by the present or a more extreme socialist government.'" The recrudescence of intra-party divisions caused Brooke serious concern as he was warned by Robert Gransden, the Cabinet Secretary, that it indicated 'the beginning of a serious split in the Unionist party'.58 After a series of meetings with the Whips and William Douglas, the Secretary of the Ulster Unionist party, there was a meeting of the parliamentary party at which, to Brooke's dismay, although a majority opposed McCoy's arguments they defended his right to continue to articulate them. The victory of the Conservatives in the 1951 election did not end the campaign with even Brooke recording his disappointment at the



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narrowness of the Tory victory: 'I have been giving some thought to the possibility of safeguarding the Unionist position if a very left government were to come to power in England. It might make a Government here impossible.'59 He found it necessary to call another parliamentary party meeting in January 1952 to have the Minister of Finance confront McCoy's arguments. Again, despite the claim that McCoy's case had been demolished, he had still to record his having had to castigate a section of the party for its criticism of the government and undermining party unity.60 Linked loyalist concerns were the on-going negotiations with the Irish government over the joint buy-out of the Great Northern Railway and the proposed north-south joint management of Lough Foyle involved in the Foyle Fisheries Commission with Brooke having to reassure his followers that such contacts with Dublin betokened no shift in his position.6' The return of de Valera to power in 1951 with the defeat of what Unionists perceived as the more irredentist coalition government, increased the selfconfidence of some in the Unionist elite but this in itself was regarded as incorrigible complacency by their loyalist critics. When James McSparran criticised political leaders in the south for putting the partition question on the 'long finger...it was difficult to avoid the impression that they were not prepared to make a serious effort to solve the problem.' The Belfast Newsletter commented that enthusiasm for anti-partitionism was waning.62 Brooke gave some indication of sharing this analysis in his account of a meeting with an assistant editor of The Times who had visited Belfast after being in the Republic to cover the Irish general: 'In the Eire elections no party is mentioning partition. He does not quite know why. I told him that the violent party in Northern Ireland was only a small percentage.'63 De Valera's rejection of northern nationalist pressures for a more activist posture and the amicable negotiations with Stormont over the GNR and the Foyle Fisheries led even the leadership of the Orange Order to sound a surprisingly conciliatory note. At the 12th July demonstration in 1953 one of the three resolutions proposed by the Imperial Grand Master, J.M. Andrews, referred to 'indications among the wiser leaders of southern Ireland of respect for our constitution'. Orange gatherings in Tyrone and Fermanagh heard denunciations of such liberalism. At Ballinamallard T.C. Nelson, MP claimed that the framers of the resolution 'must wear green spectacles. Have these Orange officials in Belfast listened to Radio Eireann describing the "Six Counties" and our beloved Queen as "Queen of England"?' The Newsletter commented that the complaints came from counties 'where Unionists are more sensitive nowadays to any suggestion of "appeasement" than those in predominantly Unionist areas'.64 But antiappeasement sentiments, while they may have been strongest in border counties, were a growing force throughout the north in 1953, spurred on by

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the conflict occasioned by the Coronation.


Dungiven and the 1953 Election Brian Maginess had become the main focus for loyalist critics of the government who would use the clear evidence of dissension in party ranks to promote the cause of Independent Unionism in the 1953 Stormont election. The Dungiven incident had all the more resonance because Maginess was already being pilloried as an enemy of Orangeism and a proponent of constitutional complacency. The reputation as an opponent of the Order stemmed from the ban he had placed on a proposed march by Orangemen along the nationalist Longstone Road near Kilkeel, County Down in June 1952. The last Orange march there had been 16 years before and there was now an Ancient Order of Hibernians hall on the road. The Minister had subsequently gone to explain the ban to the local district lodge but had met with considerable hostility. A few days later the Orangemen had decided to try to march again but had accepted a re-routing. Two bands who defied this and marched along the road were met by a nationalist crowd at the Hibernian hall, and a riot was narrowly averted by police persuading the bands to go back.65 The up-and-coming Unionist MP, Brian Faulkner, who specialised in cultivating grass-roots Orangeism, demanded a full investigation and it was raised at Stormont. Several of the Orangemen showed their disgust by resigning from the B Specials and the Longstone Road incident would feature as a major issue in intra-Unionist disputes throughout the next couple of years with particular intensity during the Stormont election in October 1953. The election campaign was dominated on the Unionist side by the attacks of eight Independent Unionist candidates on the record of the government. The Independents' campaign centred on two issues: 'appeasement' and the need for a vigorous group of Independent MPs at Stormont to challenge what they portrayed as the regime's supine role as a rubber stamp for Westminster legislation. The core mobilising issue and the one they used to attract dissident loyalist support was 'appeasement' focussing on denunciations of Maginess over the Longstone Road and Dungiven and on the government's education policies. However, the campaign was also assisted by the growing salience of the unemployment issue. This had been a particular concern of the government since 1951 when the linen industry had been hit by an international slump in textiles at the same time as the shortage of steel due to the Korean War hit shipbuilding and engineering. These problems were exacerbated by the Conservative government's response to the inflationary pressure of the rearmament programme with a credit squeeze and reductions in public expenditure.66 By



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the beginning of 1952 unemployment had reached 11 per cent in Northern Ireland, and while Brooke had pressed Churchill for special measures to help deal with the problem, little had been forthcoming by the time of the election. Unemployment in 1953 had fallen somewhat but at 9 per cent was double that in Merseyside the UK development area with the highest rate of unemployment, and was four times the national average.67 The government was attacked from both left and right on the issue. For the Northern Ireland Labour party it was the Unionist regime's links to and support for Tory policies that was to blame, while for the Independents, echoing the Dominion Status lobby, it was the post-war subservience to 'socialistic' policies that was over-taxing local industry and undermining the work ethic of the Ulster proletariat.68 An analysis of the result in the Newsletter admitted 'there is no denying the fact that there was appalling apathy among sections of the Unionist population' ,69 Although the Unionists lost only two seats and won one, the sharp decline of their vote compared with 1949 was a major concern. In the twenty constituencies where Unionist party candidates faced opposition their total vote was more than 37,000 less than in 1949.™ The problem was particularly of concern in Belfast where Unionist candidates in a number of constituencies saw sharp declines in their vote. Although the immediate focus was on Clifton, where Hall-Thompson lost to the fundamentalist lay preacher Norman Porter who had been the most articulately sectarian of the Independent Unionists, the concern of Unionist party headquarters was that the Independent challenge had been able to exploit a wider malaise in the Unionist electoral coalition.7' A post-mortem on the results produced for party headquarters pointed up a range of factors to account for the low Unionist poll. Unemployment and the narrow class basis of the party in Belfast were seen as important: 'Our party is losing the support of the lower paid income group and the artisans to the NILP... It is very unfortunate that we have no members of parliament drawn from this category... Many of the Divisional Associations are not as representative or democratic as they ought to be. This appears to apply particularly in Belfast...'72 However the willingness to contemplate voting for the NILP and the scarcely less disturbing tendency not to vote at all, were also seen as a product of a complacency amongst many electors who 'while not opposed to the government, did not realise the value of their vote sufficiently to go to the poll'.73 A number of factors were identified including the large number of uncontested seats (21 compared to 14 in 1949) and the lack of effective organisation in new housing states in the Belfast area. But the central problem was seen to be the government's identification with a broader and less strident form of Unionism which was not being effectively communicated to the party and the broader Unionist


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community: 'Because the "Big Drum" has heretofore dominated Unionist politics an intensive campaign of political education in broadest sense must be undertaken by the Ulster Unionist Council.'74 Maginess's and Brooke's emphasis on the weakening of the anti-partitionist movement, the Ireland Act and the return of the Conservatives had appeared to encourage a feeling of constitutional security which had provided both the NILP and the Independents with scope to argue that votes for them would not endanger the Union.75 It was precisely the lessening of the salience of the constitutional issue that allowed the Independent's attack on 'appeasement' to acquire its momentum. As the party's analysis of the election put it: 'There is a feeling abroad that the Government is too eager to please its opponents and forget about its friends' and it specifically referred to 'Incidents at Dungiven, Annalong (Longstone Road) and other places and occurrences relating to the flying of the union Jack.'76 Brooke and Maginess's concern with the image of the regime outside the province had clearly fuelled the anti'appeasement' movement. The analysis noted the problem: 'The position of the Unionist Party now as compared with its position in pre-1920 days is admittedly different. It is now charged with the government of the country and fair play must be meted out [sic] to the minority, whereas in the pre1920 days it had no responsibilities except to its own followers.'77 Already during the campaign it was evident that the Independent challenge was pushing the Prime Minister to jettison any hints of a broader vision of Unionism. Thus campaigning for Maginess in Iveagh he had brandished his loyalist credentials: 'I told them that I had offered to desert from the Army to defend the Union in 1914, that I had run the Specials and done all I could for the Union.'78 At another meeting there was a crude echo of some of his more florid sectarian outbursts in the 1930s: 'He had been criticised for employing a Roman Catholic driver. That was not correct. His driver was a Scottish Presbyterian and a good one at that.'79 The Flags and Emblems Act: the Collapse of Instrumental Moderation Although Maginess held the seat his majority was slashed from 7,558 to 1,560 and his loyalist critics claimed that he held it only because of Catholic support.80 Brooke's reading of the result prioritised the Independent threat, noting in his diary that 'Our people still believe the yarns about Dungiven when the IRA was supposed to have held the town during Coronation day.' The same entry, just a week after election day, noted that he had already asked the Unionist Chief Whip to take over at Home Affairs.81 The Independents buoyed up by Porter's victory continued to press the government on Dungiven with the support of a number of Unionist


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backbenchers. Maginess was now Minister of Finance and it was normal for this senior minister to act as Deputy Prime Minister. However he told Brooke that some MPs had threatened to resign if he was given the position82 and it became increasingly obvious that his prospects within the party had been blighted by the election result. Brooke was forced to give a lengthy statement to the House of Commons on Dungiven in response to a question from Minford. Minford's speech supported the more lurid of the loyalist depictions of an IRA 'seizure' of the village and ended threateningly 'if we find that the Minister cannot give us protection in our lawful walks we will protect ourselves'.83 Brooke had prepared a statement in consultation with Maginess and Hanna, the new Minister of Home Affairs, which refuted the claims about an IRA takeover and backed the police decision while 'assuring loyalists that we will back them as far as we can'.84 He hoped that the support of the Grand Lodge of Ireland for the government would finish the issue but by the beginning of December 1953 it was clear that continuing Independent agitation on Dungiven was finding substantial support in the County Londonderry Grand Lodge where there was a demand for an inquiry which Brooke was dismayed to find out was echoed by some members of the Grand Lodge of Ireland. George Hanna was despatched to address the Grand Lodge and got a vote of confidence after agreeing that if there was any new evidence produced the government would have an inquiry. Brooke was alarmed at the Orange hierarchy's willingness to respond to extremist pressure: 'I intend to tell the Grand Lodge that loyalist ranks cannot stand a division. We must take to the middle road or the extreme road. If the latter course, then Unionism's good name is finished.'85 The new year opened with the government clearly on the defensive as Porter and the Independents sponsored an Orange and Protestant Committee which organised a mass meeting in Belfast's Ulster Hall to be addressed by the leader of the Boveva Flute band and other loyalists involved in the Dungiven incident. A special meeting of the Unionist parliamentary party was held at Glengall Street the day before the Ulster Hall meeting. It was attended by the cabinet and the Westminster MPs and intended to stiffen party and Orange resolve against the Independents and ensure that no Unionist MP attended the meeting. Brooke had found it increasingly difficult to maintain the support of the Orange hierarchy: 'I had the greatest difficulty in getting Andrews (Imperial Grand Master)to disassociate the Grand Lodge from the malcontents. As usual they want to do nothing. Grand Lodge would have been down the drain and given all their control to Porter and company.'86 But the meeting itself showed the government's trimming to accommodate its critics. Hanna made a statement that he was investigating the incident and had met the Grand Lodge who were awaiting


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a special report from the Londonderry County Grand Lodge. Where Brooke's statement to Stormont in November had been dismissive of the loyalist version of events, Hanna's statement was much more strident: 'The action taken at Dungiven by the party's political opponents had been an outrageous abuse of the liberty and freedom of action enjoyed by people under Unionist rule.' He added that such behaviour would not be tolerated and in a hint of the Flags and Emblems Bill commented that 'the mere fact of their (nationalists) refraining from overt aggression would not afford them immunity from the full processes of the law.'87 The loyalist meeting which filled the Ulster Hall to capacity and left 2,000 supporters outside, heard strong denunciations not only of Maginess but of those like the Minister of Agriculture, the Reverend Robert Moore, who it was claimed had advised Unionists to 'forget the past'. The chairman attacked the 'traitors in their own camp who want to give the Roman Catholics sufficient to take away the freedom of loyalists', and the Minister of Commerce was denounced for considering building factories in places like Newry, Strabane and Londonderry: 'These are all Nationalist areas where the people are too lazy to work.'88 Porter's own fevered conception of 'appeasement' now blamed the government for alleged occasions when the singing of hymns had been prohibited in two hospitals and for 'Roman Catholic literature' being left on the beds of Protestant patients. Despite its more bizarre sectarian embellishments Brooke took the meeting - which also called for the party to get rid of him and passed a motion of no confidence in the government - very seriously noting in his diary the next day. 'These men are dangerous.'89 This was the context in which the simmering dispute between the Inspector General of the RUC and the top officials of the Ministry of Home Affairs since the Coronation was finally resolved in a manner that clearly ignored Pirn's deep reservations about tailoring public order legislation to the exigencies of internal party politics. The issues raised by the proposed legislation had been the source of conflict between the Inspector General and top officials of Home Affairs since the celebrations of the Coronation. Pirn had issued an order to his officers on 20 June 1953 which attempted to provided guidelines to deal with similar problems over the flying of the Union Jack or Tricolour which he anticipated might arise in the period leading up to a proposed Royal visit in July. It advised that in circumstances where the flying of a Union flag might lead to a serious breach of the peace the person responsible should be 'tactfully advised' on the dangers but not told to remove the flag and nor should the police remove it.90 After the visit Pirn produced a more detailed draft circular on the display of flags and decorations which caused apprehension in Home Affairs as it did provide that in certain 'extreme' cases the common law duty of the police to prevent


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a breach of the peace would permit the removal of Union flag.9' The matter then became a matter for discussion between Maginess and the Attorney General who appear to have hoped to ignore it until pressed for a response by Pim. The resultant conference in the Attorney General's office took place after the general election and was attended by Pim, the Ministers of Home Affairs and Finance and officials from Home Affairs. It centred on the communication to Pim of the 'general feeling that it should not or could not be admitted that the flying of the Union Jack could lead to a breach of the peace or that persons objecting to the Union Jack were entitled to do so.'92 Pim undertook to produce a new circular with the deletion of the paragraph that contemplated the removal of the Union Jack but this was regarded by Adrian Robinson of Home Affairs as 'still too milk and water and so full of pious comment and indefinite instructions that would not serve the purposes for which it is intended'.93 Robinson had drafted his own set of proposals and it was these which provided the basis for the Flags and Emblems legislation. It was at the cabinet meeting two days after the Ulster Hall meeting that this draft of the Flags and Emblems bill was agreed. Brooke noted, 'We agreed on legislation that the Union Jack was to fly without interference... No doubt the Orange and Protestants will claim this as a victory.'94 It has been argued that under Brooke's leadership in the post-war period, 'the "Protestant ascendancy" seemed to be secure, and a certain amount of triumphalism crept into unionism; more often than not Brookeborough played the orange card.'95 However, it was precisely the sense of relative security brought about by the welfare state and the Ireland Act that opened up the space in which a substantial number of traditional Unionist voters could feel freer to express their own unhappiness with a range of government policies by voting for the NILP, the Independents or simply staying at home on polling day. It was this relative relaxation of the internal ties of the Unionist electoral bloc that ironically made the efforts of Brooke and Maginess to ameliorate the hard edges of the regime so vulnerable to assault by loyalist ultras. The new national and international situation after 1945 had encouraged some in the Unionist elite in a belief that overtly partisan behaviour by Ulster Unionists would be fully exploited by antipartitionists in Westminster, the United States and a range of new forums from the United Nations to the Council of Europe. The reaction against this approach ranged from the Dominion Status lobby to the fundamentalist backlash on the education issue. However it was strength of the marching tradition in defining the Unionism of many Protestants that made the issue of public order a battleground, not simply between nationalists and the state, but within Unionism itself. For it was the issue where those sectors of the Protestant community who most resisted post-war compromises found it

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easiest to do battle. The Flags and Emblems Act was therefore as much a defeat for a certain broader conception of the Union, and for those in the Unionist elite who realised that partition would have to be defended in Strasbourg and New York as well as Derry and Fermanagh, as it was an assault on nationalist rights.


NOTES 1. Sabine Wichert, Northern Ireland Since 1945 (London: Longman, 1991), pp.66-75. 2. Michael Farrell, Arming the Protestants (London: Pluto, 1983), pp.268-9. 3. An editorial in the Derry Journal 'The Police State in Truth', 3 Feb. 1954, claimed that the proposed bill went to 'the extremist limits touched by the Red regimes in China or Eastern Europe... This is the police state with a vengeance.' 4. Bob Purdie, Politics in the Streets, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1990), p.30 5. Lucy Bryson and Clem McCartney, Clashing Symbols: A Report on the Use of Flags and Other Symbols in Northern Ireland (Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies, 1994), p.145. 6. Ibid., p.145. 7. Ibid., p. 146. 8. Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (henceforward PRONI): CAB4/924, 'Display of Flags', 7 Jan. 1954. 9. Ibid. 10. These and subsequent quotations are from PRONI: HA/32/1/956, Memorandum from Sir Richard Pim to The Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs, 30 Dec. 1953. 11. Bryson and McCartney, p. 144. 12. Belfast Newsletter, 25 May 1953 13. W.H. Moffatt quoted in Pim memorandum, PRONI: HA/32/1/956, Memorandum from Sir Richard Pim to The Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs, 30 Dec. 1953. 14. Belfast Newsletter, 1 June 1953 15. This account was given by the Unionist MP, Nathaniel Minford who had been contacted by members of the band and phoned the Minister of Home Affairs to try and get police protection for the band, Northern Ireland House of Commons, Debates, Vol.xxxviii, 17 Nov. 1953, cols. 163-5. 16. PRONI, D 3004/D/44, Brooke Diaries, 21 Sept. 1953. 17. Ibid., Diaries, 23 Sept. 1953. 18. See Brian Barton, Brookeborough: The Making of a Prime Minister (Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies, 1988), pp.215-16. 19. See Brendan Lynn, Holding the Ground: The Nationalist Party in Northern Ireland 1945-72 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997), pp. 11-55. 20. See Paul Bew, Peter Gibbon and Henry Patterson, Northern Ireland 1921-1996, Political Forces and Social Classes (London: Serif, 1996), pp.97-104. 21. Lynn, Holding the Ground, pp.74-5. Thus at the end of 1950 Brooke met a deputation from the Executive of the Ulster Unionist Council on the Safeguarding of Employment Act. The deputation complained that the Minister of Labour was not administering the Act in a manner that best served Protestant interests: 'I told them that frankly no minister could ask his department to go outside the bill as passed by parliament, but that we would do what we could to encourage loyalists to stay in the country.' Diaries, 12 Dec. 1950. 22. Belfast Newsletter, 13 July 1946. 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid. 25. Michael Farrell, Northern Ireland, The Orange State (London: Pluto, 1976), p.181. 26. See Bob Purdie, 'The Friends of Ireland. British Labour and Irish Nationalism, 1945-49' in


27. 28.


29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

35.

36. 37. 38.

39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

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Tom Gallagher and James O'Connell (eds.) Contemporary Irish Studies (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983), pp.81-93. The Round Table, Vol. XXXVIII, 1948. Graham Walker, The Politics of Frustration: Harry Midgley and the Failure of Labour in Northern Ireland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985), pp.199-200. PRONI, D 3004/D/44, Diaries, 6 Feb. 1951. Ibid., 13 Dec. 1950. Ibid., 18 Feb. 1951. Barton, Brookeborough, p.78. Ibid., p.89. PRONI, CAB9B/267/7, letter from Maynard Sinclair, acting prime minister, to Chuter Ede, 6 Aug. 1946, protesting about the fact that the Free State's application to join the UN was made in the name of 'Ireland': 'It is bringing into the international sphere the use of a nomenclature which is calculated to cause even greater misunderstanding about the status of Northern Ireland.' The same file contains a letter from Gransden, Secretary to NI cabinet to A.J. Kelly of the Home Office, 12 Jan. 1949: 'The Prime Minister is quite taken with the idea of a representative on the permanent UK delegation at the United Nations.' PRONI: CAB9B/267/7, letter from L. E Curran to Prime Minister, 21 Jan. 1949: Brooke had requested government legal advisers to look at possible challenges to the north's constitutional position being brought by the Republic through (a) joining Western European Union, (b) joining NATO, (c) having its claims brought before the UN General Assembly and (d) taking a case to an international tribunal. Patrick Hogan, an Irish delegate at the Inter-parliamentary Union meeting in Istanbul, claimed that a 'police state had been established in the Six Counties', Northern Whig, 3 Sept. 1951. See Purdie, 'The Friends of Ireland', p.87. PRONI: CAB4/810, memorandum by the Minister of Home Affairs on the Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Act, 22 Feb. 1950. Diaries, 13 Dec. 1950. Ibid., 3 Jan. 1951. PRONI, HA/32/1/663, report on breach of the peace in Cookstown on 27 Aug. 1950 by S.S. Hopkins, County Inspector, Omagh to Inspector General of RUC, 6 Sept. 1950. Ibid., Letter from Sir Richard Pim to the Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs, 8 Sept. 1950 and resolution of the Cookstown Unionist Association. Belfast Newsletter, 20 April 1951 Diaries, 18 May 1951. Belfast Newletter, 19 March 1951. Ibid., 26 March 1951. Diaries, 18 May 1951. PRONI, Cab4/ 846/10, memorandum by Minister of Home Affairs on Public Order Bill, 8 May 1951. Northern Ireland House of Commons, Debates, Vol.XXXV, 19 June 1951, col.1541. PRONI, Cab 9J/53/2, letter from Brian Maginess to Sir Basil Brooke, 21 Aug. 1951. 'Roman Catholic Electors Seeing the Light', Northern Whig, 20 Oct. 1951. PRONI, D 1327/16/2/29, Ulster Unionist Council Papers, 'Analysis of 1951 Westminster Election'. Diaries, 9 Oct. 1951 and 1 Nov. 1951. Ibid., 9 Nov. 1951 and 16 Nov. 1951. PRONI, D1327/16/2/27, Ulster Unionist Council Papers, election leaflet for Tom Teevan, West Belfast by-election, 29 Nov. 1950. The speech reported in the Londonderry Sentinel on 28 Jan. 1950 was quoted by the nationalist MP, Cahir Healy, at Stormont, Northern Ireland House of Commons, Debates, Vol.XXXV, 22 May 1951, col.1135. '"More power to Ulster!" declares Mr McCoy', Northern Whig, 1 Sept. 1951. PRONI, Cab 9J/53/2, letter from Gransden to the Prime Minister, 17 Aug. 1951. Diaries, 26 Oct. 1951.


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60. 57 Ibid., 3 Jan. 1951. 61. Ibid., 10 Dec. 1952: 'Grand Lodge meeting. I informed them that negotiations with Eire were on business matters and nothing more. Attempts to raise the constitutional question would not succeed.' 62. Belfast Newsletter, 26 May 1953 63. Diaries, 6 June 1951. 64. Belfast Newsletter, 14 July 1953. 65. This account is based on Maginess's justification of the ban given during the election campaign, Ibid., 17 Oct. 1953. 66. Bew, Gibbon and Patterson, pp.120-21. 67. Figures from Brian Maginess budget speech as acting Minister of Finance, Belfast Newsletter, 6 May 1953. 68. The NILP pamphlet 'Spotlight on the Unionist Record' focussed on the unemployment issue and the claim that 4000 Ulster people had emigrated to Canada in 1952, ibid., 19 Oct. 1953. At a meeting to support the Independent Unionist candidate in North Deny one speaker who raised the unemployment issue linked it to the detrimental effects of the welfare state: 'It was bad enough having unemployment but when the unemployed got so much for not working some of these people would become unemployable.' Another speaker, the industrialist, Sir Graham Larmor attacked the government's acceptance of Westminster taxation levels: 'Leaving the individual free to risk his own capital would be best, but the fact was that in taxation, as in trade, Stormont's powers were limited and Northern Ireland did not control its own destiny.' Ibid., 210ct. 1953. 69. Ibid., 23 Oct. 1953. 70. Irish News, 24 Oct. 1953. 71. In Willowfield Midgley's vote dropped from 11, 304 in 1949 to 6,539; in Cromac the Unionist vote in 1949 had been 10,152, in 1953 it was 5, 293; in Victoria it dropped from 11, 330 and a majority over the NILP of 8,907 to 7, 198 and a majority of 1, 662; in Woodvale where their candidate had been unopposed in 1949, the majority over the Independent Unionist was only 299 votes and the NILP also had a substantial vote, Ibid., 23 Oct. 1953. 72. PRONI, D 1327/16/3/51, Ulster Unionist Council Papers, 'Observations on the 1953 election'. At the time of partition the Unionist Parliamentary Party had a working class membership of ten per cent, all members of the Ulster Unionist Labour Association. The only one to last until the post-war period was William Grant, Minister of Labour, who had left the scene by 1950: see E. Rumpf and A.C. Hepburn, Nationalism and Socialism in Twentieth Century Ireland (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1977), p. 177. 73. Ibid. 74. Ibid. 75. A Newsletter leader during the campaign had commented: 'Not the least disturbing feature of the present campaign has been an inordinate tendency to suggest that, as Northern Ireland's constitutional position is now unassailable, the time has come when the Unionist electorate can dismiss its fear and with safety concentrate purely on domestic issues. No more pernicious theory could be advanced,' Belfast Newsletter, 16 Oct. 1953. 76. 'Observations on the 1953 election'. 77. Ibid. 78. Diaries, 14 Oct. 1953 79. Belfast Newsletter, 16 Oct. 1953. 80. Ibid., 24 Oct. 1953. Mr. Maginess's widow supported the idea that her husband's margin of victory was dependent on Catholic support. Interview with Mrs. Margaret Maginess at Hillsborough, 15 Jan 1998.

81. Diaries, 27 Oct. 1953. 82. Ibid., 28 Oct. 1953. 83. Northern Ireland House of Commons, Debates, Vol.XXXVIII, 17 Nov. 1953, col.165. 84. Diaries, 17 Nov. 1953. 85. Ibid., 1 Dec. 1953. All the four entries in December were concerned solely with the Dungiven issue and his end-of-year summary was bleak: 'There seems to be a movement in the country of the extremists towards the independents which may well undo a great deal of the good


86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93.


94. 95.

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which we have tried to do.' Ibid., 17 Dec. 1953. Ibid., 1 Jan. 1954. Belfast Newsletter, 6 Jan. 1954. Ibid. Diaries, 6 Jan. 1954. PRONI, HA/32/1/956, order from the Inspector general to all RUC stations, 20 June 1953. Ibid., HA/32/1/956, draft circular from Inspector General of the RUC on the display of flags and decorations, 10 July 1953. Ibid., report of a conference in the Attorney General's Office, Stormont, 16 Nov. 1953. Ibid., memorandum from Secretary of Ministry of Home Affairs to Minister of Home Affairs, 24 Nov. 1953. Diaries, 7 Jan. 1954. Wichert, p.67.