January 6 1975
TWO prominent Socialist Democratic and Labour Party members last night accused the Rev Ian Paisley and his UUUC colleagues of attempting to wreck the peace plan worked out by Church leaders and the Provisional IRA in order to further their own political careers.
Mr Paddy Devlin, Assembly member for West Belfast, said the UUUC’s successes in the two general elections last year were due to their exploitation of the fears of the Loyalists voters that the Provisional IRA’s campaign of violence was aimed at them and they were now afraid that if the ceasefire extended to the Convention elections they would lose heavily.
“If the machinery of violence was dismantled on every side that would mean the UUUC would be in great trouble and they know it”, Mr Devlin said. “They do not have any political thinking on issues affecting the people of the north. They have no basic political philosophy to deal with the long-term problems. They have given very little real service to their supporters and none at all to the people they purport to represent in their various areas”.
Mr Devlin’s Derry Assembly colleague, Mr Hugh Logue, appealed to the UUUC supporters to make it clear to Mr Paisley that his attempt to wreck the peace initiative does not have their support.
“They must understand from Paisley’s record”, he added, “that his interest in Provisional violence is as strongly vested as is a milkman’s in the milk from a cow – if it dried up he is out of business”.
Their attack came on the eve of today’s UUUC private meeting to discuss the latest extension of the Provisional IRA’s ceasefire. It is not thought likely that the meeting will result in an immediate call for another strike on the lines of the one which brought down the power-sharing Executive last May.
Public statements of the leaders of the UUUC, which embraces the Official, Democratic and the Vanguard Unionists, have tended to reinforce this view.
But many hard-liners in the UUUC camp are deeply suspicious of the ceasefire. They believe that the Provisionals are not searching for peace, but using the ceasefire to re-group and rearm, and have warned of a possible “sell-out” of the Loyalist people by the British Government.
Stinging attack from SDLP members on the UUUC’s opposition to the IRA ceasefire, claiming people like Ian Paisley thrived on the violence in the North.
