Former Alliance Party leader John Cushnahan has said he is “deeply hurt and angered” by his immediate successor’s damning characterisation of the party at the time he stood down as leader more than 35 years ago.
In a newly-published book, Lord John Alderdice describes the state of the Alliance Party when he was elected leader after Mr Cushnahan resigned in 1987 as “terrible”.
He told the authors of The Alliance Party of Northern Ireland: Beyond Unionism and Nationalism that the party “was in bad shape financially, organisationally and politically”.
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“When I became leader the situation was terrible. Everything about it was terrible,” the Liberal Democrat peer said.
“The finances were terrible. The finances were in a mess; organisationally we had lost a very great deal; the party headquarters was in very poor shape. I used to joke that I had become a slum landlord.”
But according to Mr Cushnahan, who would later serve as a Fine Gael MEP, his Alliance successor’s comments are “not in accordance with the facts”.
The former North Down assembly member insists that under his leadership, Alliance’s fortunes improved.
“When I took over the leadership of the Alliance Party in 1984, its electoral share of the vote in that year’s European election had been 5%,” he told The Irish News.
“Despite the fact this was the most polarised period in Northern Ireland politics due to the fallout from the Hunger Strike and the Anglo-Irish Agreement the Alliance electoral share of the vote under my leadership had been doubled to 10% in the Westminster election – this was its highest share of the vote since 1979 and it remained Alliance’s highest electoral share of the vote until 2019.”
The former MEP said Alliance’s electoral performance while he was leader were in “marked contrast” to that under Lord Alderdice.
“When I led the Alliance Party, our parliamentary party had 10 out of 78 members at Stormont while under John Alderdice that figure declined in 1998 to 6 out of 108 members,” he said.
“Therefore, it was actually under John Alderdice’s leadership, not mine that the party was in bad shape and suffered a serious decline both politically and organisationally.”
He also rejects the claims about the poor state of the party’s headquarters, saying up until his resignation as leader weekly press conferences were held on the premises on Belfast’s University Avenue.
“The description of the HQ doesn’t chime with my own recollection and I imagine there would be plenty of archive TV footage showing those weekly press conferences to prove the building was in good shape,” the former Belfast councillor said.
Mr Cushnahan said he enjoyed a “very positive relationship” with Alliance’s current leadership and would still attend the party’s annual conference. He stressed that he has no issue with the book’s authors, which include University of Liverpool’s Professor Jon Tonge and Claire Rice, and Ulster University’s Máire Braniff.
“I was deeply hurt and angered when I read these comments from John Alderdice,” he said.
Lord Alderdice has not responded to The Irish News.
