But what happened next was, and has remained ever since, a subject of controversy – and the way in which the proposal for voluntary coalition was brought forward was as controversial as the idea itself. For its opponents, the idea was something suddenly sprung on them out of the blue, with no proper pedigree within UUUC policy-making councils. But for its proponents, there was ample scope for voluntary coalition in the UUUC’s manifesto.23 Most of the UUUC would have viewed such proposals as mere window-dressing – especially since there appeared to be no chance that they might be accepted by the SDLP. But after the initial impasse was reached, events and positions moved very rapidly. Both parties exchanged position papers on 26 August 1975 and reported the deadlock to the chairman, Sir Robert Lowry – with the specific request that he look at paragraph 8 (iii) of the UUUC document. That portion of it outlined three ways in which a coalition could be formed: first, by inter-party agreement before the election, approved by the electorate; second, by a combination of two or more minority parties obtaining a majority together; or, third, by parties coming together in the national interest during an emergency. Not only did this section – which was drafted by Craig and Trimble – appear to many in the UUUC to contradict the earlier passages on straightforward majority rule but they contended that it was not put to the UUUC Convention grouping as a whole prior to its presentation to the SDLP. That said, it was discussed by the 12-strong UUUC policy Cabinet (on which Trimble sat) and by the three appointed UUUC negotiators – Craig, Capt. Austin Ardill of the UUP and Rev. William Beattie of the DUP. Indeed, the official Vanguard account of this episode states that Beattie saw it and assented after showing it to Paisley and that it was ratified on the following day by the policy committee. The DUP leader later denied seeing it; Beattie says he only agreed to look at the early version, in which the coalition appeared to be voluntary. But when the DUP and others examined the fine print more closely, it turned out to be anything but voluntary.24
Whatever was or was not agreed, on 29 August 1975, the UUUC negotiators were told by Lowry that the SDLP had said that it was prepared to accept the the Unionists’ position of 26 August as a basis for further discussion. As the official Vanguard record, drafted by Trimble and approved by others, then states: ‘However it was recognised that further exploration was needed to see if the detail of such an agreement should be settled. Ian Paisley arrived and discussed the matter with Mr Craig. On their way out to their cars, Mr Paisley told Mr Craig that such an agreement would be satisfactory to the Unionist people if it was put in a referendum first … it was stated that the SDLP appreciated that there could be no constitutional guarantee within the structures of government envisaged by the UUUC and that consequently they could have no assurance beyond the life of the first Parliament and that they would be liable to dismissal if they failed to support government policy. It was also stated that the SDLP had agreed that “the first tasks of the new government would be to wage war on the terrorists”… they also accepted that the [Northern Ireland] Parliament should control security and have appropriate forces – indeed they said that they would prefer the war against terrorism to be waged by local forces rather than by Westminster.’25 On 3 September 1975, according to Lowry, the UUUC negotiators came to him and requested that he prepare a paper on the voluntary coalition and the SDLP followed suit with a similar request: Hugh Logue, then an SDLP Convention member, says that although the SDLP were not at all enthusiastic about this idea, they decided that it would not be politically advantageous to shoot it down: ‘Our view was “let’s see if Vanguard can deliver”,’ he recalls. ‘The problem was that had it become a real offer it would have caused tensions within the SDLP – and would certainly have triggered a vigorous debate.’26 Indeed, Trimble remembers asking John Hume if he thought he could carry the whole of the SDLP: the Derryman calculated that they would lose three to four out of the party’s seventeen-strong Convention caucus.27
Lowry’s paper was delivered on 4 September. At the UUUC policy committee meeting that day, it became clear that Paisley would now oppose the plan. ‘In the course of argument Dr Paisley conceded that there was no alternative way of regaining a Parliament but nonetheless felt that the price was too high,’ noted the official Vanguard record. ‘He said that all we could do was to await divine intervention. Billy Beattie privately informed a Vanguard member that the DUP would leave the coalition and said they were going out to rouse the country against this “sell-out” although he had not clearly dissented from the initiative earlier in the week.’28 (Beattie reiterates that this was because he believed the proposals as originally presented were different from what they subsequently turned out to be.) Craig may have been under the impression that the UUUC team had agreed to his proposals; but when the matter went to the separate Vanguard and UUP Convention caucuses within the UUUC coalition, it was clear that the Unionists of all shades were split by the voluntary coalition proposal. David Trimble, addressing his fellow Vanguardists at Saintfield in the following year, laid the blame squarely at the door of the UUUC rather than the SDLP: ‘At this point, the UUUC panicked. The thought of obtaining an agreement even on their own terms so scared them that they broke off talks.’29
Reg Empey, then a Convention member, says that Craig never consulted him about the idea – even though he was chairman of Vanguard and his running mate in East Belfast. There had been no meeting of the party’s full council, nor any debate at constituency level, and once leaks started to appear in the press, local party workers started to make alarmed calls to headquarters. The Vanguard leader insisted ‘that they had to strike while the iron is hot’ remembers Empey. ‘I observed that we had been the principal complainants under O’Neill that there had been no consultation and numerous attempts to bounce the party into decisions without debate. But Bill had made up his mind, he was absolutely rigid and inflexible. Back me or sack me was his approach. He didn’t take a conciliatory approach to colleagues.’30 Certainly, the lack of preparation of the grassroots contributed to the emerging debacle, but it was not the only cause of it. As so often in Northern Ireland, terrorist action played its part in hardening attitudes: on 1 September 1975, four Protestants were murdered by the South Armagh Republican Action Force (a cover name for the Provisional IRA) at the Tullyvallen Orange Hall in Newtownhamilton, Co. Armagh.31
A more important cause of the the Voluntary Coalition disaster lay in the internal dynamics of Unionist politics – or, more precisely in this instance, Protestant politics. For when word of it leaked out to Paisley’s Free Presbyterian Church, the reaction of his co-religionists was unanimous: have nothing to do with this. At a Church meeting on 7 September, Paisley was told that any further dalliance with the coalition idea would divide the Free Presbyterians as well as the DUP.32 Trimble also discerned two reactions within the UUP. The first related to their doubts about holding their own supporters in line with Paisley touring the country denouncing the proponents of the scheme as ‘Vanguard Republicans’. But the second calculation was, Trimble believes to this day, more cynical: that many of them saw Craig’s gamble as a way of destroying the Vanguard leader. After all,