Yesterday I heard the news that the
Friends of the Union organisation is to be wound up. A circular reads that it is no longer practical for the organisation to continue and gives reasons as a lack of recent activity, a lack of funds and the lack of a suitable sponsor.
I attended the first public meeting in the Ulster Hall, Belfast, of the
Friends of the Union organisation in early 1987 and became a member of the organisation then. The inspiration for the new organisation came from
Ian Gow MP (1937-90) and Ian succeeded in interesting fellow-MPs, several of whom travelled over to Belfast for that inaugural meeting. I have been a member of FotU ever since.
Ian Gow was a remarkable man. I heard him speak several times, always fluently, effectively and without notes. He had an acute legal brain, had served in the Territorial Army and was MP for Bournemouth on the South Coast of England. On the occasion of the first television broadcast from the House of Commons, the Speaker turned to Ian, who was was noted for his wit, to ask the first broadcast question from that chamber. A nicer man you couldn't have wished to meet, nor a more principled one.
Ian had no, let me emphasise, no connection or interest in Northern Ireland until
Airey Neave MP (1916-79) asked him to cover Northern Ireland for the Conservative Opposition. Then Ian developed an intense concern for our region, for our people, and for the fundamental political principles at stake here.
When
Margaret Thatcher came to power as Prime Minister in 1979, she appointed Ian her Private Secretary. The press called Ian the
'most powerful man in England' at the time, perhaps with some truth, since Ian controlled access to the PM, read all her papers and advised the PM. After some years he was
‘promoted’ to a job as a junior Housing Minister - a step up the ladder but of much less general political importance.
Once Ian and I were sharing drinks before another meeting of FotU in Belfast. I asked Ian how he would have advised Margaret Thatcher on the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1986, had he then been her Private Secretary. He replied that he would have highlighted three points-
a) that the constitutional guarantees offered by the Government of the Republic of Ireland were nothing new;
b) that the promises on greater security co-operation and extradition were worthless [as subsequently they indeed turned out]; and
c) that the terms of the Agreement was unacceptable to the people of Northern Ireland as a whole.
The IRA’s murder of Ian Gow illustrated that organisation’s contempt for democratic and, indeed, human values. Before that, Republicans had murdered Ian’s mentor, Airey Neave, and Ian was under no illusion but that, choosing to identify himself with Northern Ireland, he had become an IRA target. A political colleague,
Laurence Kennedy, [see a web mention
here ] and I travelled to Bournemouth for the funeral which filled the Parish Church with many top English politicians, including the PM and many of her cabinet.
Lawrence Kennedy, too, later became the subject of a Republican assassination attempt, which was luckily foiled.
From the address of Ian's Priest - Ian was High-Church Anglican - I learnt for the first time of Ian's sincere and profound Christian convictions. We had noted, however,Ian's unusual interest in the architecture of country churches, when campaigning with him in Northern Ireland.
Before the funeral, I sat round a table in a bar sharing drinks with
Gerry Fitt, a Catholic, a Nationalist, and a former SDLP MP for West Belfast, who had himself suffered atrocious violence and intimidation from Republicans. And after the meeting I stayed overnight in Bournemouth as the guest of the Chairman of the Bournemouth Conservative Association, who happened to be a (Southern) Irishman.
The Friends of the Union did much good work. It published pamphlets, held many meetings, including at the Party Conference fringe, seminars, conferences, and an annual lecture in London. It had an important political influence among the younger generation in Britain who wanted to understand the politics of Northern Ireland.
The Friends of the Union’s work captured many important allies. One of these was
Conor Cruise O’Brien, from a Southern Catholic Nationalist background who had served as a Minister in a government of the Republic. Ian Gow’s murder so sickened him, O'Brien wrote, that the time for him to sit on the fence was over. From then on he would support Northern Ireland’s right to exist as a separate polity, and to go whichever way it chose. O'Brien strongly condemned the Republican terrorist campaign. Others of the younger generation, I would suggest, are
Michael Gove (now an MP) and
Dean Godson, author of a biography of David Trimble, which happens to offer a crushing indictment of Trimble's political leadershipl. Like Gow, Godson (of Central European Jewish background) had originally no family or other connection with Northern Ireland.
More recently, I had become conscious of a weakening in the purity of the Friends’ political vision. It had offered invitations to speak at their fora to favourites of the Northern Ireland Office as
Brian Mawhinney, a Government Minister at Stormont when the Anglo-Irish Agreement was introduced, or the then Leader of the
Alliance Party. People such as these did not share the high ideals of the founders of the Friends of the Union, nor did they suffer similar sacrifice. These invitations sickened me.
Rest in Peace, Friends of the Union, and all who laboured in your cause.
