William Craig:WILLIAM CRAIG, who has died age 86, was a hardline unionist politician in Northern Ireland whose aversion to reform or compromise with the North's non-unionist population prompted him to form a right-wing organisation named Vanguard which developed links with loyalist paramilitary organisations.
Vanguard pledged “resistance to an undemocratic and un-British regime” and, vowing to defend unionist rule from Stormont against direct rule from Westminster, suggested instead the possibility of a Federal British Isles. William McConnell, one of Craig’s erstwhile moderate unionist colleagues and a supporter of the reforming unionist prime minister Terence O’Neill, claimed in reference to Craig that Vanguard rallies involved “a certain Hitlerian-type figure . . . walking up and down the lines, inspecting his so-called storm-troopers”.
As minister for home affairs, Craig used his powers to suppress, with violence, the Northern Ireland civil rights movement, which he regarded as a political front for the IRA. Later, he spoke about liquidating the enemies of Northern Ireland.
Although something of a recluse over the last 25 years, William Craig’s reputation, certainly among nationalists, is that of a notorious and outspoken hardliner who advocated popular use of force to defeat republicanism. Some unionists have preferred to view him rather more kindly, placing his dogged opposition to political reform and to power-sharing in the context of a defence of genuinely held principle.
Peter Robinson, the man who ultimately defeated Craig taking his East Belfast seat in the 1979 Westminster election effectively ending his electoral career, dubbed him as “a committed unionist who cared deeply about Northern Ireland”.
Despite the gulf in political opinion about him, many speak of the private William Craig as a warm and sociable man.
He was born in Cookstown, Co Tyrone, in 1924 and was educated at the Royal School Dungannon. As a very young man he served with the Royal Air Force during the second World War, joining at the age of just 19.
Craig was a founder of the unionist association while at Queen’s University Belfast where he was studying to become a solicitor. He qualified in 1952 and chaired the Young Unionist Council for seven years from 1953.
He won election to the then Stormont parliament in a byelection in Larne, Co Antrim, in 1960. He was at that time a backer of Terence O’Neill, supporting him when he became prime minister in March 1963. O’Neill duly rewarded Craig with a varied ministerial career.
Although best known for his tenure as home affairs minister, especially in relation to his handling of the early civil rights demonstrations, Craig was also influential in other areas of government.
He was first appointed parliamentary secretary to the ministry of finance for a short spell in the spring of 1963 and was then promoted to minister of home affairs from April 1963 until July 1964.
This was followed by a spell as minister of health and local government from July 1964 until January 1965 when he was appointed minister of development, a ministry he held until October 1966. He returned to the ministry of home affairs, remaining there until his dismissal in December 1968.
Craig was closely involved in the politically controversial decision to create the new city of Craigavon, named after Northern Ireland’s first prime minister, James Craig, the 1st Viscount Craigavon, which was an ambitious and flawed attempt to link the two Armagh towns of Portadown and Lurgan to create a new urban centre outside of Belfast.
However, his reputation, while founded in other ministries, was cast by his second spell at home affairs and by his opposition to the fledgling civil rights movement which he saw as a dangerous front for republicanism. It was Craig’s decision to ban the civil rights march in Derry on October 5th 1968 which was baton-charged by the Royal Ulster Constabulary in provocative scenes which came to symbolise the early Troubles.
Despite his swift rise under O’Neill, Craig was forming his own, highly individual and almost maverick politics. O’Neill dismissed him as a minister in late 1968, because of his alleged support for an independent Northern Ireland of sorts.
Out of ministerial office, but still in the Unionist Party, Craig headed the Ulster Loyalist Association and regularly attacked the leaders of his party from the back benches of Stormont including Maj James Chichester-Clark, who succeeded O’Neill as prime minister, and then Brian Faulkner. He lost the Unionist whip in 1970.
Craig responded in 1972 by forming Vanguard. It was a loose association which included former Ulster Unionist leaders Reg Empey and David Trimble which he reconstituted as a political party the following year.
Craig made violent and inflammatory speeches. In one, made in 1972 to supporters gathered in Belfast’s Ormeau Park, he said: “We must build up the dossiers on the men and women who are a menace to this country, because one day, ladies and gentlemen, if the politicians fail, it will be our duty to liquidate the enemy.” He survived an attempt to kill him.
He was utterly opposed to the first attempt to create a power-sharing administration in Northern Ireland between unionists and nationalists, the 1973 Sunningdale Agreement. This envisaged institutionalised power-sharing at Stormont and a Council of Ireland creating a North-South dimension to affairs of government on the whole island.
Craig won a seat in the elections to the Assembly set up under the agreement and vowed to oppose Sunningdale from within. In this, he drew common cause with like-minded unionists including Harry West and the Rev Ian Paisley. With them he formed the United Ulster Unionist Council which reflected his strongly majoritarian views.
A supporter of militant industrial action to bring down the Executive, led by Faulkner and the then leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, Gerry Fitt, Craig, by now the East Belfast MP, subsequently won a seat in the Constitutional Convention which was established to consider alternatives to the power-sharing experiment which collapsed in the face of a loyalist strike.
Unlike his council colleagues, Craig maintained his strongly independent streak. He was a supporter of the then European Economic Community (EEC) and was nominated to the Council of Europe in 1977. He also, curiously, at one stage backed the notion of a voluntary coalition with the SDLP – which cost him in terms of his credentials as a die-hard unionist.
Vanguard disintegrated and he rejoined the Ulster Unionist Party for a short spell but lost his Westminster seat to the DUP and failed to get elected to the 1982 Assembly which was established under proposals drawn up by northern secretary James Prior.
He slipped away from public life, save for some outright opposition to the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, living quietly and unnoticed in north Down with his German-born wife, Doris.
In his final BBC interview in 1999, Craig explained his opposition to the series of political initiatives which marked the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. "They had defied our wishes as the majority of the people," he said. "The government was not loyal to the Crown. The government compromised the Crown." His funeral notice in the Belfast News Letterrequested a strictly private funeral. "No cards, letters or flowers, please."
William (Bill) Craig: born December 2nd, 1924; died April 25th, 2011