A High Court judge yesterday said "the rules of basic fairness were broken" by the Ulster Unionist Party's disciplinary committee when it suspended three MPs from its ruling council.
Mr Jeffrey Donaldson, the Rev Martin Smyth and Mr David Burnside were told their conduct was "detrimental to the best interests of Ulster Unionism" when they said they would no longer follow the party whip, and that they would be suspended until a full disciplinary committee hearing took place on July 17th.
But at the High Court in Belfast yesterday Mr Justice Girvan described their suspension as "unlawful, invalid and of no force or effect".
He said the three MPs were not given any opportunity to be heard, and an argument by their lawyer that the circumstances were of "such a unique and urgent gravity" that they had to be dealt with in that way "would lead an objective observer to doubt the committee's capacity to conduct a dispassionate investigation and to arrive at an unbiased decision".
The judge said the committee's decision was "irregular" on several grounds involving its own rules. Mr Donaldson, as a member of the committee, should have been entitled to vote, he ruled. Yet no vote was recorded as having been taken, and no resolution formulated or put to the meeting.
The disciplinary committee was constituted specially for the decision to suspend the three MPs, he said, and therefore had "no legal effect".
He also pointed to "subtle but important differences" between the wording of the party's rule 19, and that of a letter sent to the three MPs informing them of their suspension.
Afterwards Mr Jeffrey Donaldson called on party leader David Trimble to "draw back from the brink. Such draconian measures as the judge described are not the way".
"I would simply say, catch yourself on. If you want to save your party from implosion, draw back."
Party chairman Mr James Cooper said: "That message has been given very clearly to Jeffrey Donaldson and his colleagues for the last two weeks. We would be delighted to discuss this matter. The door is open."
He said the judge upheld the party officers' decision to refer to the disciplinary committee, but that the methodology and constitution was wrongly decided.
"It is highly unusual and very regrettable that members of our party have to pick into archaic rules to drag us through the courts in this matter," he said.