Obituary: William Craig, politician and founder of Vanguard

Published on Sunday 1 May 2011 20:48

Firebrand unionist who founded Vanguard and advocated independence for Northern Ireland

William Craig, politician and founder of Vanguard.

Born: 2 December, 1924, in Cookstown, Co Tyrone.

Died: 25 April, 2011, in Bangor, Co Down, aged 86.

Bill Craig, one of the bigger figures in Ulster unionism, was the Northern Ireland politician who a generation ago founded the ultra-unionist Vanguard movement. In his time, he addressed tens of thousands of cheering supporters at political rallies, yet lived as a recluse for the final quarter of his life.

One of his few remaining political colleagues was one-time Vanguard press officer and former South Antrim MP David Burnside, who kept in touch with Craig, and visited him annually. "He simply withdrew from public life and didn't have any great opinions on anything," said Burnside. "It wasn't as if he was depressed about (politics], he was just disillusioned and decided to withdraw."

A graduate of Queen's University, Belfast and a practising solicitor, Craig was active in politics from student days, leading the Ulster Young Unionist Council. When a by-election in 1960 in Larne for the Stormont Parliament occurred, Craig not only proved a natural choice, but swiftly gained recognition in the government of Terence O'Neill.

As O'Neill's minister for home affairs, it was Craig who confronted nationalist Catholic agitation for "equal rights", a movement based on US civil rights campaigns to end racial discrimination. Craig - who claimed that the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association was only a front for the IRA - reacted by banning the march. The resultant violent clashes in Londonderry of October 1968, televised throughout the world, spelt the beginning of the end for Craig under O'Neill.

The patrician and firmly provincial O'Neill long suspected that Craig was in fact plotting to establish a semi-independent Northern Ireland, and two months later dismissed him. The move proved precisely what Craig needed, and the latter built a powerbase for himself within unionism, becoming head of the Ulster Loyalist Association. When in May 1970, the official Unionist Party withdrew the whip from him followed by the suspension of Stormont less than two years later, Craig retaliated with his own political party, the Ulster Vanguard movement. Burnside said: "He formed Vanguard (to] create an umbrella movement for the unionist and loyalist population. He took a hard line in the defence of Stormont."The hardness of that line was clearly enunciated by Craig when, at an open- air rally in Belfast in 1972, he stated that use of physical force would be necessary to achieve "normality" within Northern Ireland.

To cheers from thousands present, he continued: "We must build up 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." Under his direction, Vanguard organised a two-day strike, after which he issued a policy statement entitled "Ulster - A Nation", advocating independence.

In October 1972, he addressed the Conservative right-wing Monday Club stating that he could "mobilise 80,000 men to oppose the British government, adding "We are prepared to come out and shoot and kill…I am prepared to kill, and those behind me will have my full support."

He survived an assassination attempt that same year when gunmen opened fire on his car.

Craig's star reached its zenith when he was elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly, the institution created by the very Sunningdale Agreement so vigorously opposed by Vanguard. Under the fundamentalist Vanguard banner, he went on to win a Westminster seat for East Belfast in the February 1974 general election. But when Craig broke with the majority of his party to support voluntary power-sharing, Vanguard fell apart, and Craig lost his parliamentary seat in the 1979 election by just 64 votes.

Ironically, he was unseated by Peter Robinson, a one-time Vanguard rival, and now Northern Ireland first minister. After he failed to be elected to the new assembly in 1982, Craig's political career stopped dead.

William Craig showed early promise from schooldays at Royal School, Dungannon, and Larne Grammar School. The first in his family to go to university, he saw active service during the Second World War with the RAF as a tail gunner in Avro Lancasters.

His political days over, he lived in seclusion in Bangor, shunning visitors. But his long absence from public life was noticed, and Robinson was generous in his tribute to his old adversary, paying particular acknowledgement to Craig's work as "a committed unionist". Robinson said: "Bill was involved in politics during some of the most turbulent times in Northern Ireland's history. He was a committed unionist who cared deeply about Northern Ireland."

Craig broke his self-imposed silence in 1999 to give one final press interview. Looking back on his political career, he stuck to his views, defending his defiance of Westminster in the loyalist workers' strike.

"They (Westminster] had defied our wishes as the majority of the people" he said."The government was not loyal to the crown", adding "The government compromised the crown."

He died following a stroke in March, and is survived by his wife, the German-born Doris Hilgendorff whom he met on a holiday, and two sons - both of whom served in the Royal Ulster Constabulary.