Friends of the Union

The purpose of Friends of the Union, according to the website of Jeffrey Donaldson MP, is "The purpose of the Friends of the Union is to increase knowledge and understanding within and without the United Kingdom of the need to maintain the Union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" was founded in 1986 by 'a group of 16 Tory MPs and eight peers including Ian Gow, former chairman of the Tory backbench committee on Northern Ireland, who was murdered by the IRA, and Viscount Cranborne, a member of the Cabinet and Leader of the House of Lords.' It was wound up in 2006. Blogger James O'Fee stated: "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." Friends of the Union provided a meeting place for a number of figures from the Irish political scence and a younger generation of British conservatives, which saw them come together in the neoconservative cause. For example Paul Bew the former Marxist political scientist and David Trimble the Ulster Unionist leader (whom Bew advised) both ended up as signatories to the British Neocon Henry Jackson Society, along with Dean Godson and Michael Gove.

The Independent listed those involved:

Among the group's trustees are Charles Moore, Sir Ivan Lawrence, the hardline Tory chairman of the Commons Home Affairs Committee, Mr Cooke at Conservative Central Office, and Sir Philip Goodhart, a former Under-Secretary of State at the Northern Ireland Office. Among 10 Tory MPs on its list of patrons are the whipless Eurosceptics Nicholas Budgen and John Wilkinson.

Friends of the Union was linked to the leaking of a draft Framework Document in the early stages of the Irish peace process.

Last night it was becoming clear that a caucus of fervent Loyalists under the umbrella of a Unionist study group is closely associated with the leaker. It is made up of PR man David Burnside, D'Ancona himself; Dean Godson, a Daily Telegraph staff reporter; Paul Goodman, Northern Ireland correspondent on the Sunday Telegraph; Noel Malcolm, a historian and Daily Telegraph political columnist; Andrew McHallam, executive director of the Institute for European Defence and Strategic Studies; Charles Moore, editor of the Sunday Telegraph; Simon Pearce, a Conservative election candidate; company director Justin Shaw and historian Andrew Roberts. One of the group said last night: 'We didn't want the position when the framework document was published of being out in the cold as we were over the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985. There was a coming together of minds over what should be done.'

The Irish Government viewed the leak as an attempt to damage the peace process.

Irish ministers and Opposition leaders moved swiftly to attack the credibility of the Times's claim that joint authority is to be proposed by the planned framework document on the future of Northern Ireland. The Taoiseach, John Bruton, openly challenged the motives for the leaking of parts of the document. He said it was clearly an attempt at news management designed to upset one side and was not the work of anyone who wanted to develop the peace process.

Legacy

According to James O'Fee a member of the organisation between 1987 and 2006, the key legacy of the group was its success in winning allies and in interesting a new generation in unionist politics:

The Friends of the Union did much good work... 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.

But on the downside, concludes O'Fee, there was a weakening of the 'purity' of vision.

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.

Publication, Website, Notes

Publications

This listing is from the Friends of the Union website archived on the Internet Archive:

This is the definitive list of the pamphlets published by Friends of the Union since 1987. Some of them are still available (free post and packing) by sending a cheque to the address on the Home Page. At the time of writing Friends of the Union is undertaking a programme of publishing all its existing pamphlets on-line. Those that are currently available are labelled as such. If you would like to be kept up to date as pamphlets become available on-line please subscribe to our Mailing List. Views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Friends of the Union or its Trustees.

• Plan B by Patrick Crozier. First published February 2000, price £4.50
• The Northern Ireland Peace Process: Blurring the Lines between Democracy and Terrorism. Ninth Ian Gow Memorial Lecture by Jeffrey Donaldson MP. First published February 2000 Copies available price £4.50
• The Tories and the Peace Process by Andrew MacKay MP Copies available price £3.00
• The Royal Ulster Constabulary: Our Thanks and Our Support by Sir John Hermon et al Published in conjunction with the Unionist Information Office GB. First Published November 1999 Out of print.
• Eighth Ian Gow Memorial Lecture by Sean O’Callaghan First published April 1999 Copies available price £3.00
• The Renewal of Unionism. Seventh Ian Gow Memorial Lecture by Viscount Cranborne First published May 1998Copies available price £3.00
• Ulster for Beginners by Patrick Crozier First published February 1998 Copies available price £3.50
• Sixth Ian Gow Memorial Lecture by Sir James Molyneaux KBE MP First published December 1996 Copies available price £3.00
• ‘Parity of Esteem’ and ‘Consent’: How Words Deceive by Arlene Foster First published November 1996 Copies available price £3.00
• The Preconditions for Peace in Northern Ireland by Geoffrey Lee Williams
• Strengthening the United Kingdom Edited by Alistair B Cooke
• Fifth Ian Gow Memorial Lecture by Paul Bew price £3.00
• The Union: Two Conflicting Interpretations by Arthur Aughey
• The Conflicting Aims of Irish Nationalism. Fourth Ian Gow Memorial Lecture by Thomas Wilson First published February 1995 price £3.50
• A Unionist Plea for Clear Thinking and Straight Talking by Aileen Quinton Copies available price £2.50
• The British Nation State and its Enemies by The Rt. Hon. Norman Lamont MP Out of print.
• Illusion and 'Denial': Politicians and Ulster by Geoffrey Wheatcroft web edition not yet available Out of print.
• The Untried Solution: A Stronger Union by Trustees of the Friends of the Union, Out of print.
• A Tale of a Round Table by Charles Moore Published in association with the T E Utley Memorial Fund Copies available price £2.50
• Third Ian Gow Memorial Lecture by J Enoch Powell MBE Copies available price £2.50
• 'The Grim Milestone' and Aspects of the IRA Terror Campaign by a Special Correspondent
• Strengthening the Union by Alistair B. Cooke, David Trimble et al web edition not yet available Copies available price £3.50
• Second Ian Gow Memorial Lecture by Conor Cruise O'Brien Out of print.
• First Ian Gow Memorial Lecture by Charles Moore First published October 1991 Copies available price £1.50
• Ulster: The Unionist Options by Alistair B. Cooke web edition not yet available Out of print.
• The Second World War and Northern Ireland by Ian Greig. With an Introduction by Viscount Cranborne web edition not yet available Copies available price £3.50
• Religion and Politics by Hugh Shearman web edition not yet available Out of print.
• Hope for Peace with an Introduction by Ian Gow First published 1988 Out of print.
• The Green and the Red: The influence of the Ultra left on the situation in Northern Ireland by Ian Greig, price £3.50
• Ulster: The Origins of the Problem by Alistair B. Cooke Out of print.
• Address to Friends of the Union by Conor Cruise O'Brien Out of print.
• Headway in Ulster: Some Practical Ideas by John A. Oliver Out of print.
• Ulster Catholics and the Union by Sir John Biggs-Davison MP Copies available price £2.50
• Why Democratic Socialists should support the Union by Michael Squires First published 1987 Copies available price £1.50

Website

• Friends of the Union - from the Internet Archive.