The Press WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 1969. Captain O’Neill’s Hard Row

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31923, 26 February 1969, Page 16

The Press WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 1969. Captain O’Neill’s Hard Row

Bannside, the constituency of the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland (Captain Terence O’Neill), is a scattered rural electorate on the banks of the River Bann in County Antrim. A less likely setting for a bitter election campaign pitched, at its lowest level, to religious intolerance and bigotry, could scarcely be imagined. Yet Captain O’Neill’s political future has been prejudiced by the campaign he has just fought, and all but lost, to the Reverend lan Paisley. Mr Paisley, campaigning on a “ no-Popery ” platform, came within 1500 votes of unseating Captain O’Neill. Captain O’Neill’s appeal for support among the moderate Roman Catholics in his own constituency was pointedly ignored. Cardinal Conway, Primate of Northern Ireland, voted early on the day of the election in one of the Armagh constituencies, where only two candidates—both standing for Captain O’Neill’s Unionist Party—were offering. The Cardinal’s gesture was a clear sign to all Roman Catholic voters that the hierarchy supported Captain O’Neill’s policy of rapprochement with the Church, whose adherents comprise rather more than a third of the population but rather less than a third of the electorate. But in his own electorate, Captain O’Neill apparently won very few Roman Catholic votes and barely 50 per cent of the Protestant votes. The Unionist Party lost several seats to Mr Paisley’s supporters—most of them in electorates with a sufficient Roman Catholic vote to have tipped the scales in favour of the Unionist candidates. The loss of electoral support by Captain O’Neill is even more serious than will be apparent from a mere count of successful Unionist candidates —official and unofficial: at least seven of these were among the 10 members of Parliament who petitioned for his resignation. This election has by no means given Captain O’Neill the clear mandate, for which he had hoped, to push through his liberal reforms to give Roman Catholics fair representation in local government and equal treatment in housing, education, and other social services. Y'et it does not rule out altogether the prospects of modest progress towards these goals over the next three years. There is a minor consolation for Captain O’Neill’s supporters in their failure to win many Roman Catholic votes: extreme Protestants cannot pretend that the Unionist Party is kept in power by the Roman Catholic minority. The Unionists cannot afford to try to woo the Right-wing defectors back from the Paisley camp. The liberal road they have chosen is clearly the only way to avoid even bloodier sectarian clashes than those stirred up by Mr Paisley in recent months. Thev can only hope that, before the next General Election in Northern Ireland, they will have removed the worst —and well founded —grievances of the Roman Catholic minority and overcome the suspicion with which that minority stiff views Captain 0 Neill anti his party.