O’Neill’s Gamble Fails

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31923, 26 February 1969, Page 17

O’Neill’s Gamble Fails

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) BELFAST, Feb. 25. The moderate Prime Minister of Northern Ireland (Captain Terence O’Neill) has failed in an election gamble aimed at crushing opponents of his reforms to end religious bigotry.

The General Election he called to confound his critics has left his own Unionist Party and Northern Ireland still bitterly divided in the long-standing ProtestantRoman Catholic conflict. Captain O’Neill, a Protestant. had campaigned on a platform of a fair deal for

the Roman Catholics of Northern Ireland’s one-third minority, but the record 75 per cent poll in the election did not register a clear-cut vote of confidence in his policy. Captain O’Neill himself was returned to Parliament by a sensationally narrow margin —he was nearly unseated by his arch-enemy, the militant extremist Protestant clergyman, the Rev. lan Paisley, who came within 1415 votes of a victory. At least half a dozen of the Prime Minister’s major opponents in the ruling Protestant Unionist Party were returned.

They included Mr William i Craig, dismissed as Minister ’ of Home Affairs by , Captain O'Neill. Another party critic, Mr Brian Faulkmer, who quit his post as

Minister of Commerce after a difference of opinion with Captain O’Neill, also won his seat.

The final result of the election will not be known until later today, but overnight returns from 37 of the 45 constituencies, make it clear that his prestige had been severly damaged. The result in Captain O’Neill’s own constituency staggered the political pundits who had predicted that Mr Paisley, with his thundering cry of “No Popery here,” would be wiped out as a political force. Instead, the militant cleric captured 6331 votes in the Bannside constituency and a Roman Catholic People’s Democracy (civil rights) can-

didate received 2301. The total poll in the constituency was 16,377. Jubilantly, Mr Paisley denounced Captain O’Neill as “a traitor to Protestantism who has been justly humiliated.”

“He is finished as a leader,” Mr Paisley told cheering crowds.

The Prime Minister, brooding over his stinging personal set-back and his own stillshaky position as party leader, may reveal his future plans at a press conference later today. The early signs are that his own political career, as well as his liberal policies, may be in jeopardy, although before the election he pledged himself to stick to his campaign in spite of any difficulties.