The new leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) faced his first resignation today after he was accused of snubbing Gaelic games.
Fermanagh Orangeman Tom Elliott was voted in as the party’s new leader last night following a campaign in which he pledged never to attend a Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) game.
A traditionalist Ulster Unionist, part-time farmer and former member of the Royal Irish Regiment and Ulster Defence Regiment, he defeated the Lagan Valley MLA Basil McCrea (50), who was viewed as a party moderniser. Mr Elliott won two-thirds support from the 1,000 UUP delegates who met in Belfast’s Waterfront Hall last night.
During his election campaign, he said he would not attend a GAA match or gay pride march. In one radio interview last week, he pointedly refused to unequivocally offer an opinion as to who he wanted to win the All-Ireland final between Down and Cork.
But UUP member and former Ireland rugby international Trevor Ringland, a noted campaigner against sectarianism, today threatened to resign from the party unless Mr Elliott agreed to attend a GAA match.
“I would guarantee him that if there is an Ulster team in the all-Ireland final next year I will get him two tickets for that final,” Mr Ringland said. “I want to hear him say in the next few days that if I get him those tickets he will go to that match.
“Because I see people who are reaching out to the unionist community, reaching out to try to build a shared society here and they need encouragement as well. They need to see and hear a unionism that actually wants to have a relationship with them.”
Mr Elliott later said he had worked behind the scenes to help GAA clubs in his local area, but was against public gestures he branded as “tokenism”.
He said his critics were making too much of the issue.
“I am not anti-GAA, but there are still huge difficulties in the community about the GAA,” he said. “And I accept, as someone who is an Orangeman, there are difficulties with parts of the community in Northern Ireland with the Orange Order.”
Mr Elliott succeeded Sir Reg Empey, who resigned as leader after his party’s disastrous general election.
The party had formed an alliance with the Conservatives and fielded joint candidates, but despite the high-profile support of David Cameron, they failed to win a single Westminster seat in Northern Ireland.
The new leader also told BBC Radio Ulster that the formal link with the Conservatives is over, though he is prepared to discuss new co-operation between the party, beginning at grassroots level.
Taoiseach Brian Cowen today congratulated Mr Elliott and paid tribute to Sir Reg. “I look forward to working with Tom and his colleagues for the mutual benefit of all of those that we represent, especially at this time of great economic difficulty,” Mr Cowen said.
Northern Ireland Secretary Owen Paterson and DUP leader Peter Robinson also congratulated Mr Elliott on his election.
Mr Elliott faces formidable challenges to try to restore the lost fortunes of the once-dominant Ulster Unionist Party. He has taken the helm of a party founded 105 years ago following in the footsteps of such UUP leaders as Edward Carson, James Craig, Basil Brooke, Terence O’Neill, Brian Faulkner and Nobel Laureate David Trimble.
He has the immediate challenge of trying to prepare the party for next May’s Assembly elections against the DUP, which has usurped the UUP as the main unionist party. The DUP holds 36 Assembly seats against 17 for the UUP.
In 1997, the UUP held 10 Westminster seats while the DUP held just two. But by 2005 the UUP had collapsed to just one seat against nine for the DUP. In the Westminster elections earlier this year the UUP was left without a single seat.