WHEN the vice chairman of the Conservative backbench Northern Ireland Committee, Mr David Wilshire MP, joined a group known as the Friends of the Union for lunch in London last week, he knew he was among like minded politicians.
They are "deeply disturbed and puzzled" by the British government's reluctance to put forward Conservative candidates in the June elections in Northern Ireland. In the next week, Friends of the Union will meet representatives at Conservative Central Office to negotiate a manifesto, which the group believes should support Conservative only candidates.
Speaking on the BBC programme On the Record, Mr Wilshire argued that the group represented Conservative and unionist MPs who believe the government has made the conditions for Sinn Fein to enter all party negotiations "too easy. The government's decision to adopt a neutral stance on the status of Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom is a total sell out to Dublin".
The former chairman of the Conservative party, Lord Tebbit, said he believed that Conservative Central Office would not support the group's request because it exposed the rift between politicians who passionately believed in keeping Northern Ireland as part of the UK and a government which had moved into a more neutral position on the issue.
A straw poll of 100 backbench Conservative MPs conducted by On the Record found that 52 thought the government should be persuaders to maintain Northern Ireland as part of the UK, while 46 agreed there should be no territorial aspirations to the North by the Irish Government.
Asked if Conservative candidates should be fielded in the North's elections, 57 MPs agreed, 28 said No and 15 were undecided. Most of the 88 MPs questioned said the government must not only require of Sinn Fein/IRA that it should restore the ceasefire, but also demand that any ceasefire be permanent before it can enter all party talks.