The year of failure: Jonathan Bardon on the loyalist strike, the collapse of the power-sharing executive and increased violence in Northern Ireland.
On January 4th, 1974, the Ulster Unionist Council delivered a crippling blow to the power-sharing executive which had only begun work three days before. The ruling body of the Unionist Party had passed a motion to reject the Council of Ireland, a key element of the Sunningdale agreement. New chief minister Brian Faulkner had no choice but to resign as Unionist leader.
"It was, of course, ridiculous to have such a meeting within three weeks of the Sunningdale conference," Mr Faulkner explained to taoiseach Liam Cosgrave at Baldonnel on January 16th. He assured him that "the Assembly majority as such was safe", but asked for decisive action against terrorists taking refuge in the Republic.
"The apprehension of a prominent IRA man like Martin McGuinness would do more to satisfy Northern Ireland people than anything else," he explained.
Loyalist rioting against Sunningdale during the first month climaxed on January 22nd, when in unprecedented scenes at Stormont, anti-agreement Assembly members violently seized occupation of ministerial seats and had to be forcibly removed - it took eight RUC men to carry Ian Paisley out to the front steps.
The executive refused to accept that it was holed beneath the water even after the Westminster general election, called by Edward Heath for February 28th, delivered a hammer blow. Loyalist assembly members opposed to the December settlement formed a common front named the United Ulster Unionist Council.
Armed with the powerful slogan "Dublin is only a Sunningdale away", the loyalist pact candidates won 11 of Northern Ireland's 12 seats.
It was now patently obvious that the assembly, where the executive could still command a majority, no longer reflected the wishes of most voters. However, Harold Wilson, prime minister of the new Labour government, was upbeat when he joined his secretary of State, Merlyn Rees, and the executive in Belfast on April 18th. Oliver Napier, the Minister of Law Reform, attempted to make him face the realities of the situation. He warned that a formal ratification of Sunningdale in the Assembly "could produce a D-Day with violence from both extremes of the political spectrum". So it proved.
At 6 p.m. on May 14th, the assembly endorsed the Sunningdale agreement. A few minutes later, a 21-man loyalist committee, the Ulster Workers Council (UWC), informed journalists that a strike in protest would begin forthwith. At first the stoppage appeared to fail but during the following day squads of UDA men and Tartan youths called menacingly on businesses all over Belfast.
At Larne, masked UDA men prevented the ferry from sailing; workers streamed home from the Carrickfergus synthetic fibre plants; shipyard workers were told that any vehicles remaining in the car park by 2 p.m. would be burned. Three-quarters of Derry was left without electricity and Belfast was suffering four-hour power cuts.
The strike slowly gained momentum. Farm vehicles shut off roads; Catholic women leaving Michelin's Mallusk factory were attacked by around 100 UDA men; and so many of Citybus's vehicles were seized to make barricades in Belfast the service was withdrawn.
On May 17th, news came through of dreadful bloodshed. Car bombs, driven in and planted by the UVF, had exploded without warning in Monaghan and in Dublin, killing 32 people and injuring more than another 100.
"I am very happy about the bombings," said Sammy Smyth of the UWC. There is a war with the Free State and now we are laughing at them."
What could lawful authority do? John Hume, Minister of Commerce, got his colleagues to agree to an oil plan to "requisition the main source of supply". Stan Orme, the minister of state, considered the proposal on May 23rd. Bob Cooper, minister of manpower services, pointed out "there had been a great solidification of workers' opinion and support for the strike". This was because the government "publicly was not doing anything".
Orme was not ready to act. Told "the police had reservations", Orme feared the oil plan could not be put into effect without undue force. "One could not go out and shoot people on the barricades, for example."
At Chequers, Wilson was unyielding when he met Faulkner on May 23rd. His government "refused to talk directly, indirectly, through intermediaries or any other way with non-elected people". Faulkner pressed the oil plan, saying "there had been virtually no firm action and no arrests".
"No decisions had been reached," Wilson said. "One might be into a card game situation. If Government played the five of trumps, could they be sure that the strikers would not play the seven, and a dangerous process of bidding might then begin?"
Wilson ended by saying he would make a broadcast next day "to give a sense of urgency while not building up an air of crisis".
That broadcast castigated the strikers as "people who spend their lives sponging on Westminster and British democracy and then systematically assault democratic methods".
In response, the UWC ordered a reduction in electricity to 10 per cent. The Electricity Service spokesman, Hugo Patterson, told the BBC: "The shutdown is on, it's complete, it's final, it's irrevocable . . . We are past the point of no return." The fuel plan was implemented but no attempt was made to take over the power stations.
On May 28th, Faulkner made it clear he wished to negotiate with the strikers. Since this was opposed by the Westminster government and the SDLP, there was "not a consensus view". At lunchtime Rees accepted his resignation. There was no acrimony as members of the collapsed executive "expressed their mutual sorrow" and resolved not to "deviate one jot or tittle from the principles on which the executive was founded". Next day a loyalist demonstration at Stormont was transformed into a massive victory celebration as the strike was called off.
A protracted political stalemate followed. At Westminster in July there was all-party support for winding up the assembly, extending direct rule and for calling an elected Constitutional Convention to search for a solution. Rees was to wait 10 months before calling the Convention to give Faulkner time to get his power-sharing Unionist Party of Northern Ireland established in the constituencies. The government hoped for the re-emergence of a strong middle ground.
Westminster was whistling in the wind. In the UK general election of October, not a single UPNI candidate was elected. Though Harry West lost his seat to the Independent Frank Maguire, the UUC vote had risen by a further seven percentage points. "This was not the election for the 'soft' centre", a civil servant's memorandum correctly observed.
Meanwhile, most of the responsibility for security fell on Rees's shoulders. Loyalist politicians met him on June 25th to demand "a local unpaid force under Government control". This the secretary of state turned down since "any third force would be drawn from one section of the community". He also rejected a proposal to introduce identity cards - "the firm advice of the security forces was that their introduction would not be productive".
Violence ebbed briefly with "the record low of 227" shooting incidents in June and a July so comparatively quiet the RUC chief constable felt sufficiently relaxed to inform him that "a man had been arrested in possession of a stolen crocodile".
But violent incidents escalated again and the militant republicans once more extended their campaign to England, killing 24 and injuring 237 in pub bombings in Guildford and Birmingham. Tougher anti-terrorist legislation followed. The only outcome of a meeting on December 10th between Protestant clergy and Provisional republicans at Feakle, Co Clare, was a 10-day truce over the Christmas period.
The total for violent deaths in Northern Ireland rose to 304 in 1974, by comparison with 263 the previous year. Few seemed to realise a greater energy crisis - the world-wide quadrupling of oil prices - would shortly deprive many UWC strikers of their jobs.