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| Mr Gary McMichael |
The Ulster Democratic Party is to disband after a fall out with loyalist paramilitaries over backing for the Belfast Agreement. Twelve years after its formation as the political wing of the Ulster Defence Association, the leadership today announced it was folding "without rancour or ill-will."The decision followed a series of splits and tensions over acts of violence by the UDA, even though they claimed to be still on ceasefire and supported the peace process.A UDP statement said: "During the past months intensive discussions have taken place within the Ulster Democratic Party regarding the future electoral and representative viability of the party."These discussions are now at an end and it has been decided that, from this date, the UDP should be dissolved and therefore cease to exist as a political party."Progressive Unionist Party leader Mr David Ervine said he was disappointed by the move.Mr Ervine said: "It is a big loss in terms of the capacity and the decency and integrity of the many elements of the UDP and the commitment they have shown to try and change this society.""But I would not panic. I think there are a lot of individuals out there who have associations with the UDA," he said.The Ulster Unionist Party's Mr Dermott Nesbitt said "normality" was craved in Northern Ireland. "When the people of Northern Ireland voted in May 1998 they voted for peace."He said dissent among rejectionists was dissent from what the people of the island wanted.The statement added: "Former colleagues within the UDP having reached this decision without rancour or ill-will, wish to make it clear that they part on perfectly amicable terms."As part of the developing peace process at the time, the party played a significant role in persuading the UDA to declare a ceasefire in October 1994 and at one stage had direct access to the political administrations in London, Dublin and Washington.But since the signing of the Belfast Agreement in April 1998, the party has polled badly. In January this year, major divisions emerged and in June the party failed to register for the local government elections. A month later with UDA leadership withdrew its support for the Agreement.Security chiefs believe paramilitary elements are now heavily involved in drugs and racketeering.Sinn Féin said an end to the UDP was worrying.Mr Martin McGuinness, the party's Mid Ulster MP and education minister at the Northern Ireland Assembly, said the UDA and republicans who rejected the Belfast Agreement should consider their actions.He said: "They are not going to succeed. The road which we are travelling, the road of the Good Friday Agreement and the road of the peace process is not one which are going to be easily shifted off."Leading member Mr Gary McMichael's father John, the UDP's first chairman, was one of a number of leading members of the party to have been murdered by the IRA. He died when a car bomb exploded under his car at Lisburn, Co Antrim in December 1987.Mr Cecil McKnight was the party's chairman when he was shot dead by the IRA in Derry in June 1991. And just before the Provisionals declared their first ceasefire in August 1994, they shot dead one of Mr Gary McMichael's closest political associates, Mr Ray Smallwoods, also in Lisburn.The current chairman Mr John White served a life sentence for the murders of a couple killed in a frenzied knife attack at an isolated quarry on the outskirts of Belfast in June 1973.
PA