After columnist Ed Curran urged unionist politicians to unite under a single banner, spokesmen for the DUP and Ulster Unionist Party outline just why they won’t be speaking with one voice

FOR A MOVE CLOSER

Division will only aid all of our enemies

Dear Ed

For Ed Curran 1969 seems to be ‘year zero’ in the history of unionist politics. This is not the case. Unionism has had differences and splits for almost as long as there have been officially constituted unionist parties. If we were to go back to the turn of the 20th century, we would see a multiplicity of unionist candidates running at election time: ‘liberal unionist’ candidates and ‘independent unionist’ candidates.

There was the famous 1902 South Belfast by-election won by an independent, and, for much of the duration of the old Stormont Parliament, the north of Belfast was represented by independent unionist MPs like DI Nixon and Norman Porter. Divisions within unionism in a historical context are nothing new, but that doesn't mean we should not work to end them now. The DUP is committed to that path — our record shows that.

The government of the Republic has acknowledged that the constitutional issue has been settled. We have a devolved UK and a new landscape for local councils is just around the corner. There needs to be a new understanding within unionism that we should work together to prevent nationalist momentum from ever building up again. Rank-and-file unionists demand we cooperate in order to maximise unionist representation in councils, the devolved Assembly, Brussels and in our national parliament at Westminster. The DUP recognised this reality in 2005 in both South Belfast and Fermanagh/South Tyrone. We offered first pick of the constituencies to the UUP. In my own constituency of Upper Bann we recognised it again in the 2007 Assembly election. We saw the very real danger that a unionist Assembly seat could be won by Sinn Fein. I took the decision to publicly call on supporters not to cast their first preference votes for me, but to vote for my colleagues and then to vote for other unionists on the ballot paper.

This was successful and allowed the UUP's George Savage to hold off the challenge from Sinn Fein's Dessie Ward. Today George sits as an Ulster Unionist MLA because of the steps the DUP took to protect and enhance unionist representation. I am glad that it was a fellow unionist who won that seat.

It is in the interests of unionism that unionists are elected and that unionist concerns are represented fully in all democratic forums. In that context it seems strange that while the DUP has been making public calls for cooperation and seeking meetings with the UUP on this front, the UUP has rebuffed our efforts. The unionist community wants to see political unionism punching its weight at election contests. They are fed up with the enemies of the union profiting from the division in our own camp. Reg Empey (a past member of three different unionist parties) cannot afford to blithely dismiss the growing demand for closer cooperation within the unionist family.

One final point, Ed, your article misrepresents the new government arrangements. Thanks to the efforts of the DUP, the system of government in Northern Ireland has been fundamentally changed from that which existed during the Trimble era, whose architect you laud so much.

Government ministers cannot simply go off and do their own thing as was the case in the past with Martin McGuinness and the 11-plus or Bairbre de Brun and maternity services at the Royal Victoria Hospital. That is no longer the possible; just ask Caitriona Ruane, who has found it impossible to do anything on future post-primary education without the consent of the unionist parties.

Yours, David Simpson,

DUP MP for Upper Bann

AGAINST A MOVE CLOSER

A merger may not guarantee any more seats

Dear Ed,

Thank you for Monday's letter. You point out that most of the policy positions that divided the UUP from the DUP have been resolved, with the DUP now endorsing the policies that we pursued — because it usually takes them six to eight years to reach the same conclusions! The question, then, is what was all the turmoil in unionism about for the past 40 years?

We have to face the fact that the vitriol created within unionism since the DUP was formed, and especially during the negotiations leading to the Belfast Agreement, has left a legacy of bitterness which will take time to heal. Indeed, one result of the DUP's policy change has been further fracturing and the emergence of the TUV.

Also, if we go down the route of a single party at this stage I'm pretty certain that nationalism/ republicanism would travel down a similar route, leaving us with a consolidation of the ‘us-and-them’ mentality and little or no incentive to break free from the shackles that keep us in our own camps and behind our own walls.

And do we really want to condemn ourselves and future generations to a mandatory coalition of the same old unionists versus the same old republicans? Election after election in which Protestants will vote for one bloc and Catholics will vote for another does not represent any long term security for the Union. The Ulster Unionist Party has a broader vision of the Union and unionism. We don't see it in terms of a ‘little Ulster’ setting.

I think the mistake that was made between partition in 1921 and the end of the NI Parliament in 1972 was to isolate ourselves from mainstream national politics. We were left to our own devices and felt comfortable that Stormont alone would secure the future of unionism. This was a big mistake: it didn't then and it won't now. The politics of this place cannot be confined to the constitutional issue alone. If we broaden the political agenda we will broaden the support we can muster for the Union. We must be capable of full participation not only in Stormont politics, but in Westminster politics as well.

This must mean full participation in Westminster and Stormont governments. This is why we are working with the Conservatives: to bring NI into the mainstream, to end the democratic deficit and to level the playing field for unionists. Increasing the number of MPs who are actively pro-Union rather than just ‘neutral’ must be in the long term interests of the Union.

I know that the Union's future depends upon maximising pro-Union turnout and seats won. I'm not convinced that a merging of the UUP and DUP would, necessarily, achieve that goal. Indeed, electoral evidence suggests that a significant section within both parties refuses to transfer from one to the other.

We need to face the fact, too, that unionist unity didn't always deliver in the past. One attempt after another failed. And it wasn't all that long ago that Belfast Telegraph editorials were encouraging the unionist electorate to listen to O'Neill, Faulkner and Trimble, rather than to Paisley and Robinson.

My view is that we must tread carefully. Our collective aim must be to maximise the overall pro-Union vote and be prepared to cooperate where appropriate. In the meantime each of our parties will continue to offer a choice to the people. Choice is the bedrock of democracy and choice, I believe, is also the surest way of maximising interest in and votes for the Union.

Yours, Sir Reg Empey,

leader of the UUP