Edgar Graham
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For the pop musician, see Ugly Casanova.
Edgar Graham (1954 - 1983). Northern Irish Unionist political figure. Member of Queen's University law faculty, and friend of Ulster Unionist Party's David Trimble, Graham was elected member of the 1982 Northern Ireland Assembly for South Belfast.
See Wikipedia article on the Northern Ireland Assembly, 1982.
A former Chairman of the Ulster Young Unionist Council, Graham was widely seen as a future leader of the UUP. A professional colleague of David Trimble at the School of Law at Queen's University Belfast, he was a rising star of both academia and unionism.
On the morning of December 7th 1983, whilst chatting to party and university colleague, Dermot Nesbitt, he was shot in the head by an Irish Republican Army member.
In a communique taking responsibility for the killing, the IRA command said that it should be a salutary lesson to those loyalists who stand foursquare behind the laws and forces of oppression of the nationalist people. IRA members said that Graham was targeted because of aid and advice he had reportedly given the Prison Service. [1]
The resultant by-election was won unopposed by then Ulster Unionist Party Chief Executive Frank Millar, Jr.
The results on the election of Assembly by-election, 1 March 1984 are at the Northern Ireland Elections Commission [2].
[edit] Repercussions
Edgar Graham is still widely remembered in the Unionist community, and his death is pointed to as evidence of the callous nature of the Republican war. Republicans counter that Graham's involvement in the prison service, as well as his public support for ever harsher treatment of Republicans by the security services made him a legitimate target, and that this differentiates his killing from those of civilians in the Catholic community who were randomly targeted by Unionist Paramilitaries.
Whatever the motivation, Graham's death caused almost unprecedented shock amongst the Protestant middle classes in Ulster who saw such a killing, extending beyond the security services or working-class communities, as a threatening escalation in the Troubles. To this day, Graham is often spoken of by Unionist political leaders, and former UUP leader David Trimble has invoked his friend's killing to show both that the Unionist community had suffered greatly at the hands of Republicans, and that more moderate Unionists were willing to take bold moves (especially support for the Good Friday Agreement) and were willing put their suffering behind them.
Journalist Ed Moloney, in his highly controversial 2003 book, "A Secret History of the IRA", contends that Graham's killing was ordered by a restive IRA unit, the Belfast Brigade and Ivor Bell, as part of a campaign that was a direct challenge to Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams' call for a more "controlled and disciplined" campaign twined with a growing parliamentary strategy. Moloney argues that Belfast area attacks by the IRA in late 1983, because of their backlash in the middle classes of both communities, in fact strengthened Adams and Sinn Féin's political path.
It should be noted that whatever repercussions that came from the killing of Graham, violence in Ulster actually continued in a pattern of decline in 1983, with 77 deaths, down from 97 the previous year. Security services suffered only five deaths in 1983, its lowest number since 1971.
[edit] Sources
- Robert Waller, Byron Criddle: Almanac of British Politics. Routledge, UK. (2002). p.313. ISBN 0-415-26834-6
- Tim Pat Coogan: The IRA. Palgrave. (2002). p. 553. ISBN 0-312-29416-6
- Bridget Hourican, Ruth Dudley Edwards: An Atlas Of Irish History. Routledge, UK. (2005). p.264 ISBN 0-415-33952-9
- Alan A Jackson: Ireland, 1798-1998. Blackwell. (1999). ISBN 0-631-19542-4
- J. Bowyer Bell: The Secret Army: The IRA (3rd ed.). Transaction (1997). ISBN 1-56000-901-2
