Vanguard Progressive Unionist Party
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The Vanguard Unionist Progressive Party, also known as the Vanguard Ulster Progressive Party (and several variations of word order), was a unionist political party which existed in Northern Ireland between 1973 and 1978. It was closely affiliated with several loyalist paramilitary groups.
It has its roots in the Vanguard or Ulster Vanguard wing of the Ulster Unionist Party who were opposed to the moderate policies of the party's leader and last Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, Brian Faulkner. After the suspension of the Stormont Parliament, Faulkner moved towards a policy of power-sharing with nationalist and non-sectarian politicians under the Sunningdale Agreement. In opposition to this many in the Ulster Unionists broke away and founded a separate Vanguard Party under the leadership of the form Stormont Minister William Craig. The party contested a succession of elections: to the brief Sunningdale Assembly, the February 1974 General Election, the October 1974 General Election and the 1975 elections to the Constitutional Convention. The 1973 Sunningdale and local council elections were fought in an informal alliance with the DUP as "the loyalist coalition" while the latter three were fought as part of the United Ulster Unionist Council, a more formal arrangement, with the Democratic Unionist Party and the Ulster Unionists, where the anti-Sunningdale wing of the party was now in control.
Despite the "Progressive" part of its title, Vanguard is usually considered to have been a right-wing party. In its earliest days it adopted the style associated with falangist parties with an honour guard, a common salute and a habit of wearing sashes. It demanded the "extermination" of the Irish Republican Army and a reversal of the reforms introduced by Brian Faulkner and his predecessor, and it even flirted with the idea of full independence for Northern Ireland. However there were occasions when it did not follow the same course as other right-wing or unionist parties. For example in the 1975 referendum on the United Kingdom's membership of the-then European Economic Community, it campaigned for the United Kingdom to remain a member whilst the other Unionist parties campaigned for withdrawal.
The party was originally as electorally strong as the DUP with twenty-four local councillors elected in 1973 against twenty-eight councillors for the DUP (although many of these were elected under different labels) and three MPs in 1974 against one DUP MP (although this was partly due to the nomination strategy of the UUUC which arguably gave better seats to Vanguagrd than the DUP). The bulk of Vanguard's council seats were in urban centres in the East. The party also obtained more seats in 1975 in the elections to the Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention than the DUP. However Vanguard's prospects of replacing the DUP as the second party of Unionism came to grief as a result of events during the constitutional convention.
The Constitutional Convention was intended to serve as a forum to allow the politicians of Northern Ireland to draw up their own proposals for the political future of the province, though this proved unsuccessful. However it led to William Craig proposing a voluntary coalition with the Nationalist SDLP in the event of there being a state of emergency, but any idea of power sharing was anathema to many Unionist in the post-Sunningdale climate of 1975. As a result the party was bitterly split with only David Trimble and Glenn Barr backing Craig with the other eleven convention members challenging Craig's leadership. Craig however claimed that he had the backing of the party's rank and file and this was confirmed when sixty percent of party members and thirteen of the twenty-four councillors backed him at a specially convened meeting. (Three councillors failed to side with either faction and stood as independents in the 1977 council elections.) The dissidents then broke away to form what would later become the United Ulster Unionist Party.
The 1977 council elections were seen as a crucial test of Vanguard's ability to survive as a party and ultimately the party failed that test emerging from the election with only five councillors compared to twenty-four in 1973 or the thirteen that they had after the 1975 split.
Craig then applied to rejoin the UUP in February 1978 and subsequently merged the remainder of Vanguard back into the Ulster Unionist Party, where it returned to its origin as a pressure group within the UUP as the Vanguard movement, although this too seems to have quickly faded away. The Democratic Unionist Party has since become the main hardline Unionist party that offers an alternative position to the Ulster Unionists.
In the 1982 elections for the new Northern Ireland Assembly, Craig, who had once more left the Ulster Unionists after losing his seat at Westminster, revived the name Vanguard for his candidacy in East Belfast. However he failed to get elected.
Several prominent current Ulster Unionist politicians were members of Vanguard, including David Trimble (who briefly served as Deputy Leader), David Burnside (who was Vanguard's press officer), Rev. Martin Smyth, MP (Deputy Leader and Grand Master of the Orange Order) and Reg Empey.
