A Talk with "King Billy" of Ulster

When William Craig, 49, was Minister of Home Affairs in the defunct Unionist government at Stormont in 1968, he ordered the Royal Ulster Constabulary to halt the first civil rights march by Roman Catholics through Londonderry. That decision contributed to the five years of violence that soon followed. It also launched "King Billy" Craig, now head of the Vanguard Unionist Party, on an unrelenting war on behalf of Northern Ireland's Protestants. Throughout "the troubles," his line has had a one-track consistency: Ulster, he believes, faces a takeover by the Catholic-dominated Republic of Ireland and this can be prevented only if Ulster's Protestants band together in political and military opposition to union. A soft-spoken lawyer whose voice seldom rises above a whisper, Craig last week talked with TIME Correspondent William McWhirter in his suburban Belfast home, which is still scarred by a recent terrorist bomb attack. The views of King Billy:

ON UNIONIST GOALS. We would never form a government that would give [Ulster's Catholic] minority a veto over the whole constitution. Sunningdale [the power-sharing agreement] was merely the trigger. The real target was the destruction of the Executive. We may not get everything we want, but we're in a position to stop anything we don't want.

ON ULSTER'S PROTESTANTS. They're sturdy individualists with a deep sense of tradition, industrious and keen on moneymaking, but they are prepared to throw it all away if their fundamental beliefs are attacked. Look at the farmers. They poured their milk down the drains in the morning and blocked the roadways in the afternoon.

ON NORTHERN IRISH NATIONALISM. If Britain persists in denying democratic rights to its own citizens, matters will be brought to a head, and we'll ask for negotiation to set up an independent Ulster. We have now put the challenge to Britain that it must govern us as it governs Scotland and Wales. We're quite happy to do without [our own] parliament if necessary, provided of course that we would have equal [representation] in Westminster. We had to take the stand we did for our own pride. More and more people began to think that the Protestants would simply let things slide without a protest. The strike has been a sharp reminder to them that that is the last thing we are going to let happen.

ON SECTARIAN CONFLICTS. There are two nations in Ulster. It's wrong to talk of just Protestants and Catholics. The differences are more fundamental than that. The Protestants look upon the Catholics as being a social liability. They present a tremendous social problem because they are far from selfsupporting, and their large family structures, existing on welfare benefits with high unemployment, are subsidized by the Protestant community. It's a situation I'm prepared to accept, but it's the inescapable social and economic problems arising from it that have created too much distrust in the country. The Catholics think they are being deprived, but every effort to close that gap is looked upon by Protestants as an example of special treatment.

ON ULSTER'S POLITICAL FUTURE. I'm afraid that any democratic system will produce a Protestant parliament as long as Catholics refuse to respect the separate identity of Ulster [from the Irish Republic] and give their loyalty to it. [If they continue to divide their loyalties] they will become a foreign minority. They must decide. What we would like to do is create a basis where they can cease to have that mixed allegiance and begin to identify with the state.

Things after this last strike will never be quite the same again. It's got to end now. It's only a question of how the end comes about. If we don't talk, we'll have to fight.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.