Origins
The group had its origins in the earlier New Ulster Political Research Group (NUPRG), which was set up, on the initiative of UDA chairman Andy Tyrie, in January 1978 under the chairmanship of Glen Barr, largely as a reaction to antagonism that had grown between the UDA and Ian Paisley after the loyalist group had supported a failed strike organised by Paisley the previous year. Barr's old friends Tommy Lyttle and Harry Chicken both took up seats on the NUPRG whilst South Belfast Brigadier and Tyrie's deputy John McMichael was appointed secretary of the new body.
After a few months McMichael wrote about the progress of the group in the UDA's Ulster magazine and stated that they had examined the case for direct rule from Westminster and found it to be wholly unsatisfactory. According to McMichael the future lay in "a special type of negotiated independence". Tyrie also began to argue for independence and Barr, who had advocated this Ulster nationalism for some time, gave indications to Magill magazine that this was the direction in which the NUPRG was going. Their March 1979 report, Beyond the Religious Divide, argued the case for independence and even provided an outline of the workings of such a state, basing it largely on the American model of a Supreme Court, written constitution and bill of rights and the separation of the executive and judicial arms of government. The document also called for a power-sharing arrangement that would take account of the wishes of the Catholic minority.
The group fielded three candidates in the 1981 local elections, with one of them holding the seat that he had won in a 1980 by-election. However the NUPRG were disbanded soon afterwards and replaced with the Ulster Loyalist Democratic Party, a group that took Beyond the Religious Divide as the basis of its ideology.
Read more about this topic: Ulster Political Research Group
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