Decline
The UUUC began to fall apart in 1976 when VUPP leader William Craig suggested working in a potential coalition government with the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party. When it became clear that Craig's ideas were not in keeping with those of his partners, Vanguard split with his opponents setting up the United Ulster Unionist Party (UUUP) while Craig's supporters stayed with Vanguard which left the UUUC. The UUUC thereafter consisted of the UUP, DUP and UUUP.
The UUUC set up the United Unionist Action Council (UUAC) in 1977 a policy group and an activism co-ordinating committee. Chaired by Joseph Burns and featuring DUP leader Ian Paisley and UUUP leader Ernest Baird, the group included representatives from loyalist paramilitary groups the Ulster Defence Association, Down Orange Welfare and the Orange Volunteers and also organised its own vigilante group under the name Ulster Service Corps. The UUAC helped organise the May 1977 strike by the Ulster Workers Council, that sought to repeat the effects of 1974. However the second strike proved much less effective and did not get the backing of the Ulster Unionists, who in fact campaigned against it. The strike proved the final straw for the UUUC with the UUP, DUP and UUUP going their separate ways after it collapsed.
Read more about this topic: United Ulster Unionist Council
Famous quotes containing the word decline:
“The decline of a culture
Mourned by scholars who dream of the ghosts of Greek boys.”
—Stephen Spender (1909–1995)
“Families suffered badly under industrialization, but they survived, and the lives of men, women, and children improved. Children, once marginal and exploited figures, have moved to a position of greater protection and respect,... The historic decline in the overall death rates for children is an astonishing social fact, notwithstanding the disgraceful infant mortality figures for the poor and minorities. Like the decline in death from childbirth for women, this is a stunning achievement.”
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“But only that soul can be my friend which I encounter on the line of my own march, that soul to which I do not decline, and which does not decline me, but, native of the same celestial latitude, repeats in its own all my experience.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)