‘Meticulously Crafted Ambiguities’: The Confused Political Vision of Ulster Vanguard

Abstract

In his insightful ‘intellectual history’ of the modern Irish troubles, Richard Bourke, reflecting upon the fated implosion of William Craig's Vanguard Unionist Party, identified a set of ‘meticulously crafted ambiguities’ (Bourke (2003) Peace in Ireland: The War of Ideas, p. 227 (London: Random House)) as crucial factors in that movement's abortive attempt to capture the political soul of Protestant Ulster. Through a close reading of Vanguard's ideological development, from its origins as a Unionist ‘ginger group’ through to its marginalisation from the authoritative centre of Unionist politics in September 1975, this essay sets out to recover a sense of that internal dissonance which, from the movement's inception in February 1972, threatened to undermine the cohesion of the Vanguard project. Though it was to be Craig's inability to reconcile a majority of his party's elite to the idea of Nationalist participation in government that would prove decisive in precipitating his political downfall, as this article will attempt to demonstrate, a conspicuous failure to address these so-called ‘meticulously crafted ambiguities’ and resolve the numerous internal contradictions of Vanguard's ‘post-Unionist’ ideology tended to underscore the improbability of its acting as a unifying locus for the realignment of populist forces within contemporary Unionism.