Brown family 'vindicated' after court orders Govt to set up public inquiry
David Young, Belfast Telegraph, May 3rd, 2025
DAUGHTER OF SLAIN GAA OFFICIAL URGES THE NI SECRETARY TO 'DO THE RIGHT THING'
The daughter of murdered GAA official Sean Brown has urged the NI Secretary to do the “right thing” and comply with a Court of Appeal order to set up a public inquiry into his killing.
It comes as the UK Government confirmed it will go to the Supreme Court over a ruling that ordered a probe into the killing.
Clare Loughran said her family felt “vindicated” after Appeal Court judges in Belfast affirmed an earlier High Court ruling compelling the Government to act.
They said their final order compelling Hilary Benn to establish an inquiry would come into effect on June 2.
Last month the Court of Appeal ruled that the ongoing failure to hold a public inquiry in the Brown case was unlawful.
Four week deferral for Benn
The judges deferred making a final order for four weeks to give Mr Benn space to consider his response.
Last night an official spokesperson said the Government acknowledges the court's decisions “and now intend to seek permission to appeal from the Supreme Court”.
They the ruling and terms of the mandatory order “raise matters of constitutional significance that go beyond this individual case”
“The court previously invited the Secretary of State to reflect on the judgment and has reiterated today that this process should continue. We will of course respond to the Court on that issue in early June,” the spokesperson added.
“This will not, however, delay our determination to repeal and replace the Legacy Act, and to implement mechanisms that are human-rights compliant.”
Earlier this week, Mr Benn applied to the court to give him another four weeks for further consideration but the three judges, including Northern Ireland's Lady Chief Justice Dame Siobhan Keegan, proceeded to make their final determination yesterday.
The courtroom in Belfast was packed with supporters of the Brown family as the order was confirmed by Dame Siobhan. Mr Brown's widow Bridie and her children watched the proceedings from the front of the public gallery.
Mr Brown (61), the chairman of Bellaghy Wolfe Tones GAA Club in Co Londonderry, was ambushed, kidnapped and murdered by loyalist paramilitaries as he locked the gates of the club in May 1997.
No-one has ever been convicted of his killing. Preliminary inquest proceedings last year heard that in excess of 25 people had been linked by intelligence to the murder, including several state agents. It had also been alleged in court that surveillance of a suspect in the murder was temporarily stopped on the evening of the killing, only to resume again the following morning.
Family pleads that a Public Inquiry is only option
Outside court, Ms Loughran insisted a public inquiry was the only option open to Mr Benn as she reiterated her mother's plea to him not to take the family to the Supreme Court in London.
“We feel vindicated that we have completed the process here in this jurisdiction, and that the Lady Chief Justice and the Court of Appeal has not upheld the Secretary of State's decision on not giving us a public inquiry,” she said.
Ms Loughran added: “My mother stood in front of these microphones four weeks ago and appealed to the Secretary of State not to have to make her go to London, and that remains our position,” she said.
“She's an elderly lady. We have fought very long and very hard to try and get to the end point of this, which is that public inquiry to get to that truth. And that's all we want at this stage.
“We really appeal again to the Secretary of State. I appeal on my behalf, on behalf of my mother, to please do the right thing. Do not take us to London. Do not take this to the Supreme Court. Do not drag this out any longer.”
The family of Mr Brown were applauded by a large crowd of supporters as they arrived at the Court of Appeal for yesterday's hearing. Stormont First Minister Michelle O'Neill, Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald and other party colleagues were among those who accompanied the Brown family as they approached the court building.
Mr Benn's move to seek leave for a Supreme Court appeal in the case was made public on Wednesday.
It prompted heavy criticism from the Brown family and their supporters.
Ms Loughran asked what the Government is seeking to “hide” as she highlighted that her mother was now 87-years-old and had already endured almost 60 court appearances.
“All she (her mother) wanted ever is to find out why.
“We are 10 days away from the 28th anniversary of my father's murder, the worst day of our lives, the most brutal thing that can happen to a really entirely innocent man. Why are they continuing to drag this through further? Let us get the truth.”
State agents involved in GAA man’s 1997 murder: Analysis
By Connla Young, Crime and Security Correspondent, Irish News, May 3rd, 2025
The latest British government attempts to conceal the complicity of state agencies in the murder of Sean Brown will be seen by many for what they are.
For the past 28 years the state has done all in its power to ensure the full circumstances of the GAA clubman’s murder remain hidden.
The father-of-six was attacked, beaten and abducted as he locked the gates at Bellaghy Wolfe Tones GAC in May 1997.
Placed in the boot of his own car, he was then taken to a country lane outside Randalstown, Co Antrim, where he was shot six times.
More than 25 people, including state agents, have been linked by intelligence to his murder.
State agents - recruited by law enforcement agencies and paid from the public purse - were involved in the sectarian killing.
At every turn agencies of the state, including the RUC and PSNI, have placed obstacles in the way of the Brown family.
Part of their cruel strategy has been to play for time in the misplaced hope that their resolve, and that of others impacted by their deeds during the Troubles, will be tamed.
The contempt of state bodies is reserved not only for relatives of the dead.
Ombudsman not told of state agents
It emerged last year that former Police Ombudsman Nuala O’Loan, who reported on the Brown case in 2004, was not told of the involvement of agents.
Mrs O’Loan later said that had she known she might have “produced a very different report”.
On around 60 occasions members of the Brown family have travelled from their south Derry homes to various courts in Belfast in search of the truth.
Finally, a breakthrough came last year when a High Court judge, sitting as a coroner produced a brief gist, or summary, revealing just some of the shocking details around Mr Brown’s murder.
Patrick Kinney said that a public inquiry should be held and wrote to the then Tory Secretary of State Chris Heaton-Harris.
Legacy Act ended investigation
The inquest, which was abandoned as the introduction of the legacy act loomed, also revealed that a suspect in the murder was believed to be a serving member of the Royal Irish Regiment.
Another held a personal protection weapon and was regularly visited by a police officer at his home.
It is now known that an RUC surveillance operation on Mark ‘Swinger’ Fulton, a notorious Mid Ulster LVF member, was halted the night before the murder and picked up again the following morning.
The British government later launched a retrospective judicial review of the decision by Mr Kinney, to provide his damning gist.
Last year another High Court judge ordered that a public inquiry should be held after a case was taken by Mr Brown’s 87-year-old widow Bridie.
Benn’s test
The British government then appealed that decision and last month a three-judge panel gave Mr Benn four weeks to consider his response.
Earlier this week he confirmed he has asked the court for more time and sought leave to take the case to the Supreme Court in London.
It later emerged that Mr Benn briefed selected members of the media of his decision before Mrs Brown was made aware.
While the Court of Appeal dismissed the British government’s application on Friday, it put a stay on the operation of the mandatory order until Mr Benn’s legal team return to the court next month.
Earlier this week the Labour MP offered sympathetic words to the Brown family and said he is committed to “ensuring that there is a full, thorough and independent” investigation into the murder.
His honeyed words are now being put to the test as he considers his final response to the court.
In reality though nationalists, those that need a reminder, are likely to find that both Labour and the Tories have common cause when it comes to hiding state involvement in the murder of Catholics in the north during the years of conflict.
High Court judge to take over 13 Glenanne Gang-linked civil cases
Connla Young, Crime and Security Correspondent, Irish News, May 3rd, 2025
A HIGH court judge has taken personal charge of a series of civil cases involving the notorious Glenanne Gang.
Mr Justice Kevin Rooney took the decision at a recent sitting of the High Court and will now take over 13 cases involving the loyalist murder squad.
The gang included members of the RUC, UDR and UVF and is believed to have carried out around 125 murders, the majority of which were innocent Catholics.
Earlier this year, The Irish News reported the gang failed in a bid to kill campaigning Catholic priest Fr Denis Faul, who died in 2006, in the winter of 1975.
The activities of the gang are currently being examined by the Kenova investigation team as part of Operation Denton, which is nearing completion.
The publication of a Police Ombudsman’s investigation, Operation Newham into the gang has been delayed after a decision was taken to prosecute a former RUC officer.
Mullen murder
One of the civil cases currently being processed is linked to the murder of SDLP member Denis Mullen near Moy, Co Tyrone, in September 1975.
His daughter, Denise Mullen, a former SDLP and Aontú councillor, welcomed the development.
“I am glad at this decision and I just hopes it speeds the whole thing up,” Ms Mullen said.
“My father died almost 50 years ago in September and it’s a long time to wait for accountability.”
It is understood that up until now the series of linked cases, all lodged before the legacy act came into force last year, were being handled by different judges.
Solicitor Gavin Booth, of Phoenix Law, is hopeful the latest move will speed up the legal process.
“As we move towards the publication of the report by Operation Denton we welcome the fact that the High Court, and in particular Mr Justice Rooney, is applying expedition to our Glenanne clients cases,” he said.
“The fact that the high court is now case managing the Glenanne series of cases negates any further delays.
Denise Mullen’s father Denis was murdered in 1975
“Some of our clients fear that they’ll not be around to see their case to conclusion and it’s hoped now that no further delays will happen.”
A spokesman for the Court Service said: “Mr Justice Rooney is the legacy judge so deals with the majority of the legacy cases.
“He is dealing with these, and we have 13 cases for the Glenanne cases.”
‘The time for stalling and denial is over’
Michelle O’Neill, PLATFORM, Irish News, May 3rd, 2025
“Once again, the British government are using legal process to deny wrongdoing, to conceal the truth and limit accountability. But Hilary Benn must do the right thing
WHEN Bridie Brown called on Hilary Benn to ‘do the right thing’ and order a public inquiry into the murder of her husband, Sean, there was only one decision that should have been made. He refused to make it.
The Brown family have been to court 58 times. Five judges ruled that a public inquiry was the only way to get answers for the Brown family.
Yesterday, Bridie entered a courtroom for the 59th time after the callous and inhumane decision by the British secretary of state to seek leave to appeal the ruling that the British government’s decision not to hold a public inquiry was unlawful.
The Lady Chief Justice Dame Siobhan Keegan previously described it as “a shocking state of affairs” that there had been no “lawful inquiry into the circumstances” of the murder and that “the decision to refuse a public inquiry cannot stand and is unlawful and in breach of Article 2 obligations”.
‘Outright anger’ and ‘unwaverimng solidarity’
There is outright anger, but also unwavering solidarity with the Brown family, who entered the court surrounded by supporters. They continue to show the dignity and respect that the British government continue to lack.
The Brown family’s anguish was compounded when the media were alerted to Hilary Benn’s decision before Bridie was informed.
It shows the contempt that the British government, and their lack of integrity, in dealing with legacy in the north.
I wrote to Keir Starmer calling on him to do the right thing. Like Bridie Brown, these words fell on deaf ears.
I have recently written to An Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, and previously to former taoiseach Leo Varadkar to lend their voices to the Brown family in calling for truth and justice.
For close on 28 years the Brown family have fought with courage and dignity to uncover the full truth of what led to his murder.
Up to 25 individuals were linked to Sean’s murder at the time. Some of these individuals were state agents.
What else will come out in a public inquiry?
Bridie Brown said she is terrified by the secrets the British government is hiding over her husband’s murder.
The time for stalling and denial of truth and justice is over.
ICRIR ‘Not fit for purpose’
Despite what Hilary Benn might believe, the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery (IC-RIR) is not fit for purpose. It cannot conduct Article 2 compliant investigations. It does not command the confidence of families.
Labour must get on with repealing and replacing the legacy act. The Stormont House Agreement is the only credible path forward for addressing the past.
The Brown family are not alone in their campaign for justice. There are many other families who awaiting court directed inquests into the murder of their loved ones.
Now that the Court of Appeal affirmed the High Court’s position, it now looks like the British government will take the case to the Supreme Court in London.
Once again, the British government are using legal process to deny wrongdoing, to conceal the truth and limit accountability.
But Hilary Benn must do the right thing and direct a public inquiry.
Don’t make Bridie Brown and her family go to London.
Give the Brown family the truth and justice they deserve.
Lynskey niece in tribute to late Bishop Comiskey
John Breslin, Irish News, May 3rd, 2025
THE niece of Joe Lynskey, one of the Disappeared, said she will be “forever grateful” to the recently-deceased Bishop Brendan Comiskey and his family for helping facilitate the search for her uncle’s remains.
Intelligence received by the team charged with finding the bodies of four men still missing following their abduction, murder and secret burial by the IRA suggested Mr Lynskey’s remains might have been buried in the Comiskey family plot in Co Monaghan.
A body was exhumed from the family grave in Annyalla, but DNA and other tests ruled out Mr Lynskey or any of the remaining Disappeared. The remains were also not linked to the Comiskey family.
Maria Lynskey, speaking following Bishop Comiskey’s funeral in Clondalkin, Dublin and burial in Monaghan, said “previous searches for Joe’s remains were in a field and on a bog”.
“Going into a family grave was very different and it must have come as a shock to the family to think that one of the Disappeared might be there and I can only imagine how distressing it must have been for them,” Ms Lynskey said.
She added that the 89-year-old “was very ill at the time” but “his family supported the ICLVR’s efforts to find Joe despite the very difficult personal circumstances and that showed great compassion”.
Former Bishop of Ferns Brendan Comiskey died aged 89
“I will never forget it and I want to thank them from the bottom of my heart,” Ms Lynskey said.
Bishop Comiskey led the Ferns Diocese in the south east until his 2002 resignation following the BBC’s ‘Suing the Pope’ documentary, which revealed over 100 allegations of abuse by 21 priests dating back to 1962.
The 2005 Ferns Report found the bishop had failed to report allegations of rape and sexual abuse, including by the notorious paedophile Sean Fortune.
Muir accuses UFU of ‘knee-jerk reaction’ to latest water quality improvement plan
John Manley, Political Correspondent, Irish News, May 3rd, 2025
A STORMONT minister has accused the north’s largest farming lobby group of a “knee-jerk reaction” to proposals for improving deteriorating water quality.
Within hours of Agriculture and Environment Minister Andrew Muir (Alliance) launching a public consultation on the latest plans to reduce the impact of slurry and other nutrient-rich fertilisers on the region’s lakes and rivers, the Ulster Farmers’ Union (UFU) dismissed them as “deeply unbalanced, unfair and disconnected from the reality of farming”.
UFU president William Irvine said the proposals “lean heavily towards enforcement and regulation” and would create “extra red tape”.
In 2022, the then agriculture minister Edwin Poots reduced the penalties imposed on farmers who break environmental rules.
The DUP minister said the move, which was put in place while the Stormont institutions were suspended, was a “much fairer approach to our hard-working farmers”.
According to the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (Daera), farms are responsible for around 62% of the high phosphorus levels that adversely affect water quality.
Mr Muir said wastewater treatment was “also a significant source of nutrient inputs which are a key cause of poor water quality” but he said it was “important that all sectors play their part”.
On Thursday, he launched a consultation on the latest nutrients action programme (NAP), a series of measures aimed at improving water quality over the next three years by reducing and preventing pollution caused by nutrients from agricultural sources.
20 year battle to treat Lough
The first NAP was introduced 20 years ago in an effort to arrest the steep decline in water quality.
Daera said that while initially successful “water quality improvements achieved up to 2012 have, in general, been offset by intensification of the agricultural sector”, a trend enthusiastically supported by Mr Muir’s predecessors.
The latest proposals include new measures which the department says have been “developed based on scientific research” and form part of the Lough Neagh action plan.
But according to UFU president Mr Irvine, “farmers are tired of being the go-to scapegoats”.
Andrew Muir said he was disappointed by the UFU’s response
He said farmers had been implementing measures to improve water quality for the past 20 years.
“We fully recognise the need to protect and improve water quality, but it must be done in a way that’s balanced, fair and grounded in the day-to-day realities of farming in Northern Ireland,” he said.
“The proposals within NAP reflect a clear disconnect with local agriculture and fail to deliver what’s truly needed.”
He said the minister’s approach signals a penalising approach rather than a supportive one”.
Catastrophe looming says Minister
But Mr Muir said he was disappointed by the UFU’s response.
“I’m very disappointed at the knee jerk response from the UFU just a few hours after the consultation was launched,” he said.
“The environmental catastrophe at Lough Neagh cannot be resolved by just warm words, tokenistic gestures and education and incentivisation alone, stronger regulation and enforcement is essential.”
The minister urged all interested parties to “engage with the consultation, read the documents thoroughly and give the proposals proper consideration”.
“Just a few weeks ago chair of the Office of Environmental Protection set out a stark message – I can’t disagree with words of Dame Glenys, the time to turn things around and back the policy proposals from Daera is now.”
Mr Muir was referencing last month’s speech by Dame Glenys Stacey at the NI Environment Forum, where she said “the agri-food industry in its current form is making unsustainable demands on the environment”.
How can Sinn Féin preach Irish unity while presiding over an education system that prevents it?
Patrick Murphy, Irish News, May 3rd, 2025
FOR the first time in a long time, someone has said something sensible about a united Ireland.
It is contained in a report by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), which has been funded by the Dublin government’s Shared Island initiative.
The report points out that among the barriers to unity, the most significant is the difference in the two education systems.
Although literacy and numeracy levels are roughly the same on both sides of the border, the rate of early school leaving is twice as high in the north as in the south.
As a result, the north has poorer employment outcomes, lower income levels and ultimately lower life expectancy (Stormont is bad for your health).
So what causes this difference? The answer, as this column has pointed out for some time, is the practice of branding northern children as successes or failures at the age of 11, in what is effectively a form of educational child abuse.
Previously known as the 11-plus, and now described as academic selection, its adverse social and economic impacts have been known for years.
However, this is the first time that anyone has said it is a barrier to a united Ireland.
The report also relates academic selection to the fact that productivity per worker is 40% lower in the north than the south.
So what is Stormont doing to address the problem? The answer is nothing.
Education ignored in Programme for Government
In what has been inaccurately described as a Programme for Government (PfG), Stormont ignored education, apart from a section relating to children with special educational needs.
What a Dublin research agency has identified as a major impediment to economic development has been deemed by Stormont as not worth a mention.
In fairness, the PfG did recognise the need to improve productivity – but, in that wonderfully ethereal language much favoured by Stormont, it said: “We will improve management practices to boost productivity.”
No mention of education, just a wrong analysis, vaguely expressed.
So good news for Sinn Féin: Stormont’s education policy is damaging the north’s economy (assuming, of course, that Sinn Féin still wants to destroy the northern state).
However, the bad news for the party is that the report states that the huge gaps in education participation rates between north and south “have increased over time”.
St Andrews Agreement U-turn
As education minister, Martin McGuinness, ended state-sponsored transfer tests, but allowed academic selection to be retained through the St Andrews Agreement
“ Michelle O’Neill says that we are living ‘in the end days of partition’. Does this mean she is going to abolish academic selection, a major barrier to Irish unity?
So by presiding over academic selection in Stormont for over 25 years, Sinn Féin has pushed a united Ireland further away.
It now appears reasonable to suggest that Sinn Féin is a barrier to a united Ireland.
You will, of course, suggest that this is rubbish because, you say, the party opposes academic selection, and anyway, doesn’t it still justify the IRA campaign of violence to achieve Irish unity?
Martin McGuinness claimed the 11-plus would be abolished “within two years” in 2002, and then agreed to retain it at the St Andrews Agreement four years later, so he and Ian Paisley could chuckle with each other.
Can that be considered opposition to academic selection?
BGFA made no mention of education
As for supporting the IRA campaign, it might be worth pointing out that in the Good Friday Agreement negotiations, the IRA asked for nothing in terms of education, housing, health, social services or infrastructure.
To them Ireland was a flag, not a people, so they now govern in their own interests, not those of ordinary people.
The ESRI report also points out that because Stormont has a limit on the number of university places in the north, a significant number of young people have to go to Britain for higher education. A quarter of those never return.
Meanwhile, the south has opened six new technological universities in the past few years, catering for almost 100,000 students.
The north has no technological universities (I remember civil servants here laughing at the very idea when I advocated one for the north).
Stormont’s Sinn Féin minister for the economy intends to expand student numbers at Magee University College in Derry.
However, that looks more than a short-term effort by the party to remove the SDLP’s Colm Eastwood from his Westminster seat than a co-ordinated attempt to develop a strategy for higher education.
Meanwhile, back in the makebelieve world of Irish unity, Michelle O’Neill says that we are living “in the end days of partition”.
Does this mean she is going to abolish academic selection, a major barrier to Irish unity?
For over 25 years, Sinn Féin have been part of a government which has reinforced that barrier, while preaching and promising unity.
As long as they continue to do so, it will be difficult to take their talk of a united Ireland seriously.
Nationalists serious about unity should be cheering Nigel Farage's rise
Sam McBride, Belfast Telegraph, May 3rd, 2025, Northern Ireland Editor
UNIONISM HAS LONG SPURNED THE VERY THINGS WHICH ENHANCED SUPPORT FOR THE UNION, AND CLUNG TO THAT WHICH UNDERMINED IT. NOW IT'S DOING THIS AGAIN WITH REFORM'S DIVISIVE LEADER COMMENT
Irish nationalists weren't cheering yesterday as news of Nigel Farage's successes came in. They should have been. The greatest chance of a border poll within the next decade is arguably Farage in Downing Street.
The Reform UK leader is the sort of impulsive gambler who might just call a referendum to prove to nationalism that there's a strong pro-Union majority — but is the worst possible Prime Minister to persuade the key demographic of constitutional swing voters to back the Union.
Almost equally possible is that he would call a border poll because he's fed up with Northern Ireland complicating his Brexit plans for Britain — and especially for England — and wants rid of it, even if he couldn't say so openly.
Two years ago, Farage told Mark Paul of The Irish Times over a boozy lunch: “One day there will be a united Ireland. But it's not on the horizon immediately. Just for practical reasons.”
He claimed he'd been misquoted, but Paul had it on tape.
I first interviewed Farage in 2011 on one of multiple trips to Belfast when he was seen as a fringe figure.
He's an exceptionally skillful politician, something to which his enemies are often blinded due to the intensity of their distaste for his message.
He has a clear ideology, is a brilliant communicator, and can relate to ordinary people in a way which is now unusual in politics.
Uncomfortable with Unionists
Yet Farage's ideological purity on the EU has always sat uncomfortably with his professed unionism. Just weeks before the EU referendum, the then Ukip leader told me that voters in the Stormont election should transfer to other Eurosceptics, rather than to all other pro-Union candidates.
It was a signal that for Farage, quitting the EU was more important than the Union — and was entirely in keeping with how he, along with Boris Johnson and the overwhelming majority of Eurosceptics, were willing to accept an Irish Sea border as the price for Brexit.
Likewise, Farage was willing to share a platform with Mary Lou McDonald in 2008 as they campaigned against the Lisbon Treaty; more recently he has said that he “always got on well” with McDonald who he knows from the European Parliament.
Last year the News Letter urged TUV Jim Allister to be wary of Farage, describing him as “someone who intermittently talks up his unionism, but has never shown sustained interest in Northern Ireland or proper support for it”.
Allister has experienced his unreliability, seeing Farage back Ian Paisley over him despite the TUV and Reform being in an electoral alliance. So has Ben Habib, who many unionists respected for regularly coming to Northern Ireland and raising the problems with the Irish Sea border at a time when few in London wanted to know.
Yet yesterday Allister welcomed Reform's rise at the expense of Labour.
Unionism has long had an uneasy relationship with Labour yet Labour saved unionism once against its will, and it might be doing so again.
In 1945, unionism was a complacent de facto one-party system. It had built Northern Ireland — and that was an extraordinary achievement — but what it had built was unsustainable.
The structures to which it determinedly clung were undermining that which it existed to defend — the Union itself.
It wasn't just that majority rule or anti-Catholic discrimination were ultimately going to be indefensible; it was that unionism had at its heart a class contradiction.
Unionism’s internal contradictions
The Unionist Party wanted to be the party of Northern Ireland, but it also wanted to be the local branch of the Conservative Party. Those twin aims were irreconcilable.
Worried about the rise of socialism and independent candidates outside the Unionist Party tent in the early 20th century, unionist grandees created the Ulster Unionist Labour Association (UULA).
In their magisterial history of unionism since the Second World War, Unionism and Orangeism in Northern Ireland since 1945, Henry Patterson and Eric Kaufmann recount how the UULA's newspaper folded after just 11 issues.
The editor blamed a lack of party support but Patterson and Kaufmann acerbically noted that “the briefest consideration of the content provides a better clue to its lack of appeal to ordinary trade unionists”.
In the early 1940s, the paper eulogised “the heroic entrepreneurs” and “private enterprise” behind Belfast's wealth, lauded the “sons and grandsons” of those people “who today sit in high places” in government and urged workers to “let the employers do the worrying for a while” because “if we took over…we might do more harm than good”.
This patronising deference to power and wealth sat neatly with a party which had a formal link with the Tories. It didn't sit easily with a party which aspired to represent every unionist, from the beggar to the millionaire.
The 1945 Stormont election saw the UUP argue against Labour's proposed social reforms.
The result was near-disastrous for the UUP. It lost six seats, while the Nationalist Party gained two.
But the real damage was unionist voters electing left wing candidates, and it was this warning shot by voters which helped persuade UUP leader Basil Brooke (later Lord Brookeborough) that he had to rubber stamp Clement Attlee's proposals on the NHS, benefits and other drastic social reforms.
Eighty years later, it is those social reforms which form the core of unionism's offering to the constitutional swing voters who will decide Northern Ireland's future in any border poll.
NHS is still greatest argument for The Union
Even when under immense pressure, the NHS is the single greatest argument for the Union — so great an argument that those backing Irish unity now overwhelmingly accept that they would need a similar offering to win.
Yet this was done against unionism's wishes; Brooke believed voters were “nibbling the biscuit of socialism” and, mixing his metaphors, feared their offspring would soon be “tied hand and foot”.
In one sense, he was right. By 2023, his successor as Lord Brookeborough was arguing in the House of Lords for more money for the health service.
More broadly, he was profoundly wrong.
Three years ago, I wrote that those prophesying the impending implosion of the Union were probably wrong. Many of the Union's difficulties stemmed from a single source — a uniquely incompetent and divisive Tory administration.
That government was on borrowed time and so we'd only know the true health of the Union when it went. Sir Keir Starmer's rise to power isn't the only reason the Union is now more stable, but its relative stability wouldn't have been possible without a less divisive figure in Downing Street.
Yet there was always a counterargument to this: That if those who disliked the Tories managed to get a Labour Government with a massive majority but it still couldn't fix Britain's problems, then some of those people were likely to think separatism was the answer.
For those on the left, such as former SNP voters, a centrist Labour Government could also cause them to think that the only choice in British governments is between the right and the centre.
Stability is greatest argument for Union and Reform is unstable
With Reform surging and Labour already under pressure, there is acute peril for unionism. Yet unionism's lead party, the DUP, has repeatedly chosen to align itself with those who are closer to being English nationalists than unionists.
The test of this will come over coming weeks in unionism's response to what is likely to be Starmer's lowering of the sea border.
He's likely to soften that Tory-imposed trade frontier in a way the DUP finds difficult to warmly welcome because it involves chipping away at the whole point of Brexit, leaving the entire UK bound by more EU rules over which it now has no say whatsoever.
Starmer's emerging position on the EU is at variance with what he said two years ago, when he stated clearly: “I'm not interested in a deal that puts the UK in a position of being a rule taker. Our rules must be made in Westminster, according to the national interest of the UK as a whole.”
But few people are likely to be marching in the streets over where laws on hygiene regulations for cheese are determined.
After years of incessant arguments around what to do with Brexit, and despite the Brexiteers running the Government for much of that time, the man or woman in the street would struggle to point to two or three substantial benefits of leaving the EU.
Brexit - What was it all for?
Having failed to prove their case, Brexiteers are likely to struggle to prevent a gradual creep back towards the EU.
A Prime Minister's professions of support for the Union are far less significant than their actions — as Johnson demonstrated.
Nevertheless, Starmer has given far more comfort to unionism than to nationalism with his public utterances on the question.
In 2021, when asked in Belfast about his stance during a border poll, said: “I personally, as leader of the Labour Party, believe in the United Kingdom strongly, and would want to make the case for a United Kingdom strongly and will be doing that.”
Two years later, he said that a border poll is “not even on the horizon” — a more significant statement then than now, in some respects, because the campaign for such a referendum has now stalled but at that point had more energy amid the post-Brexit chaos.
In sending Hilary Benn to be his Northern Ireland Secretary, he appointed a far more consequential figure than recent Tory secretaries of state.
That's important not only from his perspective in that someone of heft should be able to resolve problems before they land with him, but is also important for the Union.
The despatching to Belfast of demonstrably absurd figures showed contempt for the difficult position of Secretary of State — and plenty of openminded voters would have seen it as contempt for them.
Alongside this, Taoiseach Micheál Martin has made clear he has no interest in a border poll by 2030, as Sinn Féin and others like Ireland's Future are demanding.
A lot is riding on Starmer
On both sides of the Irish border, much is riding on Starmer. He has prioritised renewed warm relations with the Republic - something which in the Prime Minister's worldview not only makes strategic sense for the UK, but is informed by the personal knowledge of a Cork man, Morgan McSweeney, at his right hand.
Labour is not alone in being a contradictory party. On the one hand, the party shares a link with the nationalist SDLP, yet at the same time it is pro-Union.
It allows members to join in Northern Ireland — and plenty have done so — yet refuses to allow any of them to stand for election, meaning that it prevented the people of Northern Ireland from voting for the government which sets their taxes, decides on their pension, and might send their sons and daughters to war.
Yet for most of the critical group of undecided people in Northern Ireland who have the power to decide its constitutional future, this Labour administration is the least worst option.
Starmer is boring and many of these people want politics to become boring again, fading into technocratic competence rather than the excitement of incessant crises.
To those people, a Reform administration would be almost as discombobulating as Brexit.
Even if he didn't grant a border poll, Farage could do immense damage to the Union through slashing funding for Stormont — something in line with his English nationalism — or cosying up to his friend Donald Trump.
The UK survived two uniquely divisive PMs in Boris Johnson and Liz Truss; it might not survive a third.
