Loyalist Ulster Democratic Party leader Gary McMichael today warned that he would be forced to resign if it changed its policy on the Good Friday Agreement. With signs that a majority of members of the UDP, which is linked to the largest paramilitary grouping, the Ulster Defence Association, is now anti-Agreement, Mr McMichael said he would have to review his position as leader.
He told the BBC's Inside Politics programme: “If we take it to extremes and there would be in the future some absolute reversal of policy, then someone who is fundamentally and irreversibly pro-Agreement, I would have to consider whether I would be the best person to argue the new policy.”
But Mr McMichael denied he has been told that unless he changed his policy, he would be removed as leader. This latest development could raise fears among security chiefs of further tension among the two main loyalist groupings, the UDA and the Ulster Volunteer Force, which recently ended a bitter feud that left seven men dead.
Security sources reported that anti-Agreement members of the UDA had allied themselves with dissident groups such as the Loyalist Volunteer Force against the pro-Agreement UVF. The LVF recently issued a statement warning it would hit back against any group that attacked its members. This was in response to a gun attack on one of its supporters in Portadown last weekend.
Sources within the UDP say three quarters of the party is now anti-Agreement and they are calling for a change in policy to reflect hardened attitudes. Mr McMichael conceded there was a challenge within his party to change policy. He said the leadership was currently consulting with its membership to gauge their opinions.
But he said that there was a responsibility on those turning against the current political process to provide an alternative strategy to enhance the unionist position. He added that, up to now, opposing forces within unionism had singularly failed to come up with an alternative policy.
