JOHN Taylor is well used to having his opinions directly questioned, but what cannot be disputed is that his range of political experience – which stretches back over 60 years – is unparalleled in these islands.

When I first met him while covering Castlereagh Borough Council back in the late 1980s, in the days before restrictions on multiple mandates were introduced, he was an elected member of both that body and the House of Commons, and approaching the end of his 10-year term in the European Parliament.

He had also previously been an MP and minister in the old Stormont administration, as well as serving in the Constitutional Convention, the Northern Ireland Forum and the versions of the legislative assembly which were launched in 1973, 1982 and 1998, while he went on to become Ulster Unionist deputy leader and remains a peer of the realm today.

It is an extraordinary record, requiring him to take on many different roles, but what has never changed is the way in which he likes to mix a sense of gravitas with a tendency to cause either controversy or mischief.

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His decision to tell his fellow unionists, in the course of an intriguing Irish News interview with Alex Kane last week, that a united Ireland was inevitable was, in many ways, a classic Taylor intervention, demonstrating that, even at the age of 88, he still enjoys being at the centre of attention.

It was something of a surprise when he stretched his involvement beyond the grandiose surroundings of Strasbourg and Westminster almost four decades ago to take in a more functional setting on the Cregagh Road in east Belfast – now the headquarters of the Orange Order – but the tactical reasons soon emerged.

Castlereagh council was very much the power base of Peter Robinson, who, as the then deputy leader of the DUP, was using every means at his disposal during an ultimately successful campaign to overtake Taylor’s Ulster Unionist Party as the dominant voice within unionism.

Taylor set out to challenge Robinson’s authority in his own back yard during the pre-devolution era, and I watched from the press desk as the two heavyweights confronted each other directly at the monthly council meetings.

There was no love lost between them, with the flamboyant Iris Robinson tending to target Taylor even more firmly than her husband, and there were unexpected developments as other councillors actively joined the argument.

One angry Robinson supporter moved from verbal exchanges to jumping up, gesticulating and barging ominously past my seat to within inches of Taylor, who impassively stared him out before order was restored.

Taylor, who still carried the scars from an appalling Official IRA gun attack which almost killed him near his Armagh home in 1972, was at that stage guarded by two plain clothes RUC officers, but, assuming that any threats would be external, in a council without a single nationalist representative, they sat in the corridor outside the chamber.

When I discussed the episode with him afterwards, he responded with good humour to my tongue-in-cheek suggestion that places might need to be found between the rival unionist benches for his armed escorts.

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Kane was fully entitled to challenge Taylor over his frequently unacceptable barbs against perceived nationalists down the years, with the latter agreeing that at times his comments had been “crass and offensive”, while it is also worth separately acknowledging that he has been one of very few senior unionists who have been prepared to consistently oppose the slaughter in Gaza since 2023, accusing Israel of war crimes.

Particular attention has focused one aspect of his conversation with Kane, when he declared: “…the reality that there is going to be a united Ireland. Unionists need to be prepared for that if we are to avoid more violence”.

Other unionists have come to the same conclusion, but prefer to keep their thoughts to themselves, with one of Stormont’s most prominent DUP figures known to have conceded privately to an opponent in recent years over the certainty of the demographic trends, while insisting that he would still strive to delay unity for as long as the electoral arithmetic permitted.

Taylor, as ever, offered a much more open and blunt assessment, advising unionists that voters in Britain were not interested in them, and, together with nationalists, they should start seriously considering the kind of northern institutions which could evolve within a united Ireland.

Those who have expressed similar views in the past have regularly been dismissed by critics as not understanding the history and fundamental principles of unionism, but, given the unique nature and duration of his public career, that is not a charge which can easily be made against the veteran polemicist officially known as Baron Kilclooney.

n.doran@irishnews.com

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