Kennedy Lindsay
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Kennedy Lindsay (1924-1997) was a Northern Ireland politician and a leading advocate of Ulster nationalism.
Born in Saskatchewan, Canada to a family with an Ulster background, Lindsay returned to Ireland to be educated at Trinity College, Dublin and, after securing his PhD, took up lecturing posts in North America and Nigeria before eventually settling in Northern Ireland and lecturing in the School of Humanities at the University of Ulster, Coleraine.
Lindsay entered politics as a member of the Vanguard Progressive Unionist Party and was elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly set up under the 1973 Sunningdale Agreement to represent that party. His 'Eight Point Ulster Plan', produced for the Loyalist Association of Workers, had garnered him much attention and he soon rose to become on of the most prominent members of the Vanguard. The main points of the plan can be summarized as follows:
- The sole task for the future must be to destroy the Irish Republican Army
- The British government must commit to governing Northern Ireland in the same way as the rest of the United Kingdom
- The government must fully identify itself as being with the Ulster people and abandon any notions of being simply a neutral arbiter
- The security forces must be strengthened for war on the IRA
- More local personnel must be recruited to the Royal Ulster Constabulary and Ulster Defence Regiment.
- The Ulster Defence Association should be incorporated into the security forces
- The British Army and the police must be given vastly improved weapons and techniques
- The government must induce the Republic of Ireland to stop harbouring IRA members.
Deeply opposed to the Assembly, Lindsay had also grown disillusioned with unionism, and began to call for implementation of the ideas of W. F. McCoy, who had earlier called for Northern Ireland to be granted Dominion status. He felt that his plan, which he had intended to strengthen the Union, had been ignored and so moved to a more formal separation for Northern Ireland. In 1972 he published a paper entitled 'Dominion of Ulster' in which he likened Irish Nationalists to the pre-World War two Sudeten Germans and described the late Stormont era as Ulster's "Vichy period" [1]
Lindsay underlined this new-found commitment when, in 1975, he set up the Ulster Dominion Group, which would emerge as the British Ulster Dominion Party in 1977. The party contested local elections without success and also produced a newspaper, The Ulsterman, which enjoyed wider circulation than the party had support.
Lindsay withdrew from politics after it became clear that the BUDP was not going to get anywhere. He then turned his attention to writing books about the British secret service operations in Northern Ireland, including Ambush at Tullywest and The British Intelligence Services in Action. He briefly returned in 1982 to stand in an Assembly election in South Antrim as a candidate for the United Ulster Unionist Party, although he and his running mate Samuel Larmour came bottom of the poll.
In 1996 Lindsay made an even briefer return when he formed the British Ulster Unionist Party with the intention of standing in elections to the Northern Ireland Forum but in the event the party did not run any candidates.
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