Decent, courageous and principled, Oliver Napier tried to cross the Northern Ireland’s deep and bitter sectarian divide at a time when many other politicians in the Province were doing the opposite, making a target of himself during the worst and most febrile moments of the Troubles.
A committed Catholic, he came close to capturing the loyalist citadel of East Belfast for the Alliance party, of which he was a founding member, in the 1979 general election, polling only 928 votes fewer than Peter Robinson, who took the seat for Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party and is today Northern Ireland’s First Minister.
The closeness of the result was a powerful message at the time in one of Northern Ireland’s least Catholic constituencies that religious differences were not such a great barrier after all to finding a peaceful and democratic solution to the Province’s seemingly intractable and tribal divide.
He took great pleasure in seeing Naomi Long’s victory for the Alliance in taking the Westminster seat from Robinson at the last General Election.
He lived to see two ministries in the current Stormont executive go to the Alliance, including the justice portfolio which he held briefly in its last reincarnation as head of the Office of Law Reform in the power-sharing arrangements that followed the 1973 Sunningdale Agreement.
Advertisement
Many of Northern Ireland’s leading politicians today from the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein were at the forefront of the successful and violent campaign to smash the Sunningdale experiment. Napier appealed to the British government during the Ulster Workers Council strike to bring in troops to prevent the closure of the Ballylumford power station to no avail.
Alliance may be only the Province’s fifth largest party today but the politics which Napier espoused as long ago as the late 1960s — when the Troubles were about to ignite — are today the mainstream consensus.
Oliver John Napier was born in Belfast in 1935 on the feast day of Saint Oliver Plunkett and raised in a Catholic middle-class family as the eldest son of solictor James Napier and his wife Sheila Bready. He was brought up to believe that there was no essential difference between Catholics and Protestants. He was educated at St Malachy’s College and Queen’s University Belfast, obtaining a law degree before joining his father’s practice.
As Northern Ireland slid towards chaos at the end of a decade which had begun with high hopes of a new era of tolerance, Napier chose to enter politics first through the Ulster Liberal Party and then the New Ulster Movement, both moderate voices. He resisted overtures to join the newly formed Social and Democratic Labour Party (SDLP) but failed to persuade his friend Gerry Fitt (obituary, August 27, 2005) the MP for West Belfast, to do the same.
Instead, with his friend Bob Cooper, he formed the Alliance party. He became leader in 1973 and joined the power-sharing negotiations which formed the basis of the Sunningdale Agreement. He served as a minister from January 1974 until its demise in May that year, the experiment shattered by the competing antagonisms of Unionist and Republican extremism.
Advertisement
A pragmatist, he tried to break the strike called by Ian Paisley which paralysed the Province by seeking ways to dilute the all-Ireland dimension of the Sunningdale Agreement. But this initiative was thwarted by the SDLP’s opposition. It would be more than another two decades of violence before the Good Friday Agreement — “Sunningdale for slow learners” as it was nicknamed — revived a similar power-sharing deal.
In the intervening years, Napier remained at the political forefront of moderation. He served on a number of failed initiatives, including the constitutional convention (1975-76); Belfast city council (1977-89); and in the assembly (1982-86).
When he resigned as party leader in 1984, Douglas Hurd, then the Northern Ireland Secretary, said that everyone who had sought a political solution to the complexities of the Province owed Napier a deep debt of gratitude.
The following year he was knighted in the Queen’s birthday honours and it was with characteristic courage that he accepted, a brave choice at the time for a man whose home in earlier years had been burnt to the ground by a mob.
He had a wry sense of humour. During the 1979 general election he made the song Oliver’s Army by Elvis Costello his campaign tune. In a later election campaign he mischievously dared to appropriate the Republican slogan “Tiocfaidh ar la” — our day will come — at the count centre, horrifying his Unionist opponents.
Advertisement
When a political rival tried to pull a stunt during a visit by Tony Blair, to the town of Holywood, Napier’s wife Briege stepped in with a wildly swinging handbag to defend the Prime Minister.
He was opposed to the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, signed by Margaret Thatcher and Garret FitzGerald (obituary, May 20), on the grounds that it was dishonourable to the Unionist community which had not been consulted. He was at his happiest in his garden, growing vegetables and teaching his children how to cultivate and rear animals. He had a thirst for knowledge, was an avid reader and had a love for languages, especially Spanish.
He is survived by his wife, whom he married in 1961, three sons and five daughters. A son predeceased him.
Sir Oliver Napier, Northern Ireland politician, was born on July 11, 1935. He died on July 2, 2011, aged 75