Unionist opposition to the Good Friday Agreement in 1999 was “complex” and “multi-layered”, former First Minister Arlene Foster said as she paid tribute to a late colleague on Tuesday.
She was speaking in Limavady in memory of David Brewster, a well-known figure from the Co Derry town who in the late 1990s was – alongside Mrs Foster – part of a group dubbed the ‘baby barristers’ who opposed the Agreement from within the UUP.
Mr Brewster, a prominent solicitor in Limavady who was also well-known for his involvement with Limavady United FC, the Orange Order and local politics, passed away suddenly in 2021.
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Mrs Foster, now a Baroness in the House of Lords, delivered a memorial lecture for Mr Brewster at the Limavady Orange Heritage Centre, where she reflected on their time together in the Ulster Unionist Party during a seminal time in Northern Ireland’s history.
“He was a formidable force in Ulster politics, not least here in his home town of Limavady,” the former DUP leader said.
“He was slightly ahead of me, I think about six years older than me, and he really made his presence felt within the party and indeed outside of the party, alongside Drew Nelson [the late Orange Order Grand Secretary] and someone else called Jeffrey Donaldson – I wonder whatever happened to him?”
She continued: “When the Belfast Agreement came along, six of us with legal backgrounds in the UUP were sceptical of the Agreement and thought there were issues around the release of prisoners, around the RUC, around the accountability of ministers at the Assembly, and of course the legacy of the past wasn’t really dealt with at all. We were asking questions of our own party and we were asking questions of the government of the day, and the Prime Minister of the day Tony Blair.
"The press called us ‘baby Barristers’. In fact, three of us were barristers and three of us were solicitors – myself, David and Drew.
“And then after the Agreement, we campaigned to get a fair implementation of the Agreement for unionism. Of course in 2003 the departing of myself and Jeffrey to the DUP was a very difficult call. Whilst David and others stayed in the Ulster Unionist Party, it was never quite the same.
"David was, at his core, a unionist who believed in devolution.
“I think what a lot of people misunderstood about David, and those of us who were opposed the Belfast Agreement at the time, is that we wanted devolution – just not at the terms set out in the Belfast Agreement. We weren’t anti-agreement, we were pro-agreement actually, but we were not in favour of the Belfast Agreement at that time.”
She added: “I tell you this because sometimes people portray, or want to portray, people like myself and David in a one-dimensional way – they are anti-agreement, they are not interested in moving forward in peace – and that is just so wrong. People are multi-layered and complex, and that certainly was the case with David.”
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