Table talk
Sir: I should answer Sir Denis Brogan's questions to me in your issue of 13 December. He asks whether there have been any Ulster Cabinet ministers who were not members of the Orange Order. Without deep research I can tell him that there is at present one member of the Northern Ireland Cabinet who is not a member of the Order, and the Rev Robert Moore, who died a few years ago, and was for many years Minister of Agriculture, was never an Orangeman.
As to Unionist Members of Parliament, again, without examining the particulars of each and every MP, I can tell him of at least five serving members who are not in the Order.
No, it is not true that no Roman_Catholic could, until recently, be a member of the Ulster Unionist party. Indeed many years ago there was a Roman Catholic Unionist Member of Parliament for my own area of Londonderry, who became a member of the Northern Ire- land, government and subsequently Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland.
The late Colonel Conolly McCausland was a Vice-President of one of my own Unionist Asso- ciations. Of course there have been hundreds of others because the only overriding criterion for membership of the Unionist party is an acceptance of the constitutional position of Northern Ireland.
The fact that it is easier, today, to point to larger numbers of Roman Catholic members of the Unionist party could be because there is a much greater acceptance of the con- stitutional position than before.
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