Oliver Napier

Now, at last, they would be in a position to break the strike.

On the 24th of May, Faulkner, Oliver Napier of the Alliance Party and Gerry Fitt, leader of the SDLP, second in the Executive, and a Member of Parliament for West Belfast, met the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, at Shackers, his stately office in Buckinghamshire.

Napier came with Ken Bloomfield, the Senior Civil Servant of the Executive, and his Senior Advisor, Tom Roberts.

All three were helicoptered in the Aldergrove airport, where, joining Faulkner, they took a plane bound for RAF Northolt.

And from the minutes we see the colonel of Harold Wilson's later speech was forming, the idea of a prime ministerial broadcast also arose during this meeting, says Faulkner in his memoirs, and it was agreed that Wilson and I should both broadcast to the nation the following day.

The content of Wilson's speech was also formed here.

The neo-fascist thugs, the fact that he was assured that the vast majority wanted to work, the fact that he was assured by Oliver Napier, the head of the Alliance Party, that the UWC were going to take control of food distribution in the next week, and the assurance that the UWC would avoid direct confrontation and go into retreat.

He was also assured by FIT that the UDA were intervening to control the distribution of welfare payments, now in a state of virtual collapse.