Republican News · Thursday 9 January 2003

Burnside went for PR post with UDA

Ulster Unionist MP David Burnside has admitted that he went for the job as media spokesperson for the UDA in the mid 1970s.

Burnside, who refuses to talk to Sinn Féin, confessed that he was interviewed by Ulster Defence Association commander Andy Tyrie for the post of public relations officer in 1977.

The South Antrim MP revealed that two years after he left his job as press officer for the Vanguard movement, he was approached by UDA chief Andy Tyrie who asked him if he could "help improve the UDA image which was in a terrible state at the time".

Burnside said he was friendly and had a lot of time for Tyrie: "I thought he was a clever political leader and responsible."

Burnside said he knew Tyrie from his work with the Vanguard Movement, an umbrella group comprising of loyalist and unionist organisations which had strong support from loyalist paramilitaries, including the UDA. Martin Smyth, now MP for South Belfast and former Grand Master of the Orange Order, was also a member of the Ulster Vanguard Movement.

Burnside refused to take the job with the UDA because they wouldn't pay him the salary he wanted, not because he had any moral hangups over the UDA's killing campaign against Catholics.

According to newspaper reports, Burnside quoted what he thought was a reasonable salary for the job, but Tyrie choked on his coffee and said the amount was far too prohibitive.

Reacting to the revelations, South Antrim Sinn Féin councillor Martin Meehan accused Burnside of hypocrisy.

"David Burnside tries to take the moral high ground but his secret past has come back to haunt him, it just shows him up for the sham he is," said Meehan.

"He refused to shake my hand at a public meeting even though I'm an elected representative but now it has emerged that he had no problem with meeting the leader of an organisation that carried out almost 500 killings, the majority of them of Catholics."

Burnside, a former soldier with the Ulster Defence Regiment [UDR], became a press officer for the British Institute of Directors in 1979 and it is understood he considered joining Tory Central Office in 1984 before he joined British Airways, where he was director of publicity.