Word: caucus
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...hope proved hollow. Before the convention delegates could reassemble, the three principal parties of the Protestant United Ulster Unionist Coalition caucused at Stormont. Among the subjects discussed was the convention's mandate: that some formula be found for power sharing acceptable both to Ulster's 1 million Protestants and 500,000 Catholics. In the caucus debates, William ("King Billy") Craig, leader of the militant Vanguard Unionist Progressive Party, emerged in the unlikely role of moderate. Long a hardliner, Craig now was urging that Catholic moderates be considered for Cabinet posts, though only on a temporary, emergency basis...
Even this minimal suggestion was more than the intransigent Rev. Ian Paisley could swallow. Following Paisley's lead the caucus voted 37 to 1 to reject any power sharing with Catholics on the Cabinet level; Craig was the lone holdout...
Gloomy Convention. Angry in defeat, Craig resigned his leadership of the Vanguard Party's contingent, objecting that the caucus had "slammed the door" on the Catholics of the Social Democratic and Labor Party (S.D.L.P.). When the Constitutional Convention gathered gloomily later in the week, Catholic S.D.L.P. members did not attend, declaring that "there is nothing to be gained from further divisive debate...
...later Assad's Baath Party called the Sinai agreement "strange and disgraceful," and Assad pointedly refused to receive Egyptian Vice President Husny Mobarak when he appeared to explain the Egyptian view. In Israel, as she made a rare political appearance to vote for ratification at a Labor Party caucus, former Premier Golda Meir said she greeted the second-stage agreement "not with a fanfare but also not with a feeling of mourning...
...approve the ordination of homosexual ministers, a conservative caucus warned that the move "will precipitate the most divisive climate since the slavery controversy split American Methodism in 1847." Acknowledging this, the youth council has called instead for a churchwide study on human sexuality. Episcopalians expect a similarly divisive controversy if the gays succeed in bringing the issue before the church's general convention next year...