Sir Oliver Napier was leader of the Alliance Party during some of the most crucial events of the Northern Ireland Troubles. Here he describes in detail the talks at Sunningdale in December 1973 which led to the setting up of the power sharing Executive at Stormont, including a bruising encounter with the Prime Minister Ted Heath, an insider's view of day to day running of Northern Ireland's short-lived first effort at cross community government, the sometimes brutal behaviour he witnessed in the Assembly during the tense days of early 1974, and the drama and anguish of the UWC strike and the Fall of the Executive in May 1974. As a minister in the Executive he attended a key meeting with Harold Wilson at the time of the UWC strike, and here talks of his horror and fury at Wilson's notorious "spongers speech", which he believes was a deliberate attempt to finish off the Executive.
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