Sir Josias Cunningham, who died on August 8th aged 66, was the president of the Ulster Unionist Council and a key confidant and adviser to James (now Lord) Molyneaux, who led the party from 1979 to 1995 and his currently besieged successor, David Trimble.
Working with great skill and diplomacy behind the scenes, he played a pivotal role in the successful struggle to hold the once all-powerful and unchallenged party together as it threatened to fragment or even disintegrate at various pressure points throughout the turbulent 30 years of the Troubles.
Unyielding in his belief that Northern Ireland was and should remain an integral and valued component of the United Kingdom, he nevertheless adopted a neutral position and played a crucial role in maintaining party unity in the 1980s. As the party debated whether the union was best protected by pushing for parity with Scotland and Wales or to instead forge peace based on a political arrangement which would involve nationalists sharing power with unionists in Belfast, he exerted a stabilising influence - holding the party together while providing direction and leadership.
His steadfastness was also the telling factor in inspiring the party to stand its ground and hold its nerve despite being pressured by the British government on the one hand and the diehard Rev Ian Paisley on the other.
Under his guidance and with his consent, Molyneaux opted to play a long game, slowing down and frustrating the British government's game-plan by protracting or boycotting negotiations. The skill with which he also resisted Paisley's alternating bluster and blandishments was heavily choreographed by Josias Cunningham.
When Molyneaux ran out of credibility with the government and the party, he swung in behind the new leader, David Trimble, with comparative influence and helped steer him through the rapids of the peace process as it gathered force in the aftermath of the republican and loyalist ceasefires in the autumn of 1994.
As the negotiating ground around the Ulster Unionists narrowed in the run-up to the Belfast Agreement, concluded on Good Friday, April 1998, Josias Cunningham was again at the heart of the process, this time recognising, albeit grudgingly, that realpolitik and the forces of history now compelled Unionists to make an historic compromise with the rest of Ireland.
As the implementation of the deal, which almost evenly divided the UUP into two camps, for and against it, started and stalled, he continued working at Trimble's shoulder to hold the sundered party together. He it was, who was trusted enough by both sides, to hold the post-dated letters of resignation that enabled Trimble and his ministers to enter into government with Sinn Fein before decommissioning of IRA weapons had even begun and to trigger their withdrawal again as the deadlock continued.
His considerable skills as a political fixer helped ensure a new breakthrough in May and to again narrowly persuade the ruling Ulster Unionist Council that it should participate in the Belfast administration and the collateral North-South and intergovernmental co-operation bodies.
At the time of his death, he was helping to revise the role and structure of the council and party to bring it more closely into tune with modern needs and demands, not least by severing the umbilical cord with the Orange Order, of which he was a member, attached to the Eldon Lodge in Belfast, whose members include Sir Reg Empey and John Taylor. This work is seen as essential if the party is to end its internecine strife and emerge again as the dominant force and voice of unionism.
Although he was the longstanding and defining power behind the unionist throne, he remained, until recent times, an utterly anonymous figure to all but those with the most intimate appreciation of the way the Ulster Unionist Party conceived its policies and groomed its frontmen.
In the pro-agreement upper echelons of the party, facing renewed combat with its opponents this autumn, there is already nervous anxiety about the consequences of the vacuum left at the heart of the organisation by his sudden death.
He will not be easy to replace for there are no longer "big house" unionist dynasties, with the impeccable pedigree of the Cunninghams. Sir Josias Cunningham, was born in Co Antrim on January 20th 1934 and educated at Fettes College, Edinburgh. After graduating from Cambridge with an MA in biological sciences, he joined the family stockbroking firm in Belfast, which had been founded in 1843, and continued to farm at Templepatrick, earning acclaim as a prize-winning cattle breeder while his wife, Anne, matched his achievements with horses.
The wealthy family also controlled the Northern Whig newspaper until it was closed down in the 1960's. With one uncle, Sir Knox Cunningham, a long-serving Unionist MP at Westminster, and another, Lt Col James Glencairn Cunningham, president and patron of the Ulster Unionist Party, it was inevitable that he would become involved in politics. Emerging from his local South Antrim Unionist Association he first became a party officer in 1974 and was elected president of the Ulster Unionist Council in 1990. Known inside the party as "the money man", he used his extensive business contacts and acumen to help keep the party financially, as well as politically, viable. He served as chairman of the Belfast Stock Exchange from 1973 to 1976, was appointed Deputy Lieutenant of Co Antrim and was knighted in January 2000. Josias Cunningham is survived by his wife Anne; sons Stephen and Jonathan and daughters Penny and Miranda.
Sir Josias Cunningham: born 1934; died, August 2000