IN view of this week's outbreak of hostilities within the small UK Unionist Party and the split between leader Bob McCartney and his members, the following extract on page 430 of Memoir: My Life and Themes by Conor Cruise O'Brien, who recently ceded from the party, is particularly interesting: "Bob and his wife Maureen and Maire and myself soon became close friends. Even apart from politics, we have many interests in common and - no less important - keen. . . senses of humour. And their friends and close partners - Cedric Wilson and his Eva, Paddy Roche and his wife Liz - soon became our friends also. It was quite a contrast with the often stormy patterns at work within the Irish Labour Party, the only political party to which I had ever previously belonged. As this was a belated experience what it brought to mind was Auden's lines about Herman Melville `towards the end he sailed into an extraordinary mildness'."