Lord McConnell of Lisburn, who died on October 24th aged 77, was a late example of how the Ulster Unionist old boys' network in South Antrim could survive for a former political figure.
Outside the mainstream of political life for nearly 30 years, he returned in 1995 after John Major lost his government majority in the Commons and offered concessions to the Ulster Unionists to prevent them throwing in their votes with Labour to bring the Conservatives down.
One of the douceurs offered was additional representation in the House of Lords. When the Ulster Unionists' leader, James Molyneaux, offered the then Brian McConnell a peerage, it was understood he would like a friendly echo on Ulster in the Lords, into which he himself would soon be retiring. But it still came with some surprise because, as the province's commissioner for national insurance and social security, Brian McConnell had been out of politics for nearly 30 years.
In June 1966, he had become the fall guy for failing to anticipate, as home affairs minister at Stormont, a disruptive demonstration by the Rev Ian Paisley at a meeting of the Presbyterian General Assembly. All the Ulster bigwigs in attendance were jostled and harangued, including the Northern Ireland governor, Lord Erskine.
It was Brian McConnell's head that was selected to roll, although he was in London at the time. He was reproached and demoted, and took the hint that his political life was over. This came as a shock to someone whose future seemed so bright that he had been made a privy counsellor only two years earlier, at the age of 42, as one of the then Ulster leader Terence O'Neill's bright young men.
Lord McConnell was born into a well-connected farming family in Belfast. After Sedbergh School, he returned to Northern Ireland to study law at Queen's University, and was called to the Bar in 1948.
As an Ulster Unionist and member of the Orange Order in South Antrim, he had a cushy entry into Stormont, being elected in 1951, then re-elected unopposed in 1953 and 1962, before being returned in 1965, this time after beating a Labour opponent. A whip by 1962, then deputy chairman of ways and means, by 1963, he had become parliamentary secretary for health, before moving, the following year, to the vulnerable post of home affairs minister.
Because his legal career had not flourished, in 1968, he took the option of becoming, for 19 years, the province's national insurance commissioner. For much of the time, he was also president of the local industrial court.
One of the things that surprised Ulster Unionists when Lord McConnell's name emerged again in 1995, was the difference between his views and those of his leader on Europe. Molyneaux was, and remains, a strong Eurosceptic, while Lord McConnell was a long-time vice-chairman and chairman of Ulster's European Movement.
He leaves his wife of 49 years, Sylvia Elizabeth Joyce (nee Agnew), two sons and a daughter.
Lord McConnell of Lisburn (Robert William Brian McConnell): born 1922; died, October 2000