During the campaign, there were riots in Divis Street when the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) removed an Irish flag from the Sinn Féin offices of Billy McMillen.
He left the UUP in 1977[6] in opposition to the party's policies tending to integrationism,[clarification needed] preferring to advocate the restoration of the Stormont administration.
He contested the 1979 European Parliament Election under that label, finishing fourth in the count for the three seats, having overtaken the UUP leader Harry West on transfers.
This was the same day that the Belfast Telegraph carried a front-page story saying that an Ulster MP had been targeted as one of twenty MPs invited by the LGBT rights organisation OutRage!
Kilfedder was described as "a phenomenon or perhaps a left-over from a remote era of Northern Irish politics when Ulster was represented by such figures as Lord Robert Grosvenor, Major Robin Chichester-Clark, Stratton Mills, and Rafton Pounder.
At the 1987 election count, in his victory speech, Kilfedder had "attacked his rival's supporters as 'a rag tag collection of people who shame the name of civil rights.'
Kilfedder's personal and political papers (including constituency affairs) are held at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, reference D4127.