179-742: The Ulster Unionist Party ( UUP ) is a unionist political party in Northern Ireland . The party was founded as the Ulster Unionist Council in 1905, emerging from the Irish Unionist Alliance in Ulster . Under Edward Carson , it led unionist opposition to the Irish Home Rule movement . Following the partition of Ireland , it was the governing party of Northern Ireland between 1921 and 1972. It
358-675: A period of Protestant–Catholic sectarian conflict , as a fraternity sworn to maintain the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland. The all-island Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland was established in 1798. Its name is a tribute to the Dutch-born Protestant king William of Orange , who defeated Catholic king James II in the Williamite–Jacobite War (1689–1691). The Order is best known for its yearly marches ,
537-650: A Belfast parliament (they did not develop an express nationalism of their own), but in summarising The Case Against Home Rule (1912), L. S. Amery did insist that "if Irish Nationalism constitutes a nation, then Ulster is a nation too". Faced with the eventual enactment of Home Rule, Carson appeared to press this argument. On 28 September 1912, Ulster Day, he was the first to sign, in Belfast City Hall, Ulster's Solemn League and Covenant . This bound signatories "to stand by one another in defending for ourselves and our children our position of equal citizenship in
716-620: A Catholic funeral for a young boy killed by the Real IRA in the Omagh bombing . In a sign of unity, Trimble and President of Ireland Mary McAleese walked into the church together. In the 2001 general election, the Ulster Unionists lost a number of seats belonging to UUP stalwarts; for example, John Taylor , the former deputy leader of the party, lost his seat of Strangford to Iris Robinson . The party's misfortunes continued at
895-587: A Catholic tradition of support for the union, focused on the value of stability and of empire, survived the first home-rule crisis. But it did not share the majority unionist conviction that any measure of devolution within the United Kingdom must lead to separation. Nor did it supply unionism with the equivalent of the Protestants who, individually, played a prominent role in home-rule and separatist politics. A handful of Irish Conservatives, drawn from
1074-552: A Catholic, had helped devise a scheme for administrative devolution involving an Irish council of both elected and nominated members. Balfour, now prime minister, was obliged to disavow the scheme and Wyndham, pressed to deny his complicity, resigned. The uproar assisted the Liberal return to office in December. The road to Catholicism's identification with constitutional Irish nationalism was "far from smooth and immediate", and
1253-405: A The Government of Ireland Bill that was largely of his own drafting. Unionists were not persuaded by his inclusion of measures to limit the remit of a Dublin legislature and to reduce the weight of the popular vote (the 200 or so popularly elected members were to sit in session with 28 Irish Peers and a further 75 Members elected on a highly restrictive property franchise). Regardless of how it
1432-571: A barn which was then set alight, with the Catholic and Protestant rebels ensuring none escaped, not even a child who it is claimed managed to break out only for a rebel to kill with his pike. In the trials that followed the massacres, evidence was recorded of anti-Orange sentiments being expressed by the rebels at Scullabogue. Partly as a result of this atrocity, the Orange Order quickly grew and large numbers of gentry with experience gained in
1611-515: A battle when the priest who accompanied the Defenders persuaded them to seek a truce, after a group called the "Bleary Boys" came from County Down to reinforce the Peep o' Day Boys. When a contingent of Defenders from County Tyrone arrived on 21 September, however, they were "determined to fight". The Peep o' Day Boys quickly regrouped and opened fire on the Defenders. According to William Blacker ,
1790-620: A conquered community and nothing else". By July 1914, the Ulster Covenant had been complemented by a British Covenant organised by Alfred Milner through the Union Defence League . Nearly two million signatories declared themselves willing to "supporting any action that may be effective" to prevent the people of Ulster being deprived "of their rights as citizens of the United Kingdom". Orange Order Defunct The Loyal Orange Institution , commonly known as
1969-527: A constructive course. He pursued reforms intended, as some saw it, to kill home rule with "kindness". For the express purpose of relieving poverty and reducing emigration, in the Congested Districts of the west Balfour initiated a programme not only of public works, but of subsidy for local craft industries. Headed by the former Unionist MP for South Dublin , Horace Plunkett , a new Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction broke with
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#17327797048612148-643: A home-rule dispensation for the six north-east counties remaining in the United Kingdom. For the next 50 years, the Ulster Unionist Party exercised the devolved powers of the Northern Ireland Parliament with little domestic opposition and outside of the governing party-political system at Westminster . In 1972, the British government suspended this arrangement. Against a background of growing political violence, and citing
2327-458: A landowner who had represented Cavan as a Liberal and who had ridiculed the order's "big drums", donned an Orange sash . Saunderson, who went on to lead the Irish Unionist Alliance at Westminster, had concluded that "the Orange society is alone capable of dealing with the condition of anarchy and rebellion which prevail in Ireland". After Gladstone 's first Home Rule Bill was defeated in
2506-801: A low-level tenant-landlord war came to Westminster in 1852 when the all-Ireland Tenant Right League helped return 48 MPs to Westminster where they sat as the Independent Irish Party . What the Young Irelander Gavan Duffy called the League of North and South soon fell apart. In the South the Church approved the Catholic MPs breaking their pledge of independent opposition and accepting government positions. In
2685-660: A minority within the United Kingdom may have passed. In 1830, the leader of the Catholic Association , Daniel O'Connell , invited Protestants to join in a campaign to repeal the Union and restore the Kingdom of Ireland under the Constitution of 1782 . At the same time, the security in Ireland for emancipation was a fivefold increase in the threshold for the property franchise . O'Connell's Protestant ally in
2864-456: A more violent and jingoist vehicle for the promotion of Unionism. Some anti-Masonic evangelical Christian groups have claimed that the Orange Order is still influenced by freemasonry. Many Masonic traditions survive, such as the organisation of the Order into lodges. The Order has a similar system of degrees through which new members advance. These degrees are interactive plays with references to
3043-600: A motion on 5 March 2016 that the party "believes that on balance Northern Ireland is better remaining in the European Union, with the UK Government pressing for further reform and a return to the founding principle of free trade, not greater political union. The Party respects that individual members may vote for withdrawal." At the 2017 general election the UUP lost both of its Commons seats, losing South Antrim to
3222-735: A new Independent Orange Order (IOO). Within the year, the Independents had nine lodges in Ballymoney alone. The split had first occurred in Belfast. In laying the foundation stone of the Working Men's Institute in Belfast in 1870, William Johnston had welcomed Catholics and Protestants uniting "around the flag of 'The United Working Classes of Belfast' determined to show that there are times and circumstances when religious differences and party creeds must be forgotten". Others within
3401-548: A new Northern Ireland legislature and executive. Renegotiated in 2006, relations within this consociational arrangement remained fraught. Unionists, with diminishing electoral strength, charged their nationalist partners in government with pursuing an anti-British cultural agenda and, post- Brexit , with supporting a trade regime, the Northern Ireland Protocol , that advances an all-Ireland agenda. In February 2024, two years after their withdrawal collapsed
3580-606: A part in framing the laws of the land. The likelihood of Irish Catholic members holding the balance of power in the Westminster Parliament further increased the alarm of Orangemen in Ireland, as O'Connell's 'Repeal' movement aimed to bring about the restoration of a separate Irish Parliament in Dublin, which would have a Catholic majority, thereby ending the Protestant Ascendancy. From this moment on,
3759-556: A persecution is now raging in this country ... the only crime is ... profession of the Roman Catholic faith. Lawless banditti have constituted themselves judges ... and the sentence they have denounced ... is nothing less than a confiscation of all property, and an immediate banishment. A former Grand Master of the Order, also called William Blacker, and a former County Grand Master of Belfast, Robert Hugh Wallace have questioned this statement, saying whoever
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#17327797048613938-429: A politician and a member of this parliament afterwards ... All I boast is that we have a Protestant Parliament and a Protestant State ". At its peak in 1965, the Order's membership was around 70,000, which meant that roughly 1 in 5 adult Ulster Protestant males were members. Since 1965, it has lost a third of its membership, especially in Belfast and Derry. The Order's political influence suffered greatly after
4117-511: A quarter of the UUP membership came from Fermanagh and South Tyrone , the constituency of Elliott. The Dublin-based political magazine, the Phoenix , described Elliott as a "blast from the past" and said that his election signified "a significant shift to the right" by the UUP. Shortly after his election, three 2010 general election candidates resigned: Harry Hamilton, Paula Bradshaw and Trevor Ringland . Bradshaw and Hamilton subsequently joined
4296-418: A reformed Northern Ireland Assembly . As of February 2024, they no longer do so as the larger faction: they serve in an executive with an Irish republican ( Sinn Féin ) First Minister . Unionism became an overarching partisan affiliation in Ireland late in the nineteenth century. Typically Presbyterian agrarian-reform Liberals coalesced with traditionally Anglican Orange Order Conservatives against
4475-681: A senior Orange fraternity. Since the Fenian -organised funeral in Dublin for Terence McManus in 1861, Johnston had been asking: "If Nationalists are allowed such mobilisation, why are loyal Orangemen not allowed to march freely". On the Orange Twelfth 1867, he forced the issue by leading a large procession of Orangemen from Bangor to Newtownards in County Down . The contravention of the Party Procession Act earned him
4654-484: A separate Ulster Unionist Party became entrenched as it took control of the new Government of Northern Ireland , established in 1921. Carson strongly opposed the partition of Ireland and the end of unionism as an all-Ireland political force, so he refused the opportunity to be Prime Minister of Northern Ireland or even to sit in the Northern Ireland House of Commons , citing a lack of connection with
4833-659: A separation of north and south, with Belfast as the capital of its own "distinct kingdom". In response to the First Home rule Bill in 1886, Radical Unionists (Liberals who proposed federalising the relationship between all countries of the United Kingdom) likewise argued that "the Protestant part of Ulster should receive special treatment . . . on grounds identical with those that support the general contention for Home Rule" Ulster Protestants expressed no interest in
5012-555: A stroke in 1898 to democratically elected councils), the old landlord class had the terms of their retirement fixed by the Wyndham Land Act of 1903. This reduced, but did not in itself resolve, agrarian tensions, even in the north. In 1906, Thomas Russell, MP , the son of an evicted Scottish crofter , broke with the Conservatives in the Irish Unionist Alliance to be returned to Westminster from South Tyrone as
5191-520: A subsequent trial, WPSU organiser Dorothy Evans created an uproar by demanding to know why James Craig, then arming Ulster Volunteers with German rifles, was not appearing on the same weapons and explosives charges. In August 1914, suffragists in Ulster suspended their agitation for the duration of the European war. Their reward was a women's franchise in 1918 and (six years after it was granted in
5370-610: A two-month prison sentence. The following year, as the standard bearer of United Protestant Working Men's Association of Ulster, Johnston was returned to Parliament for Belfast. By the late 19th century, the Order was in decline. However, its fortunes were revived in the 1880s after its embrace by the landlords in opposition to both the Irish Land League , presided over by nationalist leader Charles Stuart Parnell , and Home Rule . In response to Gladstone 's first Irish Home Rule Bill 1886 , Colonel Edward Saunderson ,
5549-530: Is a Protestant government and I am an Orangeman". This was in response to a speech the year before by Éamon de Valera in the Irish Free State claiming that Ireland was a "Catholic nation" in a debate about protests against Protestant woman Letitia Dunbar-Harrison being appointed as County Librarian in County Mayo . Two years later he stated: "I have always said that I am an Orangeman first and
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5728-543: Is only recently that some of these intra-unionist breaches have been healed. The Drumcree dispute is perhaps the most well-known episode involving the Order since 1921. On the Sunday before 12 July each year, Orangemen in Portadown would traditionally march to-and-from Drumcree Church . Originally, most of the route was farmland, but is now the densely populated Catholic part of town. The residents have sought to re-route
5907-639: The 2007 Northern Ireland Assembly election , retaining 18 MLAs. Empey was the only leader of one of the four main parties not to be re-elected on first preference votes alone in the Assembly elections of March 2007. In July 2008, the UUP and Conservative Party announced that a joint working group had been established to examine closer ties. On 26 February 2009, the Ulster Unionist Executive and area council of Northern Ireland Conservatives agreed to field joint candidates in future elections to
6086-473: The 2019 general election , but failed to re-gain a seat. Their best result was in Fermanagh and South Tyrone, where Tom Elliott lost to Sinn Féin by 57 votes. Steve Aiken resigned on 8 May 2021, and Doug Beattie was elected as leader on 17 May 2021. Beattie, a former soldier, is perceived as a progressive unionist, and it was predicted that following his election as leader, the party would reclaim some of
6265-575: The Alliance Party of Northern Ireland in April 1970, while the emergence of Ian Paisley's Protestant Unionist Party continued to draw off some working-class and more Ulster loyalist support. In June 1973 the UUP won a majority of seats in the new Northern Ireland Assembly , but the party was divided on policy. The Sunningdale Agreement , which led to the formation of a power-sharing Executive under Ulster Unionist leader Brian Faulkner , ruptured
6444-673: The Battle of the Boyne . Since the 1690s commemorations had been held throughout Ireland celebrating key dates in the Williamite War such as the Battle of Aughrim , Battle of the Boyne , Siege of Derry and the second Siege of Limerick . These followed a tradition started in Elizabethan England of celebrating key events in the Protestant calendar. By the 1740s there were organisations holding parades in Dublin such as
6623-718: The Conservative and Orange-Order candidates of the landed Ascendancy . But as the Irish party-political successors to O'Connell's Repeal movement gained representation and influence in Westminster, Cooke's call for unity was to be heeded in the progressive emergence of a pan-Protestant unionism. Up to, and through, the Great Famine of the 1840s, successive governments, Whig and Tory, had refused political responsibility for agrarian conditions in Ireland. The issues of
6802-745: The Democratic Unionist Party among unionists. The Orange Order's name stems from the Orange Associations, a name that recognized the landing of William of Orange in England and the start of the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Its flag, known as the Boyne Standard and Orange Standard , has a field of orange with a purple star and a St. George's Cross in the upper left corner. Orange represents
6981-600: The Drumcree conflict . The Orange Order celebrates the civil and religious privileges conferred on Protestants by William of Orange , the Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic who became King of England , Scotland , and Ireland in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The Order regularly commemorates the victories of William III and his forces during the Williamite War in Ireland in the early 1690s, especially
7160-829: The Government of Ireland Bill 1893 . Although most unionist support was based in Ulster , especially within areas that later became Northern Ireland , in the late 19th and early 20th century there were unionist enclaves throughout all of Ireland. Unionists in Dublin and County Wicklow and in parts of County Cork were particularly influential. In September 1904, the Conservative government of Arthur Balfour published proposals for limited devolution to Ireland which would not amount to home rule. Coming from Conservatives, these led to great alarm among Irish unionists; in March 1905,
7339-770: The Home Rule Crisis in 1912. In 1912, at Westminster the Home Rule Crisis led to the Liberal Unionist Party merging with the Conservatives, thus giving rise to the current name of the Conservative and Unionist Party , to which the Ulster Unionist Party was formally linked, to varying degrees, until 1985. At the 1918 general election , Carson switched constituencies from Dublin University to Belfast Duncairn . After
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7518-597: The House of Commons on 8 June 1886, Irish Home-Rule MPs in the House accused the Order's Belfast Grand Master, the Church of Ireland rector Richard Rutledge Kane of fomenting the violent rioting in Belfast that took 32 lives. RIC constables had been brought in from other parts of Ireland, many of them Catholic, when revellers, celebrating the defeat, had begun attacking Catholic homes and businesses. Kane did not counter
7697-401: The Irish Convention of 1917–1918 failed to reach an understanding on home rule, and even more after the Partition of Ireland under the Government of Ireland Act 1920 , Irish unionism in effect split. Many southern unionist politicians quickly became reconciled with the new Irish Free State , sitting in its Senate or joining its political parties, while in Northern Ireland the existence of
7876-433: The Irish Free State ) equal voting rights in 1928 . In 1911 a Liberal administration was once again dependent on Irish nationalist MPs. In 1912 the Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith , introduced the Third Home Rule Bill . A more generous dispensation than the earlier bills, it would, for the first time, have given an Irish parliament an accountable executive. It was carried in the Commons by a majority of ten. As expected, it
8055-402: The Irish Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893. Joined by loyalist labour, on the eve of World War I this broad opposition to Irish self-government concentrated in Belfast and its hinterlands as Ulster unionism and prepared an armed resistance—the Ulster Volunteers . Within the partition settlement of 1921 by which the rest of Ireland attained separate statehood , Ulster unionists accepted
8234-480: The Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP). In his first ministry (1868-1874), the Liberal premier William Ewart Gladstone had attempted conciliation. In 1869, he disestablished the Church of Ireland , and in 1870 introduced the Landlord and Tenant (Ireland) Act . In both measures conservative jurists identified threats to the integrity of the union. Disestablishment reneged on the promise of "one Protestant Episcopal Church" for both Britain and Ireland under Article V of
8413-400: The Irish Trades Union Congress as tantamount to support for Home Rule. Yet loyalist workers resented the idea that they were the retainers of "big-house unionists". A manifesto signed in the spring of 1914 by two thousand labour men, rejected the suggestion of the radical and socialist press that Ulster was being manipulated by "an aristocratic plot". If Sir Edward Carson led in the battle for
8592-493: The Irish Transport and General Workers' Union leader, James Larkin . The Grand Master of the Independents, R. Lindsay Crawford outlined the new order's democratic manifesto in Orangeism, its history and progress: a plea for first principles (1904). However, his subsequent call in the Magheramorne Manifesto (1904) on Irish Protestants to "reconsider their position as Irish citizens and their attitude towards their Roman Catholic countrymen" proved too much for Sloan and most of
8771-489: The Irish language , he was in company of Henry Henry , the Catholic Bishop of Down and Connor , but also Thomas Welland , the Church of Ireland Bishop of Down, Connor and Dromore , and George Raphael Buick, Moderator of the Presbyterian Church and branch vice president. The Branch president was Kane's parishioner, Dr. John St Clair Boyd . There was a time, historian Brian Kennaway remarks, when Orangemen, still regarding themselves as Irish patriots, "had no problem with
8950-452: The Loyalist Anti-Repeal Union —sought to connect. With Gladstone's conversion to home rule, politicians who had held aloof from the Order now embraced its militancy. Colonel Edward Saunderson , who had represented Cavan as a Liberal, donned an Orange sash "because", he said "the Orange society is alone capable of dealing with the condition of anarchy and rebellion which prevail in Ireland". In February 1886, playing, in his own words,
9129-412: The National Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations , but in 1985, withdrew from it as well, in protest over the Anglo-Irish Agreement . Subsequently, the Conservative Party has organised separately in Northern Ireland, with little electoral success. Under West's leadership, the party recruited Enoch Powell , who became Ulster Unionist MP for South Down in October 1974 after defecting from
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#17327797048619308-404: The Orange Order , is an international Protestant fraternal order based in Northern Ireland and primarily associated with Ulster Protestants . It also has lodges in England , Scotland , Wales and the Republic of Ireland , as well as in parts of the Commonwealth of Nations and the United States . The Orange Order was founded by Ulster Protestants in County Armagh in 1795, during
9487-406: The Royal Ulster Constabulary in Derry because of an Apprentice Boys of Derry march, sparking days of riots. Early in 1971, Chichester-Clark flew to London to request further military aid following the 1971 Scottish soldiers' killings . When this was all but refused, he resigned to be replaced by Brian Faulkner . Faulkner's government struggled though 1971 and into 1972. After Bloody Sunday ,
9666-416: The Ulster Unionist Council decided to bring these groups under central control, creating the Ulster Volunteer Force , an Ulster-wide militia dedicated to resisting Home Rule. There was a strong overlap between Orange Lodges and UVF units. A large shipment of rifles was imported from Germany to arm them in April 1914, in what became known as the Larne gun-running . However, the crisis was interrupted by
9845-487: The Ulster Unionist Council was established to bring together unionists in the north including, with 50 of 200 seats, the Orange Order . Until then, unionism had largely placed itself behind Anglo-Irish aristocrats valued for their high-level connections in Great Britain . The UUC still accorded them a degree of precedence. Castlereagh's descendant and former Lord Lieutenant of Ireland , The 6th Marquess of Londonderry , presided over its executive. The Council also retained
10024-411: The United Ulster Unionist Council (UUUC) with Vanguard and the Democratic Unionist Party , successor to the Protestant Unionist Party. The result was that the UUUC won 11 out of 12 parliamentary seats in Northern Ireland on a fiercely anti-Sunningdale platform, although they barely won 50% of the overall popular vote. This result was a fatal blow for the Executive, which soon collapsed. Up until 1972
10203-413: The "Orange card", Lord Randolph Churchill assured a "monster meeting" of the Anti-Repeal Union in Belfast, that English Conservatives would "cast in their lot" with loyalists in resisting Home Rule, and he later coined the phrase that was to become the watchword of northern unionism: "Ulster will fight, and Ulster will be right". Gladstone's own party was split on Home Rule and the House divided against
10382-416: The 1887 Act creating a new city-status municipal franchise for Belfast (piloted through the Commons by William Johnston ) conferred the vote on persons rather than men. This was eleven years before women elsewhere Ireland gained the vote in local government elections. The WSS had not been impressed by the women's Ulster Declaration or by the Ulster Women's Unionist Council (UWUC)—with over 100,000 members
10561-426: The 1960s, identifying with the civil rights movement of Martin Luther King Jr. and encouraged by attempts at reform under O'Neill, various organisations campaigned for civil rights, calling for changes to the system for allocating public housing and the voting system for the local government franchise, which was restricted to (disproportionately Protestant) rate payers . O'Neill had pushed through some reforms but in
10740-574: The 2005 election. The party held six seats at Westminster immediately before the 2005 general election, down from seven after the previous general election following the defection of Jeffrey Donaldson in 2004. The election resulted in the loss of five of their six seats. The only seat won by an Ulster Unionist was North Down, by Sylvia Hermon , who had won the seat in the 2001 general election from Robert McCartney of UK Unionist Party . David Trimble himself lost his seat in Upper Bann and resigned as party leader soon after. The ensuing leadership election
10919-428: The Act of Union (the Ulster Protestant Defence Association claimed breach of contract), and weak as they were, provisions for tenant compensation and purchase created a separate agrarian regime for Ireland at odds with the prevailing English conception of property rights. In the Long Depression of the 1870s the Land War intensified. From 1879 it was organised by the direct-action Irish National Land League , led by
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#173277970486111098-465: The Alliance Party. The party lost two seats in the 2011 Assembly elections and won fewer votes than the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) (although it won more seats than the SDLP). Two of its candidates, Bill Manwaring and Lesley Macaulay, subsequently joined the Conservative Party. In the 2011 local elections it lost seats to the Alliance Party east of the Bann and was also overtaken by them on Belfast City Council. Tom Elliott
11277-399: The Bible. There is particular concern over the ritualism of higher degrees such as the Royal Arch Purple and the Royal Black Institutions . The Order considers important the Fourth Commandment , and that it forbids Christians to work, or engage in non-religious activity generally, on Sundays. When the Twelfth of July falls on a Sunday the parades traditionally held on that date are held
11456-412: The Boyne Club and the Protestant Society, both seen as forerunners to the Orange Order. Throughout the 1780s, sectarian tension had been building in County Armagh , largely due to the relaxation of the Penal Laws . Here the number of Protestants and Catholics (in what was then Ireland's most populous county) were of roughly equal number, and competition between them to rent patches of land near markets
11635-417: The British Government threatened to remove control of the security forces from the devolved government. Faulkner reacted by resigning with his entire cabinet, and the British Government suspended, and eventually abolished, the Northern Ireland Parliament , replacing it with Direct Rule . The liberal unionist group, the New Ulster Movement , which had advocated the policies of Terence O'Neill, left and formed
11814-406: The Catholic gentry , were returned to the Commons before the 1884 Reform Act. A "unique place" was occupied by Sir Denis Henry (1864-1925). When he won his native South Londonderry seat in a 1916 by-election, he was the first Catholic to represent a unionist constituency in Ulster, and when he retained the seat in 1918, the future Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland was the last. In 1905,
11993-608: The Church of Rome", then undergoing its own devotional revolution. The leading Presbyterian evangelist, Henry Cooke took the occasion to preach Protestant Unity. In 1834, at a mass demonstration hosted upon his estate by the 3rd Marquess of Downshire , Cooke proposed a "Christian marriage" between the two main Protestant denominations (Anglican and Presbyterian). Setting their remaining differences aside, they would cooperate on all "matters of common safety". Presbyterian voters tended to favour reform-minded Whigs or, as they later emerged, tenant-right and free-trade Liberals , over
12172-433: The Conservatives. Powell advocated a policy of 'integration', whereby Northern Ireland would be administered as an integral part of the United Kingdom. This policy divided both the Ulster Unionists and the wider unionist movement, as Powell's ideas conflicted with those supporting a restoration of devolved government to Northern Ireland. The party also made gains upon the break-up of the Vanguard Party and its merger back into
12351-534: The DUP and Fermanagh & South Tyrone to Sinn Féin. The party polled 10.3% (−5.7%) and failed to take any other seats. In the 2019 local elections the UUP polled 14.1% (−2.0) winning 75 council seats, 13 fewer than in 2014. They lost their single MEP at the 2019 European Parliament elections following the retirement of Jim Nicholson. Danny Kennedy stood as the UUP candidate polling 9.3% (−4.0%). Steve Aiken succeeded Robin Swann as leader in November 2019. The party increased its vote share to 11.7% (+1.4%) in
12530-399: The Governor believed were the "lawless banditti", they could not have been Orangemen as there were no lodges in existence at the time of his speech. According to historian Jim Smyth: Later apologists rather implausibly deny any connection between the Peep-o'-Day Boys and the first Orangemen or, even less plausibly, between the Orangemen and the mass wrecking of Catholic cottages in Armagh in
12709-407: The House of Commons and European Parliament under the name " Ulster Conservatives and Unionists – New Force " (UCUNF). The agreement meant that Ulster Unionist MPs could have sat in a Conservative Government, renewing the relationship that had broken down in 1974 over the Sunningdale Agreement and in 1985 over the Anglo-Irish Agreement . The UUP's sole remaining MP at the time, Sylvia Hermon, opposed
12888-474: The House of Commons for the first time since the party's creation. At the 2010 general election , UCUNF won no seats in Northern Ireland (while Hermon won hers as an independent). The UCUNF label was not used again. Following the election, Empey resigned as leader. He was replaced by Tom Elliott as party leader in the subsequent leadership election . During the leadership election, it emerged that
13067-601: The Irish Liberal Unionists , the latter having split from the Liberal Party over the issue of home rule . While usually dominated by unionists from Ulster , the IUA was often led by southern unionists. There were also some eighty members of the House of Lords who affiliated themselves with the IUA. The Ulster Defence Union was also formed on 17 March 1893 to oppose the Liberal government's plans for
13246-790: The Irish language". (Kane's memorial at the Clifton Street Orange Hall over whose opening he had presided in 1885, commends him as a "Loyal Irish Patriot"). Famously, when in 1880, as part of its campaign for the Three Fs (fair rent, fixity of tenure, and free sale) and of resistance to evictions, the Land League organised the withdrawal of labour from Captain Charles Boycott , a land agent in County Mayo , Orangemen from County Cavan and County Monaghan , under military and police protection, helped bring in
13425-458: The Irish parliament was unlamented. Having refused calls for reform—to broaden representation and curb corruption—few saw cause to regret its passing. It took the Union thirty years to deliver on the promise of Catholic emancipation (1829)—to admit Catholics to Parliament—and permit an erosion of the Protestant monopoly on position and influence. An opportunity to integrate Catholics through their re-emerging propertied and professional classes as
13604-580: The North, the Protestant tenant righters, William Sharman Crawford and James MacKnight had their election meetings broken up by Orangemen . For unionism the more momentous challenge lay in the wake of the Reform Act 1867 . In England and Wales it produced an electorate that no longer identified instinctively with the conservative interest in Ireland and was more open to the "home-rule" compromise that nationalists now presented. Ireland would remain within
13783-811: The Orange Institution of Great Britain, advised the Marquess that following "a death of importance" (the passing of the King), the Orangemen would abandon their policy of "non-resistance" to the present "Popish Cabinet, and democratical Ministry" (the parliamentary reform ministry of Earl Grey ) and that "it might be political to join" them. Londonderry demurred: he had no doubt that the Duke of Cumberland would be persuaded that "the present state of liberal Whig feeling in this very Whig county ... entirely preclude
13962-439: The Orange Order re-emerged in a new and even more militant form. In 1835 Parliament conducted an enquiry into Orangeism and declared the oaths of the Orange Order to be illegal and prohibited their demonstrations and parades. In 1836 the Order was accused of plotting to place Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland and Imperial Grand Master of the Orange Order, on the throne in place of Victoria when King William IV died; once
14141-477: The Orangemen murdered at least six Catholic civilians. In 1995 and 1996, residents succeeded in stopping the march. This led to a standoff at Drumcree between the security forces and thousands of loyalists . Following a wave of loyalist violence, the march was allowed through. In 1997, security forces locked down the Catholic area and forced the march through, citing loyalist threats. This sparked widespread protests and violence by Irish nationalists. From 1998 onward
14320-574: The Order regarded such unity as tantamount to religious and national ecumenism . Such differences came to a head in 1902, in the contest to succeed Johnston as MP for Belfast South (and at time when four fifths of lodge masters in the city were workingmen). Thomas Sloan established the Independent lodges after he had been expelled by the Order for running as the nominee of the Belfast Protestant Association against
14499-524: The Protestant people by the Catholics". Historian Richard R Madden wrote that "efforts were made to infuse into the mind of the Protestant feelings of distrust to his Catholic fellow-countrymen". MP Thomas Knox wrote in August 1796 that "As for the Orangemen, we have rather a difficult card to play ... we must to a certain degree uphold them, for with all their licentiousness, on them we must rely for
14678-610: The UUP and the SDLP decided not to accept the seats on the Northern Ireland Executive to which they would have been entitled and to form an official opposition to the executive. This marked the first time that a devolved government in Northern Ireland did not include the UUP. In the 2016 European Union referendum the UUP was the only unionist party to support the remain campaign, the UUP Executive passing
14857-617: The UUP sat with the Conservative Party at Westminster , traditionally taking the Conservative parliamentary whip . To all intents and purposes the party functioned as the Northern Ireland branch of the Conservative Party. In 1972, in protest over the prorogation of the Parliament of Northern Ireland , the Westminster Ulster Unionist MPs withdrew from the alliance. The party remained affiliated to
15036-670: The UWUC that draft articles for an Ulster Provisional Government included votes for women. The nationalists would make no such undertaking with regard to a Dublin parliament. The marriage was short lived. In March 1914, Carson , after being door-stepped for fours days by the WSPU, ruled women's suffrage too divisive an issue for unionists. There followed a series of arson-attacks on unionist-owned and associated property that culminated in Lillian Metge 's bombing of Lisburn Cathedral . In
15215-580: The Ulster Unionist Council, which later became the Ulster Unionist Party, was formed as a co-ordinating organization for a new form of local political activity. It largely subsumed the Ulster Defence Union. From the beginning, the new organization had a strong association with the Orange Order , a Protestant fraternal organisation . The original composition of the Ulster Unionist Council was 25% Orange delegates; however, this proportion
15394-523: The Ulster Unionists. The separate United Ulster Unionist Party (UUUP) emerged from the remains of Vanguard but folded in the early 1980s, as did the UPNI. In both cases the main beneficiaries of this were the Ulster Unionists, now under the leadership of James Molyneaux (1979–95). David Trimble led the party between 1995 and 2005. His support for the Belfast Agreement caused a rupture within
15573-530: The Ulster Women's Declaration; 237,368 men signed the Solemn League and Covenant . Unionist women had been involved in political campaigning from the time of the first Home Rule Bill in 1886. Some were active suffragettes . Isabella Tod , an anti-Home Rule Liberal and campaigner for girls education, was an early pioneer. Determined lobbying by her North of Ireland Women's Suffrage Society ensured
15752-842: The Union it was "because we, the workers, the people, the democracy of Ulster, have chosen him". The majority of the signatories would have been organised in British-based unions, and could point to the growing political weight of British labour in reform measures such as the Trade Disputes Act 1906 , the People's Budget 1910 , and the National Insurance Act 1911 . Nationalists did not seek to persuade them that collective bargaining, progressive taxation and social security were principles for which majorities could be as readily found in an Irish parliament. At what
15931-649: The Union. In the early nineteenth century, Orangemen were heavily involved in violent conflict with an Irish Catholic secret society called the Ribbonmen . One instance, publicised in a 7 October 1816 edition of the Boston Commercial Gazette , included the murder of a Catholic priest and several members of the congregation of Dumreilly parish in County Cavan on 25 May 1816. According to the article, "A number of Orangemen with arms rushed into
16110-471: The United Kingdom but with a parliament in Dublin exercising powers devolved from Westminster. Meanwhile, in Ireland, a combination of the secret ballot and increased representation for the towns, reduced the electoral influence of land owners and their agents, and contributed to the triumph, in 1874 , of the Home Rule League . Fifty-nine members were returned to Westminster where they sat as
16289-485: The United Kingdom, and in using all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present conspiracy to set up a Home Rule Parliament in Ireland". In January 1913, Carson declared for the exclusion of Ulster and called for the enlistment of up to 100,000 Covenanters as drilled and armed Ulster Volunteers . On 23 September, the second Ulster Day, he accepted Chairmanship of a Provisional Government organised by Craig. If Home Rule were imposed "we will be governed as
16468-477: The agreement, stating she would not be willing to stand under the UCUNF banner. In February 2010, Hermon confirmed that she would not be seeking a nomination as a UCUNF candidate for the forthcoming general election. On 25 March 2010, she formally resigned from the party and announced that she would be standing as an independent candidate at the general election. As a result, the UUP were left without representation in
16647-472: The battle was short and the Defenders suffered "not less than thirty" deaths. After the battle had ended, the Peep o' Days marched into Loughgall, and in the house of James Sloan they founded the Orange Order, which was to be a Protestant defence association made up of lodges. The principal pledge of these lodges was to defend "the King and his heirs so long as he or they support the Protestant Ascendancy ". At
16826-756: The biggest of which are held on or around 12 July ( The Twelfth ), a public holiday in Northern Ireland. The Orange Order is a conservative, British unionist and Ulster loyalist organisation. Thus it has traditionally opposed Irish nationalism / republicanism and campaigned against Scottish independence . The Order sees itself as defending Protestant civil and religious liberties, whilst critics accuse it of being sectarian , triumphalist , and supremacist . It does not accept non-Protestants as members unless they convert and adhere to its principles, nor does it accept Protestants married to non-Protestants. Orange marches through Catholic neighbourhoods are controversial and have often led to violence, such as
17005-630: The bill, which did allow for Irish MPs, was passed by a narrow majority in the Commons but went down to defeat in the overwhelmingly Conservative House of Lords . The Conservatives formed a new ministry. Gladstone's Tory successor in 1886, Lord Salisbury , believed his government should "leave Home Rule sleeping the sleep of the unjust". In 1887 Dublin Castle was given standing power to suspend habeas corpus . However, as Chief Secretary for Ireland , Salisbury's nephew Arthur Balfour determined upon
17184-535: The centre ground that they had lost to the Alliance Party. After Beattie became leader, a number of new members joined the party including former Belfast PUP councillor Julie-Anne Corr-Johnston, Derry and Strabane DUP councillor Ryan McCready, former Independent Irish Senator Ian Marshall , Belfast Alliance Party councillor Carole Howard and Belfast PUP councillor John Kyle . In October 2021, Newry and Mourne UUP councillor Harold McKee resigned from
17363-595: The champion of the Ulster Farmers and Labourers Union. With the Cork City MP, William O'Brien , Russell helped initiate a programme that built some 40,000 one-acre labourer-owned cottages. During the constructivist 1890s, and before a Liberal government revived the prospects for home rule, unionists appeared more at ease with interest in Irish culture. The first Ulster branch of the Gaelic League
17542-695: The church and fired upon the congregation". On 19 July 1823 the Unlawful Oaths Bill was passed, banning all oath-bound societies in Ireland. This included the Orange Order, which had to be dissolved and reconstituted. In 1825 a bill banning unlawful associations – largely directed at Daniel O'Connell and his Catholic Association , compelled the Orangemen once more to dissolve their association. When Westminster finally granted Catholic Emancipation in 1829, Roman Catholics were free to take seats as MPs (and take up various other positions of influence and power from which they had been excluded) and play
17721-554: The country and encouraged Defender recruitment, creating a proto-army for the United Irishmen to utilise. The United Irishmen launched a rebellion in 1798 . In Ulster, most of the United Irish commanders and many of the rebels were Protestant. Orangemen were recruited into the yeomanry to help fight the rebellion and "proved an invaluable addition to government forces". No attempt was made to disarm Orangemen outside
17900-404: The current rules use the wording "non-reformed faith" instead. Converts to Protestantism can join by appealing to Grand Lodge. James Wilson and James Sloan, who issued the warrants for the first Lodges of the Orange Order along with 'Diamond' Dan Winter, were Freemasons , and in the 19th century many Irish Republicans regarded the Orange Order as a front group established by Unionist Masons as
18079-476: The decades following Catholic Emancipation in 1829 to oppose restoration of a separate Irish parliament . Since Partition in 1921, as Ulster unionism its goal has been to retain Northern Ireland as a devolved region within the United Kingdom and to resist the prospect of an all-Ireland republic . Within the framework of the 1998 Belfast Agreement , which concluded three decades of political violence, unionists have shared office with Irish nationalists in
18258-625: The devolution of regeneration powers to councils. They received 81,282 votes, 10.9% of the total, down 3.2% from the 2019 local elections . The party had 54 councillors elected, down 21 from 2019. Unionism in Ireland Unionism in Ireland is a political tradition that professes loyalty to the crown of the United Kingdom and to the union it represents with England , Scotland and Wales . The overwhelming sentiment of Ireland's Protestant minority , unionism mobilised in
18437-487: The devolved institutions, on the basis of new British government assurances they returned to the Assembly to form the first Northern Ireland government in which unionists are a minority. In the last decades of the Kingdom of Ireland (1542–1800), Protestants in public life advanced themselves as Irish Patriots. The focus of their patriotism was the Parliament in Dublin . Confined on a narrow franchise to landed members of
18616-454: The entire of its Roman Catholic population", with notices posted warning them "to Hell or Connaught". Other people were warned by notices not to inform on local Orangemen or "I will Blow your Soul to the Low hils of Hell And Burn the House you are in". Within two months, 7,000 Catholics had been driven out of County Armagh. According to Lord Gosford , the governor of Armagh: It is no secret that
18795-604: The established Anglican communion (the Anglo-Irish " Protestant Ascendancy "), the parliament denied equal protection and public office to Dissenters (non-Anglican Protestants) and to the Kingdom's dispossessed Roman Catholic majority. The high point of this parliamentary patriotism was the formation during the American War of Independence , of the Irish Volunteers and, as that militia paraded in Dublin,
18974-593: The first to contribute to repair funds for Catholic property damaged in the rebellion. One major outcome of the United Irishmen rebellion was the 1800 Act of Union that merged the Irish Parliament with that of Westminster, creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland . Many Catholics supported the Act, but the Orange Order saw it as a threat to the "Protestant constitution" and 36 lodges in counties Armagh and Monaghan alone passed declarations opposing
19153-662: The foundation of the Ulster Unionist Council in 1905. It is the oldest political party on the island of Ireland . Modern organised unionism emerged after William Ewart Gladstone 's introduction in 1886 of the first of three Home Rule Bills in response to demands by the Irish Parliamentary Party . In 1891, the Irish Conservative Party came to an end, merged into a new Irish Unionist Alliance (IUA) which also included
19332-447: The government hoped to thwart it by backing the Orange Order from 1796 onward. Irish nationalist historians Thomas A. Jackson and John Mitchel argued that the government's goal was to hinder the United Irishmen by fomenting sectarianism , thereby creating disunity and disorder under pretence of "passion for the Protestant religion". Mitchel wrote that the government invented and spread "fearful rumours of intended massacres of all
19511-495: The harvest on his employer's estate. But among Orangemen there was tenant-farmer support for reform. One reason the majority Irish Conservatives at Westminster did not oppose Gladstone's 1881 Land Act conceding the three F's was their recognition that "the land grievance had been a bond of discontent between Ulster and the rest of Ireland and in that sense a danger to the union". Quite apart from participation in local tenant-right associations, they had reports of Orangemen in
19690-437: The hope that they might be assisted by republican France , these United Irishmen sought a revolutionary union of "Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter" (i.e. of Catholics and Protestants of all persuasions). Their resolve was broken with the defeat of their uprising in 1798 , and by reports of rebel outrages against Protestant Loyalists in the South. The British government, which had had to deploy its own forces to suppress
19869-683: The largest unionist party in 2003 by the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). As of 2022 it is the fourth-largest party in the Northern Ireland Assembly , after Sinn Féin , the DUP, and the Alliance Party . Since August 2024 the party has been led by Mike Nesbitt . Between 1905 and 1972, its peers and MPs took the Conservative Party whip at Westminster , in effect functioning as the Northern Irish branch of
20048-507: The largest women's political organisation in Ireland. Elizabeth McCracken noted the failure of unionist women to formulate "any demand on their own behalf or that of their own sex". Yet in September 1913 McCracken was celebrating a "marriage of unionism and women's suffrage". Following reports that the militant Women's Social and Political Union (WPSU) would begin organising in Ulster, the secretary of Ulster Unionist Council had informed
20227-613: The leadership of the tenant-right movement men, like the Rev. James Armour of Ballymoney , who were at best agnostic on the union, while in the west of the province (in counties Armagh , Cavan , Fermanagh and Tyrone ) even Orangemen had started joining the Land League. The final and decisive shift in favour of constitutional concessions came in the wake of the Third Reform Act of 1884 . The near-universal admission to
20406-674: The leadership of unionism. Together with R. Lindsay Crawford and their Independent Orange Order , Sloan supported dock and linen-mill workers, led by the syndicalist James Larkin , in the great Belfast Lockout of 1907 . In July 1912, loyalists forced some 3,000 workers out of the shipyards and engineering plants in Belfast. Unlike previous incidents, the expellees included not only Catholics but also some 600 Protestants, targeted mainly because they were seen to support labour organising across sectarian lines. The unionist press depicted any connection with either British Labour (who had held their first party conference in Belfast in 1907) or with
20585-491: The link between Ireland and Great Britain were weakened or severed". That same link was critical for all those employed in the great export industries of the North—textiles, engineering, shipbuilding. For these the Irish hinterland was less important than the industrial triangle that linked Belfast and region with Clydeside and the north of England. Yet the most popular summary of case against Irish self-government remained
20764-401: The manufacturers and merchants of Belfast and neighbouring industrial districts could generally count on voting with the majority of their own workforce. But the loyalty of the Protestant worker was not unconditional. In the mind of many working-class unionists there was no contradiction between the defence of Protestant principle and political radicalism, "indeed, these were often seen as one and
20943-457: The march away from this area, seeing it as "triumphalist" and " supremacist ". There have been intermittent violent clashes during the march since the 19th century. The onset of the Troubles led to the dispute intensifying in the 1970s and 1980s. At this time, the most contentious part of the march was the outward leg along Obins Street. After serious violence two years in a row, the march
21122-424: The march was banned from Garvaghy Road and the Catholic area was sealed-off with large barricades. For a few years, there was an annual major standoff at Drumcree and widespread loyalist violence. Since 2001, things have been relatively calm, but the Order still campaigns for the right to march on Garvaghy Road. The dispute led to a short-lived boycott of businesses owned by Orangemen and their supporters elsewhere in
21301-572: The measure. In 1891 Ulster's Liberal Unionists , part of a larger Liberal break with Gladstone, entered Saunderson's Irish Unionist Alliance , and at Westminster took the Conservative whip . In 1892, despite bitter division over the personally compromised leadership of Parnell, the Nationalists were able to help Gladstone to a third ministry. The result was a second Home Rule bill . It was greeted by an Ulster opposition more highly developed and better organised. A great Ulster Unionist Convention
21480-440: The membership, and Crawford was eventually expelled. From the outset, the Orange Order was instrumental in the formation of a distinct Ulster unionism. In 1905, when the Ulster Unionist Council was established to bring together unionists in the north including, the Order was given 50 of 200 seats, It was a position within the constitution of the Ulster Unionist Party that the order was to maintain until voting to sever ties with
21659-603: The message broadcast in a "great revival" of the Orange Order — "Home Rule means Rome Rule ". In the north, the competition represented by the growing numbers of Catholics arriving at mill and factory gates had already given the once largely rural (and Anglican ) Orange Order a new lease among Protestant workers. The pattern, in itself, was not unique to Belfast and its satellites. Glasgow , Manchester , Liverpool and other British centres experiencing large-scale Irish immigration developed similar Orange and nativist ward and workplace politics with which unionists—organised in
21838-648: The monarchs in the House of Orange. The basis of the modern Orange Order is the promotion and propagation of "biblical Protestantism " and the principles of the Reformation . As such the Order only accepts those who confess a belief in a Protestant religion. As well as Catholics, non-creedal and non- Trinitarian Christians are also banned. This includes members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ( Mormons ), Jehovah's Witnesses , Unitarians , and Quakers . Previous rules specifically forbade Roman Catholics and their close relatives from joining but
22017-682: The months following 'the Diamond' – all of them, however, acknowledge the movement's lower-class origins. The Order's three main founders were James Wilson (founder of the Orange Boys), Daniel Winter and James Sloan. The first Orange lodge was established in nearby Dyan, and its first grandmaster was James Sloan of Loughgall. Its first-ever marches were to celebrate the Battle of the Boyne and they took place on 12 July 1796 in Portadown , Lurgan and Waringstown . The Society of United Irishmen
22196-621: The need to consider how Catholics in Northern Ireland could be integrated into its civic and political life, it prorogued the parliament in Belfast. Over the ensuing three decades of The Troubles , unionists divided in their responses to power-sharing proposals presented, in consultation with the Republic of Ireland , by successive British governments. Following the 1998 Belfast Agreement , under which both republican and loyalist paramilitaries committed to permanent ceasefires, unionists accepted principles of joint office and parallel consent in
22375-538: The new province. The leadership of the UUP and, subsequently, Northern Ireland, was taken by Sir James Craig . Until almost the very end of its period of power in Northern Ireland , the UUP was led by a combination of landed gentry ( The 1st Viscount Brookeborough , Hugh MacDowell Pollock and James Chichester-Clark ), aristocracy ( Terence O'Neill ) and gentrified industrial magnates ( The 1st Viscount Craigavon and J. M. Andrews – nephew of The 1st Viscount Pirrie ). Only its last Prime Minister , Brian Faulkner ,
22554-502: The north, George Ensor , observed that this broke the link between Catholic inclusion and democratic reform. In Ulster, resistance to O'Connell's appeal was stiffened by a religious revival. With its emphasis upon "personal witness", the New Reformation appeared to transcend the ecclesiastical differences between the different Protestant denominations. while launching them into "a far more conscious sense of separateness from
22733-416: The official unionist candidate, one of the city's largest millowners. For at least some of his supporters, the split was a protest against what they saw as the co-optation of the Orange Order by unionist political leaders and their alignment with the interests of landlords and employers (the "fur coat brigade"). With other independents, in the great Belfast Lockout of 1907 Sloan was to speak on platforms with
22912-549: The old-fashioned Tories of the Counties ... modern Conservatives ... Orangemen ... All these various elements—Whig, Liberal, Radical, Presbyterian, Episcopalian , Unitarian and Methodist ... united as one man." While references to Catholics were conciliatory the Convention resolved: to retain unchanged our present position as an integral portion of the United Kingdom, and protest in the most unequivocal manner against
23091-691: The other twenty-six counties became Southern Ireland . This self-governing entity within the United Kingdom was confirmed in its status under the terms of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, and in its borders by the Boundary Commission agreement of 1925. Southern Ireland became first the Irish Free State in 1922 and then in 1949 a Republic . The Orange Order had a central place in the new state of Northern Ireland. From 1921 to 1969, every prime minister of Northern Ireland
23270-579: The outbreak of the World War I in August 1914, which caused the Home Rule Bill to be suspended for the duration of the war. Many Orangemen served in the war with the 36th (Ulster) Division , suffering heavy losses, and commemorations of their sacrifice are still an important element of Orange ceremonies. The Fourth Home Rule Act was passed as the Government of Ireland Act 1920 ; the six northeastern counties of Ulster became Northern Ireland and
23449-497: The party because of Beattie's promotion of 'liberal values'. In January 2022, Beattie made what some saw as a misogynistic joke about DAERA minister Edwin Poots and his wife. After this, it was found that he had made other controversial jokes on social media, before entering politics, and he made a statement apologizing. The party contested all 18 constituencies in the 2022 Assembly election . They received 96,390 votes, 11.2% of
23628-642: The party in 2005. In 1912, the Third Home Rule Bill was introduced in the House of Commons . However, its introduction would be delayed until 1914. The Orange Order, along with the British Conservative Party and unionists in general, were inflexible in opposing the bill. The Order helped to organise the 1912 Ulster Covenant – a pledge to oppose Home Rule which was signed by up to 500,000 people. In 1911, some Orangemen began to arm themselves and train as militias. In 1913,
23807-494: The party into pro-agreement and anti-agreement factions. Trimble served as First Minister of Northern Ireland in the power-sharing administration created under the Belfast Agreement . Unusually for a unionist party, the UUP had a Catholic MLA in the Northern Ireland Assembly , Sir John Gorman until the 2003 election. In March 2005, the Orange Order voted to end its official links with the UUP. Trimble faced down Orange Order critics who tried to suspend him for his attendance at
23986-595: The party. In the 1973 elections to the Executive the party found itself divided, a division that did not formally end until January 1974 with the triumph of the anti-Sunningdale faction. Faulkner was then overthrown, and he set up the Unionist Party of Northern Ireland (UPNI). The Ulster Unionists were then led by Harry West from 1974 until 1979. In the February 1974 general election , the party participated in
24165-606: The party. This arrangement came to an end in 1972 over disagreements over the Sunningdale Agreement . The two parties have remained institutionally separate ever since, with the exception of the 2009 to 2012 Ulster Conservatives and Unionists electoral alliance. The first-ever membership survey of the UUP, published in January 2019, suggested that 67% of its members were supportive of the Conservative Party. The Ulster Unionist Party traces its formal existence back to
24344-547: The passage of any measure that would rob us of our inheritance in the Imperial Parliament, under the protection of which our capital has been invested and our home and rights safeguarded; that we record our determination to have nothing to do with a Parliament certain to be controlled by men responsible for the crime and outrage of the Land League . . . many of whom have shown themselves the ready instrument of clerical domination. After mammoth parliamentary sessions
24523-505: The payment of National Insurance contributions of teachers in Catholic Church-controlled schools. Ian Paisley called for Brookeborough's resignation in 1953 when he refused to sack Brian Maginess and Clarence Graham , who had given speeches supporting re-admitting Catholics to the UUP. He retired in 1963 and was replaced by Terence O'Neill , who emerged ahead of other candidates, Jack Andrews and Faulkner. In
24702-513: The plot was revealed the House of Commons called upon the King to disband the Order. Under pressure from Joseph Hume , William Molesworth and Lord John Russell , the King indicated measures would have to be taken and the Duke of Cumberland was forced to dissolve the Orange lodges. Hume laid evidence before the House of Commons of an approach in July 1832 to Lord Londonderry . A letter from Lieutenant-Colonel W. B. Fairman, Deputy Grand Secretary of
24881-411: The possibility of successful efforts at this juncture". In 1845 the ban was again lifted, but the notorious Battle of Dolly's Brae between Orangemen and Ribbonmen in 1849 led to a ban on Orange marches which remained in place for several decades. This was eventually lifted after a campaign of disobedience led by William Johnston of Ballykilbeg , Sovereign Grand Master of the Royal Black Institution ,
25060-413: The preservation of our lives and properties should critical times occur". The United Irishmen saw the Defenders as potential allies, and between 1794 and 1796 they formed a coalition. Despite some seeing the Defenders as "ignorant and poverty-stricken houghers and rick-burners", the United Irishmen were indebted to the Armagh disturbances as the Orangemen had scattered politicised Catholics throughout
25239-403: The process the Ulster Unionists became strongly divided. At the 1969 Stormont general election UUP candidates stood on both pro- and anti-O'Neill platforms. Several independent pro-O'Neill unionists challenging his critics, while the Protestant Unionist Party of Ian Paisley mounted a hard-line challenge. The result proved inconclusive for O'Neill, who resigned a short time later. His resignation
25418-410: The rebellion in Ireland and to turn back and defeat French intervention, decided on a union with Great Britain. Provision for Catholic emancipation was dropped from the Act of Union pushed with difficulty through the parliament in Dublin. While a separate Irish executive in Dublin was retained, representation, still wholly Protestant, was transferred to Westminster . In the Presbyterian north east
25597-530: The region. Membership of the Order was historically lower in areas where Protestants are in the majority, and vice versa. In County Fermanagh , where the Catholic and Protestant populations are close to parity, membership in 1971 was three times as high as in the more Protestant counties of Antrim and Down, where it was just over 10% of adult Protestant males. Other factors that are associated with high rates of membership are levels of unemployment that more closely match Catholic levels, and low levels of support for
25776-404: The rumour that they were on a punitive mission for the Liberal government , declaring that, unless they were disarmed, 200,000 armed Orangemen would relieve them of their weapons. At the same, in 1895 Kane was a patron of the branch in Belfast of the Gaelic League , which in the decade to follow was to become indissolubly linked with Irish nationalism . As a patron of the League's promotion of
25955-497: The same because it was the wealthy who were most prone to conciliation and treachery". Exercising the new workingman's vote , in 1868 loyalists in Belfast had chosen their own "Conservative", rejecting a millowner and returning an evangelical Orangeman, William Johnston , to Westminster. Johnston proceeded to propose and vote for labour protection , tenant right , the secret ballot and woman's suffrage In 1902, Johnston's successor as MP for South Belfast , Thomas Sloan , again
26134-429: The securing in 1782 of the parliament's legislative independence from the British government in London. In the north-east, combinations of Presbyterian tradesmen, merchants, and tenant farmers protested against the unrepresentative parliament and against an executive in Dublin Castle still appointed, through the office of the Lord Lieutenant , by English ministers. Seeing little prospect of further reform and in
26313-421: The services of Carson, from 1892 MP for Trinity College Dublin and supported him from 1910 as leader of the Irish Unionist parliamentary party. But marshalled by Captain James Craig , a millionaire director of Belfast's Dunville Whiskey , it was northern employers who undertook the real political and organisational work. Unlike the southern landowners who were politically opposed by their Catholic tenants,
26492-413: The southern Protestant Charles Stewart Parnell . In 1881, in a further Land Act , Gladstone conceded the three F's —fair rent, free sale, and fixity of tenure. Recognising that "the land grievance had been a bond of discontent between Ulster and the rest of Ireland and in that sense a danger to the union", Irish Conservatives did not oppose the measure. Protestants in the eastern counties had admitted to
26671-400: The start the Orange Order was a "parallel organisation" to the Defenders in that it was a secret oath-bound society that used passwords and signs. One of the very few landed gentry who joined the Orange Order at the outset, William Blacker, was unhappy with some of the outcomes of the Battle of the Diamond. He says that a determination was expressed to "driving from this quarter of the county
26850-411: The suffrage of male heads of household tripled the electorate in Ireland. The 1885 election returned an IPP, now under the leadership of Parnell, of 85 Members (including 17 from Ulster where Conservatives and Liberals split the unionist vote). Gladstone, whose Liberals lost all 15 of their Irish seats, was able to form his second ministry only with their Commons support. In June 1886, Gladstone tabled
27029-513: The support of the splinter Liberal Unionist Party , Salisbury returned to office in 1895. The Land Act of 1896 introduced for the first time the principle of compulsory sale to tenants, through its application was limited to bankrupt estates. "You would suppose", said Sir Edward Carson , Dublin barrister and the leading spokesman for Irish Conservatives, "that the Government were revolutionists verging on Socialism". Having been first obliged to surrender their hold on local government (transferred at
27208-475: The total, down 1.7% from the 2017 Assembly election . They had 9 MLAs elected, down 1 from 2017 after Roy Beggs Jr lost his seat in East Antrim to Alliance. In the 2023 local elections , Beattie characterised the election as a 'choice between delivery or dysfunction'. The UUP ran 101 candidates across the 11 councils, with a manifesto pledging 'city and growth deals', the appointment of 'prompt payment champions' to each council, 'below inflation rate rises' and
27387-427: The traditions of Irish Boards by announcing that its aim was to "be in touch with public opinion of the classes whom its work concerns, and to rely largely for its success upon their active assistance and cooperation". It supported and encouraged dairy cooperatives, the Creameries, that were to be an important institution in the emergence of a new class of independent smallholders. Greater reform followed when, with
27566-403: The two Irish Unionist Alliance MPs for the Dublin University constituency , and Lord Midleton were also southern unionists active in both. Carson went on to become the first leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, from 1910. Throughout his years of leadership, he fought a sustained campaign against Irish Home Rule, including taking the lead in the formation of the Ulster Volunteers at the onset of
27745-453: The unionist-controlled government of Northern Ireland was abolished in 1973. In 2012, it was stated that estimated membership of the Orange Order was around 34,000. After the outbreak of " the Troubles " in 1969, the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland encouraged Orangemen to join the Northern Ireland security forces , especially the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and the British Army's Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR). The response from Orangemen
27924-413: The vote decreased to 13.3% (−3.8%). The party gained 15 seats in the local elections that same day. They polled 16.1% (+0.9%), making it the only party to increase its vote share. At the 2015 general election , the UUP returned to Westminster, gaining the South Antrim seat from the DUP and Fermanagh & South Tyrone (where they had an electoral pact with the DUP not standing) from Sinn Féin. In 2016,
28103-435: The west (in counties Armagh , Cavan , Fermanagh and Tyrone ) actually joining the national League. Tension between tenants and landowners, nonetheless, continued within the Order, the focus shifting from tenant right to "compulsory purchase" (the right of tenants to buy out their landlords at fixed valuations). Particularly in north Antrim , where their organisation was strong, from 1903 tenant farmers began to defect to
28282-467: The yeomanry because they were seen as by far the lesser threat. It was also claimed that if an attempt had been made then "the whole of Ulster would be as bad as Antrim and Down", where the United Irishmen rebellion was at its strongest. However, sectarian massacres by the rebels in County Wexford "did much to dampen" the rebellion in Ulster. The Scullabogue Barn massacre saw over 100 non-combatant (mostly Protestant) men, women, and children imprisoned in
28461-483: The yeomanry came into the movement. The homeland and birthplace of the Defenders was mid-Ulster and here they failed to participate in the rebellion, having been cowed into submission and surrounded by their Protestant neighbours who had been armed by the government. The sectarian attacks on them were so severe that Grand Masters of the Orange Order convened to find ways of reducing them. According to Ruth Dudley Edwards and two former Grand Masters, Orangemen were among
28640-464: Was an Orangeman and member of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP); all but three Cabinet ministers were Orangemen; all but one unionist senators were Orangemen; and 87 of the 95 MPs who did not become Cabinet Ministers were Orangemen. James Craig , the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, maintained always that Ulster was in effect Protestant and the symbol of its ruling forces was the Orange Order. In 1932, Prime Minister Craig maintained that "ours
28819-431: Was banned from Obins Street in 1986. The focus then shifted to the return leg along Garvaghy Road. Each July from 1995 to 2000, the dispute drew worldwide attention as it sparked protests and violence throughout Northern Ireland, prompted a massive police / army operation, and threatened to derail the peace process . The situation in Portadown was likened to a "war zone" and a "siege". During this time, supporters of
28998-408: Was constituted, they believed that an Irish parliament would (egged on by the "American Irish") enter into conflicts with the "imperial parliament" in London that could only be resolved through "complete separation". The upper and middle classes found in Britain and the Empire "a wide range of profitable careers--in the army, in the public services, in commerce--from which they might be shut out if
29177-443: Was criticised for comments he made in his victory speech where he described elements of Sinn Féin as "scum". Elliott resigned in March 2012 saying some people had not given him a 'fair opportunity' to develop and progress many party initiatives. Mike Nesbitt was elected leader on 31 March 2012, beating John McCallister , by 536 votes to 129. In the 2014 European election Jim Nicholson held his MEP seat, although his percentage of
29356-458: Was defeated in the Lords, but as result of the crisis engendered by the opposition of the peers to the 1910 People's Budget the Lords now only had the power of delay. Home Rule would become law in 1914. There had long been discussion of giving "an option to Ulster". As early as 1843, The Northern Whig reasoned that if differences in ethnicity ("race") and interests argue for Ireland's separation from Great Britain, they could as easily argue for
29535-526: Was fierce. Drunken brawls between rival gangs had by 1786 become openly sectarian. These gangs eventually reorganised as the Protestant Peep o' Day Boys and the Catholic Defenders , with the next decade in County Armagh marked by fierce sectarian conflict between both groups, which escalated and spread into neighbouring counties. In September 1795, at a crossroads known as "The Diamond" near Loughgall , Defenders and Protestant Peep o' Day Boys gathered to fight each other. This initial stand-off ended without
29714-409: Was formed by liberal Presbyterians and Anglicans in Belfast in 1791. It sought reform of the Irish Parliament, Catholic Emancipation and the repeal of the Penal Laws . By the time the Orange Order was formed, the United Irishmen had become a revolutionary group advocating an independent Irish republic that would "Unite Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter". United Irishmen activity was on the rise, and
29893-399: Was formed in 1895 in east Belfast under the patronage of the Rev. John Baptiste Crozier and Dr. John St Clair Boyd , both avowed unionists, and of the Orange Order Grand Master, the Rev. Richard Rutledge Kane . But for many Irish unionists the chief-secretaryship of George Wyndham was "a last straw". In February 1905, they learned that his undersecretary, Sir Anthony MacDonnell ,
30072-426: Was from a middle-class background. During this era, all but 11 of the 149 UUP Stormont MPs were members of the Orange Order, as were all Prime Ministers. Sir James Craig, who in 1927 was created Viscount Craigavon , led the government of Northern Ireland from its inception until his death in November 1940 and is buried with his wife by the east wing of Parliament Buildings at Stormont . His successor, J. M. Andrews,
30251-426: Was heavily criticised for appointing octogenarian veterans of Lord Craigavon's administration to his cabinet . His government was also believed to be more interested in protecting the statue of Carson at the Stormont Estate than the citizens of Belfast during the Belfast Blitz . A backbench revolt in 1943 resulted in his resignation and replacement by Sir Basil Brooke (later Viscount Brookeborough ), although Andrews
30430-444: Was held in Belfast organised by the Liberal Unionist Thomas Sinclair , whom the press noted had been a critic of Orangeism. Speakers and observers dwelt on the diversity of creed, class and party represented among the 12,300 delegates attending. As reported by the Northern Whig there were "the old tenant-righters of the 'sixties' ... the sturdy reformers of Antrim ... the Unitarians of Down, always progressive in their politics ...
30609-400: Was not the choice of employers. The campaign of the Belfast Protestant Association candidate was marked by what his opponents considered a classic piece of bigotry. Sloan protested the exemption of Catholic convents from inspection by the Hygiene Commission (the Catholic Church should not be "a state within a state"). But it was as a trade unionist that he criticised the "fur-coat brigade" in
30788-405: Was probably caused by a speech of James Chichester-Clark who stated that he disagreed with the timing, but not the principle, of universal suffrage at local elections. Chichester-Clark won the leadership election to replace O'Neill and swiftly moved to implement many of O'Neill's reforms. Civil disorder continued to mount, culminating in August 1969 when Catholic Bogside residents clashed with
30967-399: Was recognised as leader of the party until 1946. Lord Brookeborough, despite having felt that Craigavon had held on to power for too long, was Prime Minister for one year longer. During this time he was on more than one occasion called to meetings of the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland to explain his actions, most notably following the 1947 Education Act which made the government responsible for
31146-423: Was reduced through the years. The initial leadership of the Ulster unionists all came from outside what would later become Northern Ireland. In particular, from 1905 Colonel Saunderson was simultaneously leader of the Irish Unionist Alliance MPs and leader of the Ulster Unionist Council in Belfast. In 1906 he was succeeded in both roles by Walter Hume Long , a Dublin MP. Another Dubliner, Sir Edward Carson , one of
31325-453: Was strong. Over 300 Orangemen were killed during the conflict, the vast majority of them members of the security forces. Some Orangemen also joined loyalist paramilitary groups. During the conflict, the Order had a fractious relationship with loyalist paramilitary groups, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), the Independent Orange Order and the Free Presbyterian Church . The Order urged its members not to join these organisations, and it
31504-399: Was supported by most unionist voters throughout the conflict known as the Troubles , during which time it was often referred to as the Official Unionist Party ( OUP ). Under David Trimble , the party helped negotiate the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, which ended the conflict. Trimble served as the first First Minister of Northern Ireland from 1998 to 2002. However, it was overtaken as
31683-444: Was the 24 UUP MLAs and Ervine. Empey justified the link by stating that under the d'Hondt method for allocating ministers in the Assembly, the new group would take a seat in the Executive from Sinn Féin. Following a request for a ruling from the DUP's Peter Robinson , the Speaker ruled that the UUPAG was not a political party within the meaning of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 . The party lost 9 seats in
31862-484: Was to be the high point of mobilisation in Ulster against Home Rule, the Covenant Campaign of September 1912, the unionist leadership decided that men alone could not speak for the determination of the unionist people to defend "their equal citizenship in the United Kingdom". Women were asked to sign, not the Covenant whose commitment to "all means which may be found necessary" implied a readiness to bear arms, but their own Associate Declaration. A total of 234,046 women signed
32041-455: Was won by Reg Empey . In May 2006 UUP leader Empey attempted to create a new assembly group that would have included Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) leader David Ervine . The PUP is the political wing of the illegal Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). Many in the UUP, including the last remaining MP, Sylvia Hermon , were opposed to the move. The link was in the form of a new group called the 'Ulster Unionist Party Assembly Group' whose membership
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