146-714: The Traditional Unionist Voice ( TUV ) is a unionist political party in Northern Ireland . In common with all other Northern Irish unionist parties, the TUV's political programme has as its sine qua non the preservation of Northern Ireland's place within the United Kingdom . A founding precept of the party is that "nothing which is morally wrong can be politically right". The TUV was formed in December 2007 by Jim Allister after he and others had resigned from
292-688: A Bachelor of Laws degree with honours in constitutional law. In 1974, he unsuccessfully stood for the post of president of Queen's University Belfast Students' Union . Allister quit the Official Unionist Party (OUP) to join the DUP at its founding in 1971. In June 1972, as chairman of the Queen's University Democratic Unionist Party Association, Allister wrote a letter published in the Belfast Telegraph arguing that Ian Paisley
438-560: A European Parliament assistant to Ian Paisley from 1980 to 1982. In 1982 he was elected as a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly at Stormont for North Antrim and served as the DUP assembly chief whip. In 1983 Allister stated that if the DUP were faced with a choice between no devolved government and a power-sharing government with the SDLP or other nationalist representatives, his party would opt for not having
584-650: 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 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
730-681: A "political gypsy" for leaving the DUP and joining the OUP; Beggs had resigned from the DUP after leading a Larne council delegation to Dún Laoghaire in the Republic of Ireland . In July 1984, Allister gave a speech at the unveiling of a loyalist mural in a housing estate in the Ballykeel area of Ballymena, County Antrim. Speaking to a crowd of assembled loyalists in Orkney Drive, Allister said; "There are those in this estate who do not like
876-650: 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
1022-490: A Carrickfergus councillor, David Clarke, joined the TUV after leaving the DUP over "bullying" he had allegedly faced in the party. On 4 July at the 2024 general election for the Westminster parliament, TUV leader Jim Allister was elected Member of Parliament (MP) for North Antrim . This is the first time the TUV has gained an MP seat at Westminster. In November 2009 the TUV issued a press release whose title included
1168-523: 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
1314-496: 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
1460-477: A TUV candidate, Allister polled 13.5 per cent of the first-preference votes cast but was not re-elected. Jim Allister stood as a TUV candidate in the 2010 Westminster parliamentary election in the North Antrim constituency . Having polled well in the previous year's European election, Allister stood a chance of winning the seat. This would have been a tremendous loss to the DUP, as it has historically been
1606-420: A TUV councillor. TUV stated that the sex offences related "to a period long before he was a member of this party". In January 2013, Tweed was sentenced to eight years' imprisonment. TUV chose one of its unsuccessful 2011 candidates, Timothy Gaston, to replace Tweed as councillor. Tweed's conviction was overturned in 2016 after a challenge by his lawyers on grounds that there were "flaws in how bad character evidence
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#17327726216611752-405: 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
1898-608: 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". Jim Allister James Hugh Allister KC (born 2 April 1953)
2044-527: 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
2190-454: A continuing place for fossil fuels/hydrocarbon energy as a part of the energy mix for the economy but also support development of renewable energy sources. They believe there is a need for local recycling facilities. They see farmers as "custodians of the land" who have a part to play in the long-term conservation of the natural world. The TUV opposed the introduction of The Abortion (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2020 which substantially expanded
2336-879: A deputy First Minister from the Irish Republican party Sinn Féin . Prior to the St Andrews Agreement, the DUP had presented itself as an 'anti-Agreement' unionist party opposed to numerous aspects of the Good Friday Agreement , e.g., the release of paramilitary prisoners before the end of their jail sentences, and the participation of Sinn Féin in the Northern Ireland government without complete decommissioning of Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) weapons and cessation of all IRA activity. The TUV has been an exception among Northern Irish unionist parties in consistently opposing
2482-560: A devolved government. He was also the vice-chairman of Scrutiny Committee of Department of Finance and Personnel from October 1982 to June 1986. Outside the Stormont Assembly, he was a member of Newtownabbey Borough Council from 1985 to 1987. In 1983, he stood as a DUP candidate in the Westminster election for East Antrim . However, he narrowly lost to Roy Beggs following a bitter campaign in which he denounced Beggs as
2628-480: A few seats on local councils in Northern Ireland. Its most prominent elected representative and best-known figure remains Jim Allister whose North Antrim constituency is the heartland of the party. Since 2008, the party president has been former East Londonderry Westminster MP William Ross . In March 2024, the party formed an electoral pact with Reform UK , stating that the two parties would stand mutually agreed candidates in Northern Ireland constituencies in
2774-590: A list of bills he has proposed in the Northern Ireland Assembly are accessible on the Assembly's Information Management portal. The TUV focuses most of its energies upon matters relating to the unionist / nationalist political cleavage which has dominated Northern Ireland politics since 1921. Its policies on matters beyond the Northern Ireland constitutional question can be described as right-wing and socially conservative , and they emphasise
2920-801: 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
3066-751: A member of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) since its foundation in 1971, and for which he successfully stood for election in the 2004 European Parliament election for Northern Ireland , succeeding Ian Paisley . He continued as a member of the European Parliament (MEP) following his resignation from the DUP and establishment of the TUV, serving until 2009 . Jim Allister was born on 2 April 1953 in Listooder , near Crossgar in County Down , where he lived until he
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#17327726216613212-660: 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
3358-610: A press conference in September that year threatening to declare Northern Ireland independent from the United Kingdom if the Anglo-Irish Agreement wasn't withdrawn. In November 1986 the SDLP called for Allister and other unionist politicians to be prosecuted for incitement following a "violent" speech at a DUP demonstration in Carrickfergus , afterwards the crowd had attacked Catholic property resulting in
3504-511: A proper tribute to the driving force behind it. That's probably my proudest moment as a politician … to have left on the statute book the first victory in years for innocent victims." Allister holds conservative views on social policy and is a supporter of the evangelical creationist lobby group, the Caleb Foundation . Allister opposed a motion pardoning gay men convicted for formerly illegal homosexual acts. In February 2021,
3650-652: A report, every two years, regarding the functional performance of the government, its departments and attached civil service personnel. An August 2021, opinion poll by the polling company LucidTalk found a large rise in support for Allister's party the TUV to 14% of first preference vote intentions in the upcoming May 2022 Northern Ireland Assembly elections . At the same time, the poll found that 51 per cent of those who responded rated Allister's performance as "bad or awful", compared with "bad or awful" ratings for Paul Givan , Jeffrey Donaldson and Michelle O'Neill of 48, 47 and 45 per cent, respectively. Despite an increase in
3796-585: A reported disagreement with Paisley over a voting pact with James Molyneaux 's UUP. The situation resembled fellow unionist politician and barrister Robert McCartney 's in the North Down constituency. McCartney was expelled from the UUP around the same time for not accepting the policy of the leadership. Allister was called to the Bar of Northern Ireland as a barrister in 1976, specialising in criminal law. In 2001, he
3942-659: 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
4088-525: A statutory obligation in England: since when, only one English local council has proposed a rate rise above the statutory limit (Bedfordshire council in 2015) but the proposed rates increase was overwhelmingly rejected by voters in the subsequent local referendum. A salient difference between the TUV and the other Northern Irish unionist parties is the TUV's consistent opposition to the arrangements for formation of government in Northern Ireland as prescribed by
4234-630: 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
4380-509: A strong attachment to "traditional family values ". The party opposes euthanasia . Most of the policies in the following list can be found in all TUV election manifestos since 2009. The TUV advocates an economically liberal, low taxation economy, with as much freedom of choice to the individual and small businesses as possible. They prefer that government should run a balanced budget and have been consistently critical of what they call 'Stormont Squander' of tax revenues. The TUV has emphasised
4526-520: 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
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4672-571: A ticket of opposition to the DUP/Sinn Féin-led Northern Ireland Executive. The election turned out to be hotly contested, with the unionist vote split three ways. Sinn Féin's sitting MEP Bairbre de Brún topped the poll (a first for any Irish nationalist or republican candidate). The Ulster Conservative and Unionist candidate Jim Nicholson took the second seat, with Diane Dodds of the DUP coming in third place. TUV polled 66,000 votes. Jim Allister called
4818-628: A trade regime, the Northern Ireland Protocol , that advances an all-Ireland agenda. In February 2024, two years after their withdrawal collapsed 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
4964-591: Is a Northern Irish politician and barrister who has served as Member of Parliament (MP) for North Antrim since the 2024 general election . He founded the Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) in 2007 and has led the party since its formation. Prior to his election to Westminster, Allister was a member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for North Antrim , having been first elected in the 2011 Assembly election . Allister had been
5110-451: 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 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
5256-610: Is the bedrock for the success of society". The TUV advocates a controlled-immigration approach with effective border checks and a 'points-style' application procedure whereby preference is given to prospective immigrants having skillsets which are in demand in Northern Ireland. Their position is that academic selection ( grammar schools ) should remain an option within the education system for those children whose abilities are suited to it but that all types of secondary school must be given equal priority in funding. The TUV opposed closure of residential care homes which had been operated by
5402-511: The 2011 Northern Ireland local elections . It received 2% of the overall vote. Two TUV candidates were elected in Ballymena , and one each in Moyle , Ballymoney , Larne and Limavady . The TUV fielded 12 candidates across 11 constituencies in the 2011 Northern Ireland Assembly election . They received 16,480 votes or 2.5% of the poll. Just one of their candidates was elected; Jim Allister in
5548-445: The 2015 general election , taking second in North Antrim but failing to place in the top four elsewhere. The party stood 15 candidates in 14 constituencies in the 2016 Northern Ireland Assembly election , winning 23,776 first-preference votes (3.4% of the overall vote share). Jim Allister retained his seat in North Antrim, but the party was unable to gain any additional MLAs. Jim Allister once again retained his North Antrim seat in
5694-487: The 2017 Northern Ireland Assembly election , taking 16% of first preference votes. In 2017, the party stood a single candidate in the 2017 general election . TUV did not stand any candidates in the 2019 general election . The TUV campaign for the 2022 Northern Ireland Assembly election prioritised a theme of opposition to the Northern Ireland Protocol. The party's candidates were designated on
5840-408: The 2024 United Kingdom general election . In this election, the party won its first Westminster Member of Parliament (MP), electing Jim Allister as MP for North Antrim . The Traditional Unionist Voice was founded in 2007 as a protest movement rather than as a political party. They announced that it was their intention to "occupy the traditional unionist ground" which, they said, had been abandoned by
5986-771: The American War of Independence , of the Irish Volunteers and, as that militia paraded in Dublin, 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
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6132-658: 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
6278-662: The DUP when the latter party signed the St Andrews Agreement and agreed to form a government with the Irish Republican party Sinn Féin. In 2008, the TUV began to contest elections as a political party with the declared aim of building a democratic opposition to what they described as "the DUP/Sinn Fein regime". The TUV maintains that certain aspects of the Good Friday Agreement represent a poor deal for
6424-576: The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in March of that year. At the time of his resignation, Allister was a prominent figure in the DUP and held the position of Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the party having been elected to the European Parliament in 2004. The reason for the split was DUP leader Ian Paisley's March 2007 consent to the St Andrews Agreement and his willingness to become First Minister of Northern Ireland alongside
6570-689: 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
6716-613: 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
6862-480: 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
7008-636: 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,
7154-479: The North Antrim constituency , thus becoming the party's first MLA. Allister received 4,061 first preference votes (10.1%), and on the ninth and last count was deemed to be elected without reaching the quota of 5,760 votes. In the 2014 European Parliament election , Jim Allister once again contested the Northern Ireland constituency for the TUV. On this occasion he polled 75,806 first preference votes, 12.1% of
7300-535: The Northern Ireland Protocol annulled. The TUV has campaigned for Reform UK candidates due to their shared opposition to the Northern Ireland Protocol. The TUV's Council Election manifesto of 2023 proposed that any local council wishing to increase rates by more than 5% should first seek approval for this from voters who would be asked to approve or to veto the rise via local referendum. The party suggested that this would help "deliver value for money" in local councils. The Localism Act 2011 had already introduced such
7446-590: 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 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
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#17327726216617592-540: The Ulster Defence Association (UDA) with South Belfast Brigade chief and UDA deputy leader John McMichael being appointed to the coordinating committee. Unionists blamed the Irish government for loyalist parades being rerouted from predominantly Catholic areas and the UULF's stated purpose was to oppose further perceived interference from Dublin , although the group's secretary told the press ahead of
7738-684: 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
7884-449: The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) than to the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), enabling the former to retain its seat. At a Craigavon Borough Council local by-election in Lurgan on 14 January 2010, the TUV candidate won 19.3% of first preference votes. The UUP candidate, Jo-Anne Dobson , won with 63.9%. The DUP did not contest the seat. Jim Allister, leader of TUV, contested the European Parliament election on 4 June 2009. He stood on
8030-443: The partition settlement of 1921 by which the rest of Ireland attained separate statehood , Ulster unionists accepted 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,
8176-413: 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
8322-416: 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
8468-428: 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
8614-428: The Assembly and its associated committees - so-called 'legislative devolution'. The party's first electoral contest was the Dromore local government by-election for Banbridge District Council which took place on 13 February 2008 with its candidate being Dromore solicitor, Keith Harbinson. He took 19.5% of the first preference votes cast. TUV was the last party to be eliminated, and more of its votes transferred to
8760-413: The British government suspended this arrangement. Against a background of growing political violence, and citing 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
8906-406: 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,
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#17327726216619052-608: 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
9198-413: The Civil Service (Special Advisers) Bill – was voted into law by the Northern Ireland Assembly . The bill's aim was to tighten the rules governing appointment of special advisers (SPADS) by ministers of the Northern Ireland government. Amongst other things, the new law debarred anyone convicted of an offence carrying a jail sentence of five years or more from appointment as a SPAD. Allister said that he
9344-400: The Democratic Unionist Party and the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) . It is usually considered by political commentators to be a small party and characterised as being more hardline than other Northern Irish unionist parties. Since 2011, the TUV has occupied one seat in the Northern Ireland Assembly. In 2024, they won their first seat in the United Kingdom House of Commons . The party also holds
9490-408: The European Day of Remembrance of Victims of Terrorism – each year on the anniversary of the Madrid bombings of 11 March 2004 , the European Union remembers the victims of terrorist attacks across the world. In August 2012, Allister called the Parades Commission "little Hitlers " when they placed restrictions on a loyalist parade. In June 2013, a private member's bill proposed by Allister -
9636-467: The Functioning of Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill was passed by a vote in the Northern Ireland Assembly . Introduced as a private member's bill by Jim Allister, the bill's primary aim was to correct dysfunctional behaviour by ministers, special advisers and civil servants who ran the government of Northern Ireland. The Coghlin Report (March 2020) into the Renewable Heating Incentive scheme scandal had proposed 44 recommendations for improvement in
9782-417: The Good Friday Agreement and the subsequent St Andrews Agreement. Northern Irish governments are formed via a type of consociationalist power-sharing termed 'mandatory coalition', and the government ministers who make up the Northern Ireland Executive are overseen by two first ministers. In practice this has meant that one first minister is appointed from among the unionist parties in the Assembly and
9928-417: The NHS and they supported the retention of a mix of public and private sector residential care home provision. They believe that when there is a public inquiry into the response to COVID-19 pandemic in Northern Ireland , a key element should be the question of whether care homes were sufficiently protected from the virus. The TUV opposed mandatory vaccine passports and argued that the Northern Ireland government
10074-470: 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
10220-441: The Northern Ireland Assembly but most of its content was eventually approved, with only one of the parties in the assembly objecting to all of its content. As a result of the new law, written records of all governmental meetings were to be taken by civil servants, confidential government business was no longer to be discussed via private email accounts, sharing of confidential information which could be used for private financial gain
10366-433: The South. The British government, which had had to deploy its own forces to suppress 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,
10512-670: 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
10658-530: 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
10804-842: 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
10950-471: 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
11096-485: 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
11242-547: The agreement. During the one-day loyalist strike against the agreement in March 1986 it was reportedly difficult for journalists to move around the "loyalist stronghold" of Larne without the permission of Allister. He was also very vocal in his criticism of Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) chief constable John Hermon ; the Irish Independent wrote in June 1986 that most of the statements sent by Allister with regards to
11388-541: The area for thirteen years, fled shortly afterwards and were later rehoused. In August 1985, Allister attended the first major meeting of the United Ulster Loyalist Front (UULF) in Portadown . The UULF had originally formed as a committee earlier that year to oppose police plans to reroute traditional Orange Order parades away from nationalist areas of Portadown. The UULF was supported by
11534-544: The assembly election." Source: RTÉ News On 6 May at the 2010 general election for the Westminster parliament, TUV received 26,300 votes in the 10 constituencies it contested. In the same election, the DUP received 168,216 votes and the UCUNF received 102,361 votes. A week after the election the TUV acknowledged on its website that the outcome was disappointing given that none of its candidates were elected to Parliament. Traditional Unionist Voice fielded 41 candidates in
11680-402: The ballot paper as representing "TUV - No Sea Border". For the first time in the party's history it stood a candidate in each of the 18 constituencies which elect the Northern Ireland Assembly. TUV candidates won 65,788 first preference votes, more than three times the party's score in the 2017 Assembly election and 7.6% of the total first preference vote but only one of the 90 members elected to
11826-791: The ballot paper than at obtaining first preference votes. Source: Ulster University CAIN archive Source: In the Northern Ireland local council elections held on 18 May 2023, the TUV fielded 46 candidates and polled a total of 29,202 first preference votes, 3.9% of all votes cast in the election. Nine of their candidates were elected: five in Mid and East Antrim Borough Council , two in Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Council , one in Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council and one in Belfast City Council . In March 2024,
11972-575: 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
12118-595: 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
12264-485: The chief constable could not be printed "having regards to the law of defamation and libel". In May 1986 Allister led thirteen other DUP politicians in an occupation of the telephone exchange at Parliament Buildings at Stormont and blocked calls from going through to government departments. The siege ended after the RUC used a sledgehammer to breach the barricaded door. Allister and then DUP deputy leader Peter Robinson held
12410-459: The death of an elderly Catholic woman. That same month Allister organised a rally inaugurating the Ballymena battalion of a new loyalist paramilitary group , Ulster Resistance . Allister, DUP deputy leader Peter Robinson, and Ulster Clubs chairman Alan Wright led hundreds of loyalists, many wearing paramilitary uniforms and some wearing masks, parading in a show of strength that culminated at Ballymena Town Hall , where DUP leader Ian Paisley
12556-661: The eleven new local councils in Northern Ireland, TUV candidates polled a total of 28,310 first preference votes, or 4.5%, an increase on the previous council elections. The party had 13 successful candidates. They achieved their largest number of councillors in Mid and East Antrim , where they became the third-largest party with five seats. They won three seats in Causeway Coast and Glens , two in Antrim and Newtownabbey and one each in Belfast , North Down and Ards and Lisburn and Castlereagh . The party stood in seven constituencies in
12702-450: The formation of government via the 'voluntary coalition' model which operates in most democratic countries. Voluntary coalition allows for any group of parties in an Assembly to form a government provided that they can agree on a programme for government and can command a majority in the Assembly. In the event that no voluntary coalition could be negotiated, the TUV would prefer that Northern Ireland be governed from Westminster while retaining
12848-423: The functioning of the Northern Ireland government and its civil service. The NI Executive and Assembly had responded to this report by creating a new code of conduct to address these failures. But Allister was of the opinion that this was insufficient and that law, rather than guidance, was necessary to remedy the problems identified in the report. The bill he proposed was complex, detailed and led to much debate in
12994-456: The grounds wherein abortion could be demanded. The party holds a 'pro-life' position and advocates that moral issues should be matters for local decision-making. In the TUV's 2015 manifesto (before the legalisation of same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland in January 2020) it stated that it, "oppose[s] any redefinition of marriage" and "defend[s] traditional family values ... believing that that
13140-450: 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
13286-613: 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
13432-729: 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
13578-491: 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
13724-401: 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
13870-633: 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
14016-748: The meeting that "[he] would not expect paramilitary action to be decided tonight". Following the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement in November 1985 by the Thatcher and FitzGerald governments, he was a high-profile opponent of the treaty. He was a member of the Joint Unionist Working Party, a body set up by his party and the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) to oversee the unionist campaign against
14162-603: 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
14308-474: The more direct route which would disrupt the GAA facilities". In the 2011 Northern Ireland Assembly election , Allister was elected in the North Antrim constituency for the TUV and retained his seat in the 2016, 2017 and 2022 Assembly elections. In 2012, the year after his first election as a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly , Allister established at Parliament Buildings in Belfast an annual event to mark
14454-481: The new Northern Ireland Assembly was a TUV candidate; Jim Allister in the North Antrim constituency. Under the Single Transferable Vote system of proportional representation used in Northern Ireland a disproportionality between outcome in seats and first preference vote share can arise when a party is eliminated from the count because it has been less successful at obtaining lower preference votes on
14600-575: The nineteenth century. Typically Presbyterian agrarian-reform Liberals coalesced with traditionally Anglican Orange Order Conservatives against 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
14746-502: 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
14892-520: The office of the Lord Lieutenant , by English ministers. Seeing little prospect of further reform and in 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
15038-549: 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
15184-633: The other first minister from among the Irish nationalist parties. Furthermore, ministerial roles in the Northern Ireland Executive are apportioned (via the D'Hondt mathematical formula) to political parties according to their respective strengths in the Assembly. The TUV argues that these arrangements are not in the best interests of Northern Ireland because such a government will always consist of parties having political objectives which are opposites, and thus no common programme for government can be agreed upon. The TUV would prefer to see
15330-521: The overall TUV vote, only Allister was returned to Stormont in the 2022 Assembly election. In March 2024, the TUV formed an electoral alliance with the right-wing populist party Reform UK , under which they would stand agreed candidates in Northern Ireland at the 2024 United Kingdom general election . Allister later confirmed that he would be contesting the North Antrim constituency for the TUV–Reform alliance. North Antrim had long been regarded as one of
15476-724: The paratroopers. The demonstration was part of UK-wide protests against Troubles-related prosecutions of former British soldiers. The chair of the Trust said: "Bloody Sunday has been the subject of a meticulous public inquiry which found that all those killed and wounded were innocent" and asked TUV to re-consider whether Ross was a suitable candidate. The TUV replied that there had been "various conflicting judicial findings" about Bloody Sunday. It also said Ross's words had been taken out of context and that he would remain their candidate. Unionism in Ireland Unionism in Ireland
15622-471: The party in North Belfast because of these past sectarian posts. The TUV issued a statement saying that to give its candidates the "best chance of success" the party must "take tough decisions". Bunting remained on Belfast City Council as an independent member until the 2019 Belfast City Council election when, standing this time as an independent candidate, she received 3% of first preference votes and
15768-413: The party's candidate in Northern Ireland at the 2004 European Parliament election in the United Kingdom , topping the poll with 175,000 first-preference votes, 32 per cent of the total. It is reported that he participated in more parliamentary debates and asked more questions than his fellow Northern Irish MEPs Bairbre de Brún of Sinn Féin and Jim Nicholson of the Ulster Unionist Party . Allister
15914-548: The party's safest seat and the seat of DUP founder and former party leader Ian Paisley . He came second in the poll with 7,114 votes to the DUP's Ian Paisley Jr who polled 19,672 votes. Allister is a vocal critic of the A5 Western Transport Corridor , and claimed in 2010 a proposed bypass around Dungiven on the A6 would destroy some Protestant-owned farms and suggested this was planned "in order to avoid
16060-501: The party. In late 2007, there was speculation that Allister might found a new unionist political party. It was also claimed, on 10 October 2007, that he had been approached by the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), but he in fact proceeded to found the Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) on 7 December 2007. In the 2009 European Parliament election in the United Kingdom , this time standing as
16206-547: 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
16352-573: The phrase " leprechaun language" in reference to the Irish language . The press release's content censured the Northern Ireland Department of Education for an annual increase of 350% in spending on translation from English into the Irish language (the total sum spent on translation was £47,000, according to the party). Although the press release was issued under the name of the then TUV vice-chairman Keith Harbinson, he insisted that
16498-416: The phrase was not his own but had instead been added by another, unnamed, employee of the party. When eventually published on the TUV website, the phrase was removed from the title and both Harbinson and the TUV apologised to their critics for its use. In December 2009, TUV member Trevor Collins organised a petition to release former Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) member Torrens Knight from prison, where he
16644-406: The presence of Sinn Féin in the Northern Ireland government. After Allister's resignation from the DUP, he continued to occupy his European Parliament seat, sitting as an Independent MEP until the following European election in 2009 when he was not re-elected. In terms of electoral success and financial income, Traditional Unionist Voice is the third largest unionist party in Northern Ireland, behind
16790-464: The previous December. A senior loyalist politician recalled walking into the Ulster Workers' Council HQ on Hawthornden Road in Belfast to find Allister and Peter Robinson "giggling" while phoning Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) headquarters claiming to be Catholics in distress in a loyalist area afflicted by the strike and asking the SDLP to send a car to rescue them. He served as
16936-497: The red, white and blue. To those people and to everyone else who would betray us, the Ulster Loyalists say: 'No surrender'." Later, a crowd gathered outside the home of a Catholic family who lived in Orkney Drive, a married couple with six children, and pelted the house with stones, smashing windows and damaging the family car. The father, Ivan Smith, was also reportedly punched and kicked. The Smith family, who had lived in
17082-422: The results a victory for unionism and indicated his intention to stand TUV candidates in future Northern Ireland Assembly and parliamentary elections. He additionally argued that the election represented the "depth of feeling that there is among many unionists who refuse to be rolled over in the era of Sinn Féin rule, who have quite rightly a resentment against those who betrayed them, deceived them, conned them, in
17228-497: 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
17374-544: 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,
17520-413: 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
17666-411: 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
17812-572: 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
17958-400: The total. This represented a large increase in number of votes compared to his 2009 European election score, although a decrease of just over one percentage point in terms of vote share. Allister was eliminated in the sixth of eight counts with Sinn Féin, the DUP and UUP all retaining their seats. In the 2014 Northern Ireland local elections (held on the same day as the European election) for
18104-475: The town through adjoining fields. The RUC denied any undue holdups and stated no arrests were made. When questioned by the press Allister declined to say how many were in attendance but claimed that Ulster Resistance rallies seemed to grow in size every night, declaring: The only problem we have is that we are getting too many [Ulster Resistance] volunteers and we may have to slow down the recruiting process. His departure from active politics in June 1987 followed
18250-486: 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
18396-487: The unionist community of Northern Ireland, and refuse to accept that someone with a terrorist conviction should be allowed to hold ministerial office in the government of Northern Ireland. Jim Allister had been the party's sole MLA since 2011 until he was elected to the House of Commons in the 2024 general election , after which he was replaced by Timothy Gaston . Allister's voting record, his contributions to debates and
18542-544: Was also active as a member of the European Parliament Fisheries Committee and was ranked by the pressure group TaxPayers' Alliance as the most "hard-working, transparent and pro-taxpayer" of the 75 United Kingdom MEPs during the 2004–2009 European Parliament. On 27 March 2007, Allister resigned from the DUP because of the party's decision to enter into government with Sinn Féin . It was the second occasion on which he had resigned from
18688-466: Was called to the Inner Bar as Queen's Counsel . In 2003, he represented Loyalist Volunteer Force member Clifford McKeown in court in a case regarding the 1996 murder of Catholic taxi driver Michael McGoldrick . McKeown was found guilty of the murder by the court. Allister said that McKeown would be appealing against the conviction. Allister returned to the DUP in 2004 and successfully ran as
18834-500: Was closely aligned with Enoch Powell's "integrationist" stance that Northern Ireland should be closer to the rest of the United Kingdom , and that other unionist leaders were in favour of devolution . In March 1973 Allister was elected to the post of publicity officer for the Queen's DUP Association. He was involved in the 1974 Ulster Workers' Council strike against the Sunningdale Agreement , which had been signed
18980-516: 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
19126-538: Was criticised for refusing to take action against Collins. Jim Allister replied that Collins had "acted in a misguided fashion" but said "there are people released from jail who were convicted of crimes in which people died and today they sit in our government". In November 2012, Ballymena Borough TUV councillor and former player for the Ireland national rugby union team , Davy Tweed , was convicted of child sexual abuse between 1988 and 1995. Pending sentencing, he remained
19272-510: 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
19418-478: 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 ,
19564-651: 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 ...
19710-475: Was inspired to introduce the bill by the example of Ann Travers who had protested against the appointment, in 2011, of former IRA member Mary McArdle to the position of special adviser by the then Sinn Féin minister for culture and arts. McArdle had been convicted for her part in the 1972 murder of Mary Travers and the serious wounding of her father, Tom Travers, a Belfast magistrate. Some years later, Allister recalled: "I labelled it 'Ann's Law' because that's
19856-647: Was nine, when his family moved to Craigantlet, just outside Newtownards . His parents, Robert Allister and Mary Jane Allister ( née McCrory ), were Protestants from County Monaghan ; Robert (1911–1998) was from the townland of Leagh, just south of Monaghan . They had moved northeast to County Down from County Monaghan in 1949 or 1950. Allister was a pupil at Barnamaghery Primary School and later Dundonald Primary School when he moved house. After attending Regent House Grammar School in Newtownards, Allister graduated from Queen's University Belfast with
20002-597: Was not re-elected to the council. In August 2021, the TUV defended its Assembly candidate for East Belfast, John Ross, who was criticised by the Bloody Sunday Trust (a registered charity) for comments he made about Bloody Sunday (1972) , when fourteen unarmed Catholic civilians were shot dead by the Parachute Regiment . In April 2019, while addressing a protest for British Army veterans, Ross had called Bloody Sunday "a very successful operation" by
20148-617: 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
20294-445: Was put before the jury". In 2014, Jolene Bunting became the first TUV councillor elected to Belfast City Council. It was then reported that she had posted sectarian "rants" against Catholics in 2011–2012. Bunting apologised for the online comments. She said that she did not regret their content, but regretted how they were written. In 2017, Bunting resigned from the TUV, claiming that party officials would not allow her to stand again for
20440-531: Was serving a sentence for assaulting two women. Knight had previously served seven years imprisonment for taking part in the Greysteel massacre and Castlerock killings , but had been released early (in 2000) under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. Because of his new conviction, the early release licence for his terrorist crimes was suspended. The TUV distanced itself from the petition, but
20586-518: Was the Parliament in Dublin . Confined on a narrow franchise to landed members of 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
20732-423: Was to be a criminal offence, ministers and special advisers were to sign a registry of interests which would show whether their personal financial interest overlapped with their elected responsibilities, and the appointment of so-called 'super-spads' by a political party rather than via the normal civil service appointment procedures was prohibited. Finally, the first minister and deputy first minister were to produce
20878-608: 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
21024-512: Was too cautious in easing lockdown restrictions and that Northern Irish schools should have re-opened sooner than they did. The TUV strongly supported Brexit. Their grounds for doing so included an opposition to fiscal transfers from the UK to the European Union and what they described as the subordination of local labour market, trade and other laws to the supremacy of EU law. They wish to see
21170-586: Was transferred to Westminster . In the Presbyterian north east 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
21316-416: Was waiting. Inside Paisley donned a red Ulster Resistance beret on stage, daring the RUC to arrest him while Allister pledged his "personal support" to Ulster Resistance. Allister claimed that the RUC had erected a "ring of steel" around the town in an attempt to prevent them from marching to the site of the meeting; he was cheered when he informed the gathered crowd that the colour party had instead entered
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