Misplaced Pages

#988011

108-834: Seen as an important link between grassroots loyalism and more mainstream unionist politics, the ULCCC was chaired by Glenn Barr and met in the Belfast offices of the Vanguard Progressive Unionist Party on a weekly basis. Replacing the earlier Ulster Army Council , it brought together representatives of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), Red Hand Commando , Vanguard Service Corps / Ulster Volunteer Service Corps , Down Orange Welfare (DOW), Loyalist Association of Workers and Orange Volunteers . Barr

216-650: 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

324-650: 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

432-523: 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

540-552: 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

648-405: 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

756-555: 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". Monarchy of

864-452: A constitutional ruler, must ultimately accept the decisions of the prime minister and Cabinet, who by definition enjoy the confidence of the House of Commons. In Bagehot's words: "the sovereign has, under a constitutional monarchy ... three rights – the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn." Although the royal prerogative is extensive and parliamentary approval

972-527: 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

1080-801: 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

1188-496: A majority in that House. The prime minister takes office by attending the monarch in a private audience, and after " kissing hands " that appointment is immediately effective without any other formality or instrument. The sovereign also has the power to dismiss the prime minister, but the last time this power was exercised was in 1834, when William IV dismissed Lord Melbourne ; since then, prime ministers have only left office upon their resignation, which they are expected to offer to

SECTION 10

#1732780077989

1296-660: 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

1404-659: 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

1512-712: A similar relationship to the devolved governments of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland as to the government of the UK. The sovereign appoints the First Minister of Scotland on the nomination of the Scottish Parliament , and the First Minister of Wales on the nomination of the Senedd . In Scottish matters, the sovereign acts on the advice of the Scottish Government . However, as devolution

1620-630: 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

1728-520: 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

1836-684: 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

1944-532: Is King Charles III , who ascended the throne on the death of Queen Elizabeth II , his mother. The monarch and their immediate family undertake various official, ceremonial, diplomatic and representational duties. Although formally the monarch has authority over the government —which is known as " His/Her Majesty's Government "—this power may only be used according to laws enacted in Parliament and within constraints of convention and precedent . In practice

2052-673: Is further both mentioned in and the subject of songs, loyal toasts, and salutes. " God Save the King " (or, alternatively, "God Save the Queen") is the British national anthem . Oaths of allegiance are made to the Sovereign and their lawful successors. The monarch takes little direct part in government. The authority to use the sovereign's formal powers is almost all delegated, either by statute or by convention , to ministers or officers of

2160-676: Is marked by the State Opening of Parliament , during which the monarch reads the speech from the throne in the chamber of the House of Lords, outlining the Government's legislative agenda. Prorogation usually occurs about one year after a session begins, and formally concludes the session. Dissolution ends a parliamentary term, and is followed by a general election for all seats in the House of Commons. If not dissolved sooner, Parliaments are automatically dissolved after five years. The Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 temporarily removed

2268-736: Is more limited in Wales, in Welsh matters the monarch acts on the advice of the prime minister and Cabinet of the United Kingdom. The sovereign can veto any law passed by the Northern Ireland Assembly , if it is deemed unconstitutional by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland . The sovereign is deemed the "fount of justice"; although the monarch does not personally rule in judicial cases, judicial functions are performed in his or her name. For instance, prosecutions are brought on

SECTION 20

#1732780077989

2376-482: Is not formally required for its exercise, it is limited. Many Crown prerogatives have fallen out of use or have been permanently transferred to Parliament. For example, the sovereign cannot impose and collect new taxes; such an action requires the authorisation of an Act of Parliament. According to a parliamentary report, "The Crown cannot invent new prerogative powers", and Parliament can override any prerogative power by passing legislation. The royal prerogative includes

2484-409: Is used to pardon convicted offenders or reduce sentences. The sovereign is the " fount of honour ", the source of all honours and dignities in the United Kingdom. The Crown creates all peerages , appoints members of the orders of chivalry , grants knighthoods and awards other honours. Although peerages and most other honours are granted on the advice of the prime minister, some honours are within

2592-716: 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

2700-542: The British Army , and the Royal Air Force ), and accredits British High commissioners and ambassadors, and receives heads of missions from foreign states. The sovereign has the power to appoint the prime minister. In accordance with unwritten constitutional conventions, the monarch appoints the individual who commands the support of the House of Commons, usually the leader of a party or coalition that has

2808-718: 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

2916-578: The February 1974 general election when Harold Wilson was appointed prime minister after Edward Heath resigned following his failure to form a coalition. Although Wilson's Labour Party did not have a majority, they were the largest party. The second followed the May 2010 general election , in which the Conservatives (the largest party) and Liberal Democrats (the third-largest party) agreed to form

3024-689: 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

3132-613: 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

3240-480: 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

3348-531: The Lascelles Principles , if a minority government asked to dissolve Parliament to call an early election to strengthen its position, the monarch could refuse and would do so under three conditions. When Harold Wilson requested a dissolution late in 1974, Queen Elizabeth II granted his request as Heath had already failed to form a coalition. The resulting general election gave Wilson a small majority. The monarch could in theory unilaterally dismiss

Ulster Loyalist Central Co-ordinating Committee - Misplaced Pages Continue

3456-538: The Lordship of Ireland . Meanwhile, Magna Carta began the process of reducing the English monarch's political powers. In the 16th century, English and Scottish monarchs played a central role in what became the religious English Reformation and Scottish Reformation , and the English king became King of Ireland . Beginning in 1603, the English and Scottish kingdoms were ruled by a single sovereign . From 1649 to 1660,

3564-636: 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,

3672-645: 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

3780-684: 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

3888-529: 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

3996-595: 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,

4104-565: The petty kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England and early medieval Scotland , which consolidated into the kingdoms of England and Scotland by the 10th century. England was conquered by the Normans in 1066, after which Wales also gradually came under the control of Anglo-Normans . The process was completed in the 13th century when the Principality of Wales became a client state of the English kingdom. The Anglo-Normans also established

4212-536: 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

4320-531: 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

4428-422: The 19th century. The constitutional writer Walter Bagehot identified the monarchy in 1867 as the "dignified" rather than the "efficient" part of government. That part of the government's executive authority which remains theoretically and nominally vested in the sovereign is known as the royal prerogative . The monarch acts within the constraints of convention and precedent, exercising prerogative powers only on

Ulster Loyalist Central Co-ordinating Committee - Misplaced Pages Continue

4536-691: 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

4644-480: 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

4752-462: 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,

4860-608: 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

4968-550: The Crown , or other public bodies . Thus the acts of state done in the name of the Crown, such as Crown Appointments, even if personally performed by the monarch, such as the King's Speech and the State Opening of Parliament , depend upon decisions made elsewhere. In formal terms: The sovereign's role as a constitutional monarch is largely limited to non-partisan functions, such as granting honours . This role has been recognised since

5076-405: The Empire to an end. George VI and his successors adopted the title Head of the Commonwealth as a symbol of the free association of its independent member states. The United Kingdom and fourteen other independent sovereign states that share the same person as their monarch are called Commonwealth realms . Although the monarch is shared, each country is sovereign and independent of the others, and

5184-470: 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

5292-433: 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,

5400-552: The UDA, RHC and UVF. The revived ULCCC was at the centre of controversy when Sean McPhilemy alleged that its members included Ulster Bank chief Billy Abernethy, Ulster Independence Movement leader Reverend Hugh Ross , Royal Ulster Constabulary Assistant Chief Constable Trevor Forbes and other leading people in Northern Irish society who, he claimed, conspired with leading paramilitary figures such as Billy Wright and Robin Jackson to facilitate loyalist killings. The full list of alleged members as claimed by McPhilemy in his book

5508-430: The ULCCC. McPhilemy settled out of court for $ 1 million and released a statement acknowledging that the Prenitces had no involvement in the activity described in the book. In a separate case McPhilemy was awarded £145,000 in damages against The Sunday Times after the paper claimed that The Committee was a hoax. Unionism in Ireland Unionism in Ireland is a political tradition that professes loyalty to

SECTION 50

#1732780077989

5616-506: 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

5724-407: 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

5832-585: 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

5940-432: The United Kingdom The monarchy of the United Kingdom , commonly referred to as the British monarchy , is the form of government used by the United Kingdom by which a hereditary monarch reigns as the head of state , with their powers regulated by the British Constitution . The term may also refer to the role of the royal family within the UK's broader political structure . The monarch since 8 September 2022

6048-405: 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

6156-485: 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

6264-443: The advice of ministers responsible to Parliament, often through the prime minister or Privy Council . In practice, prerogative powers are exercised only on the prime minister's advice – the prime minister, and not the sovereign, has control. The monarch holds a weekly audience with the prime minister; no records of these audiences are taken and the proceedings remain fully confidential. The monarch may express his or her views, but, as

6372-522: 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

6480-409: 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

6588-405: The fact that such an idea had little support outside sections of the UDA. Somewhat ironically it was the UDA, along with DOW, that left the ULCCC in 1976 after it emerged that McKeague and other members of the groups were unilaterally holding meetings with members of the Provisional IRA and also discussing plans for an independent Northern Ireland with leading Catholic figures. With the departure of

SECTION 60

#1732780077989

6696-405: The first coalition government since World War II. The third occurred shortly thereafter, in June 2017 , when the Conservative Party lost its majority in a snap election, though the party remained in power as a minority government . The sovereign has the power to summon, prorogue and dissolve Parliament. Each parliamentary session begins with the sovereign's summons. The new parliamentary session

6804-405: The largest loyalist paramilitary group, the ULCCC went into abeyance. The ULCCC was revived in 1991 under the leadership of Ray Smallwoods (the leader of the Ulster Democratic Party who was killed by the Provisional IRA in July 1994), although it did not gain much importance due to the existence by that time of the Combined Loyalist Military Command , which brought together the leaderships of

6912-450: 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

7020-438: 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

7128-674: 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

7236-434: 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

7344-401: 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

7452-511: 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

7560-603: 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

7668-794: The monarch has a different, specific, and official national title and style for each realm. Although the term is rarely used today, the fifteen Commonwealth realms are, with respect to their monarch, in personal union . The monarch is also head of state of the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories . King Charles III [REDACTED] William, Prince of Wales [REDACTED] Charles III ( King-in-Council ) [REDACTED] Starmer ministry ( L ) Keir Starmer ( L ) Angela Rayner ( L ) ( King-in-Parliament ) [REDACTED] Charles III [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] The Lord Reed The Lord Hodge Andrew Bailey Monetary Policy Committee In

7776-421: The monarch to dismiss them; such ministers are euphemistically described as "leaving the government". In a hung parliament where no party or coalition holds a majority, the monarch has an increased degree of latitude in choosing the individual likely to command the most support, though it would usually be the leader of the largest party. Since 1945, there have only been three hung parliaments. The first followed

7884-415: The monarch upon losing their majority in the House of Commons. While the sovereign also appoints and may dismiss every other Minister of the Crown , by convention they do so only on the recommendation of the prime minister. It is therefore the prime minister who controls the composition of the government. In practice, the prime minister will request a member of the government resign in preference to advising

7992-613: The monarch's role, including that of Head of the Armed Forces , is limited to functions such as bestowing honours and appointing the prime minister , which are performed in a non-partisan manner. The UK Government has called the monarchy "a unique soft power and diplomatic asset". The Crown also occupies a unique cultural role, serving as an unofficial brand ambassador for British interests and values abroad, increasing tourism at home, and promoting charities throughout civil society . The British monarchy traces its origins from

8100-575: 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

8208-502: 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

8316-520: 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

8424-549: 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

8532-607: 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

8640-671: The personal gift of the sovereign and are not granted on ministerial advice. The sovereign alone appoints members of the Order of the Garter , the Order of the Thistle , the Royal Victorian Order and the Order of Merit . The sovereign is personally immune from criminal prosecution or arrest, as well as from civil actions, and their property is not subject to execution or foreclosure . The Crown , however, as distinct from

8748-522: The powers to appoint and dismiss ministers, regulate the civil service, issue passports, declare war, make peace, direct the actions of the military, and negotiate and ratify treaties, alliances, and international agreements. However, a treaty cannot alter the domestic laws of the United Kingdom; an Act of Parliament is necessary in such cases. The sovereign is the Head of the Armed Forces (the Royal Navy ,

8856-483: The present borders of England, though its constituent parts retained strong regional identities. The 11th century saw England become more stable, despite a number of wars with the Danes, which resulted in a Danish monarchy for one generation. The conquest of England in 1066 by William, Duke of Normandy , was crucial in terms of both political and social change. The new monarch continued the centralisation of power begun in

8964-417: The prime minister, but in practice, the prime minister's term nowadays comes to an end only by electoral defeat, death, or resignation. Before a bill passed by the legislative Houses can become law, royal assent (the monarch's approval) is required. In theory, assent can either be granted (making the bill law) or withheld (vetoing the bill), but since 1708 assent has always been granted. The sovereign has

9072-497: 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

9180-544: 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,

9288-413: 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

9396-486: The sovereign's authority to dissolve Parliament, however, this power was restored by the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022 . The sovereign's power of prorogation was unaffected, which is a regular feature of the parliamentary calendar . In 1950 the King's Private Secretary Sir Alan "Tommy" Lascelles , writing pseudonymously to The Times newspaper, asserted a constitutional convention: according to

9504-430: The sovereign's behalf, and courts derive their authority from the Crown. The common law holds that the sovereign "can do no wrong", and so cannot be prosecuted for criminal offences. The Crown Proceedings Act 1947 allows civil lawsuits against the Crown in its public capacity (that is, lawsuits against the government), but not lawsuits against the monarch personally. The sovereign exercises the "prerogative of mercy", which

9612-586: The sovereign's property without permission. Following Viking raids and settlement in the ninth century, the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex emerged as the dominant English kingdom. Alfred the Great secured Wessex, achieved dominance over western Mercia , and assumed the title "King of the Anglo-Saxons". His grandson Æthelstan was the first king to rule over a unitary kingdom roughly corresponding to

9720-407: The sovereign, can be the subject of proceedings for tort and contract since 1947 . There are more than 160 laws granting express immunity to the sovereign or their property in various respects. For example, the sovereign is exempt from anti-discrimination legislation and other workers' rights, health and safety, or pensions laws, as well as numerous taxes, and environmental inspectors cannot enter

9828-411: 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

9936-513: 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

10044-629: The table was a supposed secret group within the Royal Ulster Constabulary that existed, under the command of Trevor Forbes, to manage police collusion in loyalist paramilitary killings. The existence of the Inner Force has also been strenuously denied by those named as having been involved. David and Albert Prentice subsequently sued McPhilemy, his publisher Roberts Rinehart and his TV production company Box Production for $ 100 million over his claims that they were involved in

10152-439: The throne. In 1707, the kingdoms of England and Scotland were merged to create the Kingdom of Great Britain , and in 1801, the Kingdom of Ireland joined to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland . Beginning in the 16th century, the monarch was the nominal head of what came to be the vast British Empire , which covered a quarter of the world's land area at its greatest extent in 1921. The title Emperor of India

10260-693: The tradition of monarchy was broken by the republican Commonwealth of England , which followed the Wars of the Three Kingdoms . Following the installation of William III and Mary II as co-monarchs in the Glorious Revolution , the Bill of Rights 1689 , and its Scottish counterpart the Claim of Right Act 1689 , further curtailed the power of the monarchy and excluded Catholics from succession to

10368-486: 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

10476-495: The uncodified Constitution of the United Kingdom , the monarch (exclusively referred to in legislation as "the Sovereign ", and styled His or Her Majesty ) is the head of state . The monarch's image is used to signify British sovereignty and government authority – their profile, for instance, appears on Bank of England notes and all British coins and their portrait in government buildings. The Sovereign

10584-565: Was added to the British monarch's titles between 1876 and 1948. The Balfour Declaration of 1926 recognised the evolution of the Dominions of the Empire into separate, self-governing countries within a Commonwealth of Nations . Also in this period, the monarchy in Ireland eventually became limited to Northern Ireland . In the years after World War II , the vast majority of British colonies and territories became independent, effectively bringing

10692-460: Was as follows: The make-up of the group was largely based on evidence provided to McPhilemy by James Sands. An alternative composition of the Committee was provided by Ken Kerr although McPhilemy later determined his evidence to be fraudulent and dismissed it. Of those named by McPhilemy only Sands and Kerr acknowledged the existence of this version of the ULCCC. The Inner Force referred to in

10800-463: 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

10908-510: 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

11016-527: 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 ,

11124-651: 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 ...

11232-617: 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

11340-507: Was soon replaced as chairman by John McKeague and the ULCCC took on the wider aim of preparing for the establishment of a unified "Ulster army" in the event of a British withdrawal from Northern Ireland, something that had become a leading fear in unionism in the mid-1970s. Both Barr and McKeague were prominent supporters of Ulster nationalism and in McKeague's capacity of ULCCC chairman he spoke publicly in support of independence, despite

11448-460: 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

11556-608: 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

11664-586: 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

#988011