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122-538: The group was established at a special meeting at the Ulster Unionist Party 's (UUP) offices in Glengall Street, Belfast , in 1956. Among the attendees were many loyalists who were to become major figures in the 1960s and 1970, such as Ian Paisley and Desmond Boal . The independent unionist MP Norman Porter also attended but took no further part in the group. The meeting's declared purpose

244-846: A devolved government in Northern Ireland did not include the UUP. In the 2016 European Union referendum the UUP was the only unionist party to support the remain campaign, the UUP Executive passing a motion on 5 March 2016 that the party "believes that on balance Northern Ireland is better remaining in the European Union, with the UK Government pressing for further reform and a return to the founding principle of free trade, not greater political union. The Party respects that individual members may vote for withdrawal." At

366-650: 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

488-620: A Catholic funeral for a young boy killed by the Real IRA in the Omagh bombing . In a sign of unity, Trimble and President of Ireland Mary McAleese walked into the church together. In the 2001 general election, the Ulster Unionists lost a number of seats belonging to UUP stalwarts; for example, John Taylor , the former deputy leader of the party, lost his seat of Strangford to Iris Robinson . The party's misfortunes continued at

610-587: A Catholic tradition of support for the union, focused on the value of stability and of empire, survived the first home-rule crisis. But it did not share the majority unionist conviction that any measure of devolution within the United Kingdom must lead to separation. Nor did it supply unionism with the equivalent of the Protestants who, individually, played a prominent role in home-rule and separatist politics. A handful of Irish Conservatives, drawn from

732-552: 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

854-405: 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

976-527: 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

1098-574: A hard-line challenge. The result proved inconclusive for O'Neill, who resigned a short time later. His resignation was probably caused by a speech of James Chichester-Clark who stated that he disagreed with the timing, but not the principle, of universal suffrage at local elections. Chichester-Clark won the leadership election to replace O'Neill and swiftly moved to implement many of O'Neill's reforms. Civil disorder continued to mount, culminating in August 1969 when Catholic Bogside residents clashed with

1220-571: A home-rule dispensation for the six north-east counties remaining in the United Kingdom. For the next 50 years, the Ulster Unionist Party exercised the devolved powers of the Northern Ireland Parliament with little domestic opposition and outside of the governing party-political system at Westminster . In 1972, the British government suspended this arrangement. Against a background of growing political violence, and citing

1342-801: 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

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1464-715: 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

1586-548: A new Northern Ireland legislature and executive. Renegotiated in 2006, relations within this consociational arrangement remained fraught. Unionists, with diminishing electoral strength, charged their nationalist partners in government with pursuing an anti-British cultural agenda and, post- Brexit , with supporting a trade regime, the Northern Ireland Protocol , that advances an all-Ireland agenda. In February 2024, two years after their withdrawal collapsed

1708-418: A reformed Northern Ireland Assembly . As of February 2024, they no longer do so as the larger faction: they serve in an executive with an Irish republican ( Sinn Féin ) First Minister . Unionism became an overarching partisan affiliation in Ireland late in the nineteenth century. Typically Presbyterian agrarian-reform Liberals coalesced with traditionally Anglican Orange Order Conservatives against

1830-659: 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

1952-630: 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

2074-520: 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

2196-501: The 1958 Northern Ireland general election . Maginess was perceived as being sympathetic to Catholics, having banned an Orange Order parade in 1952, and Duff was able to take 41.5% of the vote, although he failed to win the seat. Duff was more successful in May 1958, when he regained a seat on Belfast City Council, with Charles McCullough also taking a seat for the UPA. Further, in 1960, Boal won

2318-455: The 2017 general election the UUP lost both of its Commons seats, losing South Antrim to the DUP and Fermanagh & South Tyrone to Sinn Féin. The party polled 10.3% (−5.7%) and failed to take any other seats. In the 2019 local elections the UUP polled 14.1% (−2.0) winning 75 council seats, 13 fewer than in 2014. They lost their single MEP at the 2019 European Parliament elections following

2440-575: The Alliance Party of Northern Ireland in April 1970, while the emergence of Ian Paisley's Protestant Unionist Party continued to draw off some working-class and more Ulster loyalist support. In June 1973 the UUP won a majority of seats in the new Northern Ireland Assembly , but the party was divided on policy. The Sunningdale Agreement , which led to the formation of a power-sharing Executive under Ulster Unionist leader Brian Faulkner , ruptured

2562-631: The Belfast Shankill constituency at Stormont as an official UUP candidate. As Paisley came to dominate Ulster Protestant Action, he received his first convictions for public order offences. In June 1959, a major riot occurred on the Shankill Road in Belfast following a rally he had spoken at. His moves to form a Protestant unionist political party caused tensions in the group, and Paisley's supporters formed their own "Premier" branch of

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2684-718: 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

2806-610: The Conservative Party whip at Westminster , in effect functioning as the Northern Irish branch of the party. This arrangement came to an end in 1972 over disagreements over the Sunningdale Agreement . The two parties have remained institutionally separate ever since, with the exception of the 2009 to 2012 Ulster Conservatives and Unionists electoral alliance. The first-ever membership survey of

2928-485: The Government of Ireland Act 1920 , Irish unionism in effect split. Many southern unionist politicians quickly became reconciled with the new Irish Free State , sitting in its Senate or joining its political parties, while in Northern Ireland the existence of a separate Ulster Unionist Party became entrenched as it took control of the new Government of Northern Ireland , established in 1921. Carson strongly opposed

3050-751: The House of Lords who affiliated themselves with the IUA. The Ulster Defence Union was also formed on 17 March 1893 to oppose the Liberal government's plans for the Government of Ireland Bill 1893 . Although most unionist support was based in Ulster , especially within areas that later became Northern Ireland , in the late 19th and early 20th century there were unionist enclaves throughout all of Ireland. Unionists in Dublin and County Wicklow and in parts of County Cork were particularly influential. In September 1904,

3172-689: 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

3294-595: The Irish Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893. Joined by loyalist labour, on the eve of World War I this broad opposition to Irish self-government concentrated in Belfast and its hinterlands as Ulster unionism and prepared an armed resistance—the Ulster Volunteers . Within the partition settlement of 1921 by which the rest of Ireland attained separate statehood , Ulster unionists accepted

3416-613: 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

3538-619: The Irish Parliamentary Party . In 1891, the Irish Conservative Party came to an end, merged into a new Irish Unionist Alliance (IUA) which also included the Irish Liberal Unionists , the latter having split from the Liberal Party over the issue of home rule . While usually dominated by unionists from Ulster , the IUA was often led by southern unionists. There were also some eighty members of

3660-480: 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

3782-636: 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,

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3904-670: The National Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations , but in 1985, withdrew from it as well, in protest over the Anglo-Irish Agreement . Subsequently, the Conservative Party has organised separately in Northern Ireland, with little electoral success. Under West's leadership, the party recruited Enoch Powell , who became Ulster Unionist MP for South Down in October 1974 after defecting from

4026-536: The Royal Ulster Constabulary in Derry because of an Apprentice Boys of Derry march, sparking days of riots. Early in 1971, Chichester-Clark flew to London to request further military aid following the 1971 Scottish soldiers' killings . When this was all but refused, he resigned to be replaced by Brian Faulkner . Faulkner's government struggled though 1971 and into 1972. After Bloody Sunday ,

4148-459: The Sunningdale Agreement and in 1985 over the Anglo-Irish Agreement . The UUP's sole remaining MP at the time, Sylvia Hermon, opposed the agreement, stating she would not be willing to stand under the UCUNF banner. In February 2010, Hermon confirmed that she would not be seeking a nomination as a UCUNF candidate for the forthcoming general election. On 25 March 2010, she formally resigned from

4270-684: 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

4392-760: The United Ulster Unionist Council (UUUC) with Vanguard and the Democratic Unionist Party , successor to the Protestant Unionist Party. The result was that the UUUC won 11 out of 12 parliamentary seats in Northern Ireland on a fiercely anti-Sunningdale platform, although they barely won 50% of the overall popular vote. This result was a fatal blow for the Executive, which soon collapsed. Up until 1972

4514-614: The partition of Ireland , it was the governing party of Northern Ireland between 1921 and 1972. It was supported by most unionist voters throughout the conflict known as the Troubles , during which time it was often referred to as the Official Unionist Party ( OUP ). Under David Trimble , the party helped negotiate the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, which ended the conflict. Trimble served as

4636-533: 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

4758-563: The 'Ulster Unionist Party Assembly Group' whose membership was the 24 UUP MLAs and Ervine. Empey justified the link by stating that under the d'Hondt method for allocating ministers in the Assembly, the new group would take a seat in the Executive from Sinn Féin. Following a request for a ruling from the DUP's Peter Robinson , the Speaker ruled that the UUPAG was not a political party within

4880-605: The 149 UUP Stormont MPs were members of the Orange Order, as were all Prime Ministers. Sir James Craig, who in 1927 was created Viscount Craigavon , led the government of Northern Ireland from its inception until his death in November 1940 and is buried with his wife by the east wing of Parliament Buildings at Stormont . His successor, J. M. Andrews, was heavily criticised for appointing octogenarian veterans of Lord Craigavon's administration to his cabinet . His government

5002-416: 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

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5124-574: The 2005 election. The party held six seats at Westminster immediately before the 2005 general election, down from seven after the previous general election following the defection of Jeffrey Donaldson in 2004. The election resulted in the loss of five of their six seats. The only seat won by an Ulster Unionist was North Down, by Sylvia Hermon , who had won the seat in the 2001 general election from Robert McCartney of UK Unionist Party . David Trimble himself lost his seat in Upper Bann and resigned as party leader soon after. The ensuing leadership election

5246-428: 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

5368-417: The British Government threatened to remove control of the security forces from the devolved government. Faulkner reacted by resigning with his entire cabinet, and the British Government suspended, and eventually abolished, the Northern Ireland Parliament , replacing it with Direct Rule . The liberal unionist group, the New Ulster Movement , which had advocated the policies of Terence O'Neill, left and formed

5490-406: 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,

5612-608: 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

5734-442: The Conservative Party. In the 2011 local elections it lost seats to the Alliance Party east of the Bann and was also overtaken by them on Belfast City Council. Tom Elliott was criticised for comments he made in his victory speech where he described elements of Sinn Féin as "scum". Elliott resigned in March 2012 saying some people had not given him a 'fair opportunity' to develop and progress many party initiatives. Mike Nesbitt

5856-411: The Conservative government of Arthur Balfour published proposals for limited devolution to Ireland which would not amount to home rule. Coming from Conservatives, these led to great alarm among Irish unionists; in March 1905, the Ulster Unionist Council, which later became the Ulster Unionist Party, was formed as a co-ordinating organization for a new form of local political activity. It largely subsumed

5978-433: The Conservatives. Powell advocated a policy of 'integration', whereby Northern Ireland would be administered as an integral part of the United Kingdom. This policy divided both the Ulster Unionists and the wider unionist movement, as Powell's ideas conflicted with those supporting a restoration of devolved government to Northern Ireland. The party also made gains upon the break-up of the Vanguard Party and its merger back into

6100-458: The Irish parliament was unlamented. Having refused calls for reform—to broaden representation and curb corruption—few saw cause to regret its passing. It took the Union thirty years to deliver on the promise of Catholic emancipation (1829)—to admit Catholics to Parliament—and permit an erosion of the Protestant monopoly on position and influence. An opportunity to integrate Catholics through their re-emerging propertied and professional classes as

6222-470: 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

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6344-479: The UPA consisted of John McQuade , Billy Spence , Charles McCullough , Richard Fenton, Frank Millar , Sammy Verner, Herbert Ditty , Bob Newman and Noel Doherty , with Paisley as an ex officio member. Even though no IRA threat materialised in Belfast, and despite it becoming clear that the IRA's activities during the Border Campaign were to be limited to the border areas, Ulster Protestant Action remained in being. Factory and workplace branches were formed under

6466-512: The UPA, including one by Paisley in Belfast's Ravenhill area under his direct control. The concern of the UPA increasingly came to focus on the defence of "Bible Protestantism" and Protestant interests where jobs and housing were concerned. Although initially opposed to professional politicians, specifically banning them from membership of the group, the UPA stood the former Belfast City Councillor and superintendent of an independent gospel mission, Albert Duff, against Brian Maginess in Iveagh at

6588-436: The UPA, reinforcing their control of the group. In the 1960s, Paisley and the UPA campaigned against Prime Minister of Northern Ireland Terence O'Neill 's rapprochement with the Republic of Ireland and his meetings with its Taoiseach Seán Lemass , an IRA veteran of the Easter Rising and Irish Civil War . They opposed efforts by O'Neill to deliver civil rights to the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland, especially

6710-419: The UPA. In 1966, the group re-formed as the Protestant Unionist Party. Ulster Unionist Party The Ulster Unionist Party ( UUP ) is a unionist political party in Northern Ireland . The party was founded as the Ulster Unionist Council in 1905, emerging from the Irish Unionist Alliance in Ulster . Under Edward Carson , it led unionist opposition to the Irish Home Rule movement . Following

6832-410: The UUP returned to Westminster, gaining the South Antrim seat from the DUP and Fermanagh & South Tyrone (where they had an electoral pact with the DUP not standing) from Sinn Féin. In 2016, the UUP and the SDLP decided not to accept the seats on the Northern Ireland Executive to which they would have been entitled and to form an official opposition to the executive. This marked the first time that

6954-406: The UUP sat with the Conservative Party at Westminster , traditionally taking the Conservative parliamentary whip . To all intents and purposes the party functioned as the Northern Ireland branch of the Conservative Party. In 1972, in protest over the prorogation of the Parliament of Northern Ireland , the Westminster Ulster Unionist MPs withdrew from the alliance. The party remained affiliated to

7076-418: The UUP was led by a combination of landed gentry ( The 1st Viscount Brookeborough , Hugh MacDowell Pollock and James Chichester-Clark ), aristocracy ( Terence O'Neill ) and gentrified industrial magnates ( The 1st Viscount Craigavon and J. M. Andrews – nephew of The 1st Viscount Pirrie ). Only its last Prime Minister , Brian Faulkner , was from a middle-class background. During this era, all but 11 of

7198-452: The UUP, published in January 2019, suggested that 67% of its members were supportive of the Conservative Party. The Ulster Unionist Party traces its formal existence back to the foundation of the Ulster Unionist Council in 1905. It is the oldest political party on the island of Ireland . Modern organised unionism emerged after William Ewart Gladstone 's introduction in 1886 of the first of three Home Rule Bills in response to demands by

7320-417: The UUP. He retired in 1963 and was replaced by Terence O'Neill , who emerged ahead of other candidates, Jack Andrews and Faulkner. In the 1960s, identifying with the civil rights movement of Martin Luther King Jr. and encouraged by attempts at reform under O'Neill, various organisations campaigned for civil rights, calling for changes to the system for allocating public housing and the voting system for

7442-472: The UUP. Shortly after his election, three 2010 general election candidates resigned: Harry Hamilton, Paula Bradshaw and Trevor Ringland . Bradshaw and Hamilton subsequently joined the Alliance Party. The party lost two seats in the 2011 Assembly elections and won fewer votes than the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) (although it won more seats than the SDLP). Two of its candidates, Bill Manwaring and Lesley Macaulay, subsequently joined

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7564-506: 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

7686-454: The Ulster Defence Union. From the beginning, the new organization had a strong association with the Orange Order , a Protestant fraternal organisation . The original composition of the Ulster Unionist Council was 25% Orange delegates; however, this proportion was reduced through the years. The initial leadership of the Ulster unionists all came from outside what would later become Northern Ireland. In particular, from 1905 Colonel Saunderson

7808-406: The Ulster Unionist Executive and area council of Northern Ireland Conservatives agreed to field joint candidates in future elections to the House of Commons and European Parliament under the name " Ulster Conservatives and Unionists – New Force " (UCUNF). The agreement meant that Ulster Unionist MPs could have sat in a Conservative Government, renewing the relationship that had broken down in 1974 over

7930-405: The Ulster Unionists. The separate United Ulster Unionist Party (UUUP) emerged from the remains of Vanguard but folded in the early 1980s, as did the UPNI. In both cases the main beneficiaries of this were the Ulster Unionists, now under the leadership of James Molyneaux (1979–95). David Trimble led the party between 1995 and 2005. His support for the Belfast Agreement caused a rupture within

8052-407: 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

8174-585: 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

8296-405: 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

8418-485: 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

8540-522: 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

8662-409: 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

8784-655: The current name of the Conservative and Unionist Party , to which the Ulster Unionist Party was formally linked, to varying degrees, until 1985. At the 1918 general election , Carson switched constituencies from Dublin University to Belfast Duncairn . After the Irish Convention of 1917–1918 failed to reach an understanding on home rule, and even more after the Partition of Ireland under

8906-542: The decades following Catholic Emancipation in 1829 to oppose restoration of a separate Irish parliament . Since Partition in 1921, as Ulster unionism its goal has been to retain Northern Ireland as a devolved region within the United Kingdom and to resist the prospect of an all-Ireland republic . Within the framework of the 1998 Belfast Agreement , which concluded three decades of political violence, unionists have shared office with Irish nationalists in

9028-629: The devolution of regeneration powers to councils. They received 81,282 votes, 10.9% of the total, down 3.2% from the 2019 local elections . The party had 54 councillors elected, down 21 from 2019. Unionism in Ireland Unionism in Ireland is a political tradition that professes loyalty to the crown of the United Kingdom and to the union it represents with England , Scotland and Wales . The overwhelming sentiment of Ireland's Protestant minority , unionism mobilised in

9150-598: The devolved institutions, on the basis of new British government assurances they returned to the Assembly to form the first Northern Ireland government in which unionists are a minority. In the last decades of the Kingdom of Ireland (1542–1800), Protestants in public life advanced themselves as Irish Patriots. The focus of their patriotism was the Parliament in Dublin . Confined on a narrow franchise to landed members of

9272-604: The established Anglican communion (the Anglo-Irish " Protestant Ascendancy "), the parliament denied equal protection and public office to Dissenters (non-Anglican Protestants) and to the Kingdom's dispossessed Roman Catholic majority. The high point of this parliamentary patriotism was the formation during the American War of Independence , of the Irish Volunteers and, as that militia paraded in Dublin,

9394-493: The first First Minister of Northern Ireland from 1998 to 2002. However, it was overtaken as the largest unionist party in 2003 by the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). As of 2022 it is the fourth-largest party in the Northern Ireland Assembly , after Sinn Féin , the DUP, and the Alliance Party . Since August 2024 the party has been led by Mike Nesbitt . Between 1905 and 1972, its peers and MPs took

9516-608: The first leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, from 1910. Throughout his years of leadership, he fought a sustained campaign against Irish Home Rule, including taking the lead in the formation of the Ulster Volunteers at the onset of the Home Rule Crisis in 1912. In 1912, at Westminster the Home Rule Crisis led to the Liberal Unionist Party merging with the Conservatives, thus giving rise to

9638-437: The hope that they might be assisted by republican France , these United Irishmen sought a revolutionary union of "Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter" (i.e. of Catholics and Protestants of all persuasions). Their resolve was broken with the defeat of their uprising in 1798 , and by reports of rebel outrages against Protestant Loyalists in the South. The British government, which had had to deploy its own forces to suppress

9760-507: The largest women's political organisation in Ireland. Elizabeth McCracken noted the failure of unionist women to formulate "any demand on their own behalf or that of their own sex". Yet in September 1913 McCracken was celebrating a "marriage of unionism and women's suffrage". Following reports that the militant Women's Social and Political Union (WPSU) would begin organising in Ulster, the secretary of Ulster Unionist Council had informed

9882-613: 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

10004-674: 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

10126-491: 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

10248-519: The local government franchise, which was restricted to (disproportionately Protestant) rate payers . O'Neill had pushed through some reforms but in the process the Ulster Unionists became strongly divided. At the 1969 Stormont general election UUP candidates stood on both pro- and anti-O'Neill platforms. Several independent pro-O'Neill unionists challenging his critics, while the Protestant Unionist Party of Ian Paisley mounted

10370-401: 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

10492-540: The meaning of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 . The party lost 9 seats in the 2007 Northern Ireland Assembly election , retaining 18 MLAs. Empey was the only leader of one of the four main parties not to be re-elected on first preference votes alone in the Assembly elections of March 2007. In July 2008, the UUP and Conservative Party announced that a joint working group had been established to examine closer ties. On 26 February 2009,

10614-633: 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

10736-603: 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

10858-621: The need to consider how Catholics in Northern Ireland could be integrated into its civic and political life, it prorogued the parliament in Belfast. Over the ensuing three decades of The Troubles , unionists divided in their responses to power-sharing proposals presented, in consultation with the Republic of Ireland , by successive British governments. Following the 1998 Belfast Agreement , under which both republican and loyalist paramilitaries committed to permanent ceasefires, unionists accepted principles of joint office and parallel consent in

10980-502: 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

11102-549: 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

11224-509: The partition of Ireland and the end of unionism as an all-Ireland political force, so he refused the opportunity to be Prime Minister of Northern Ireland or even to sit in the Northern Ireland House of Commons , citing a lack of connection with the new province. The leadership of the UUP and, subsequently, Northern Ireland, was taken by Sir James Craig . Until almost the very end of its period of power in Northern Ireland ,

11346-434: The party and announced that she would be standing as an independent candidate at the general election. As a result, the UUP were left without representation in the House of Commons for the first time since the party's creation. At the 2010 general election , UCUNF won no seats in Northern Ireland (while Hermon won hers as an independent). The UCUNF label was not used again. Following the election, Empey resigned as leader. He

11468-501: The party because of Beattie's promotion of 'liberal values'. In January 2022, Beattie made what some saw as a misogynistic joke about DAERA minister Edwin Poots and his wife. After this, it was found that he had made other controversial jokes on social media, before entering politics, and he made a statement apologizing. The party contested all 18 constituencies in the 2022 Assembly election . They received 96,390 votes, 11.2% of

11590-561: The party into pro-agreement and anti-agreement factions. Trimble served as First Minister of Northern Ireland in the power-sharing administration created under the Belfast Agreement . Unusually for a unionist party, the UUP had a Catholic MLA in the Northern Ireland Assembly , Sir John Gorman until the 2003 election. In March 2005, the Orange Order voted to end its official links with the UUP. Trimble faced down Orange Order critics who tried to suspend him for his attendance at

11712-538: The party. In the 1973 elections to the Executive the party found itself divided, a division that did not formally end until January 1974 with the triumph of the anti-Sunningdale faction. Faulkner was then overthrown, and he set up the Unionist Party of Northern Ireland (UPNI). The Ulster Unionists were then led by Harry West from 1974 until 1979. In the February 1974 general election , the party participated in

11834-547: 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

11956-402: The proposed abolition of gerrymandering of local electoral areas for the election of urban and county councils. In 1964, Paisley's demand that the Royal Ulster Constabulary remove an Irish Tricolour from Sinn Féin 's Belfast offices led to two days of rioting after this was followed through. In the aftermath of these protests, Duff and James McCarroll were elected to Belfast City Council for

12078-519: The rebellion in Ireland and to turn back and defeat French intervention, decided on a union with Great Britain. Provision for Catholic emancipation was dropped from the Act of Union pushed with difficulty through the parliament in Dublin. While a separate Irish executive in Dublin was retained, representation, still wholly Protestant, was transferred to Westminster . In the Presbyterian north east

12200-548: The retirement of Jim Nicholson. Danny Kennedy stood as the UUP candidate polling 9.3% (−4.0%). Steve Aiken succeeded Robin Swann as leader in November 2019. The party increased its vote share to 11.7% (+1.4%) in the 2019 general election , but failed to re-gain a seat. Their best result was in Fermanagh and South Tyrone, where Tom Elliott lost to Sinn Féin by 57 votes. Steve Aiken resigned on 8 May 2021, and Doug Beattie

12322-497: 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

12444-608: The securing in 1782 of the parliament's legislative independence from the British government in London. In the north-east, combinations of Presbyterian tradesmen, merchants, and tenant farmers protested against the unrepresentative parliament and against an executive in Dublin Castle still appointed, through the office of the Lord Lieutenant , by English ministers. Seeing little prospect of further reform and in

12566-544: 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,

12688-413: 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

12810-411: 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

12932-572: 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

13054-537: The total, down 1.7% from the 2017 Assembly election . They had 9 MLAs elected, down 1 from 2017 after Roy Beggs Jr lost his seat in East Antrim to Alliance. In the 2023 local elections , Beattie characterised the election as a 'choice between delivery or dysfunction'. The UUP ran 101 candidates across the 11 councils, with a manifesto pledging 'city and growth deals', the appointment of 'prompt payment champions' to each council, 'below inflation rate rises' and

13176-486: 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

13298-692: Was Prime Minister for one year longer. During this time he was on more than one occasion called to meetings of the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland to explain his actions, most notably following the 1947 Education Act which made the government responsible for the payment of National Insurance contributions of teachers in Catholic Church-controlled schools. Ian Paisley called for Brookeborough's resignation in 1953 when he refused to sack Brian Maginess and Clarence Graham , who had given speeches supporting re-admitting Catholics to

13420-567: Was also believed to be more interested in protecting the statue of Carson at the Stormont Estate than the citizens of Belfast during the Belfast Blitz . A backbench revolt in 1943 resulted in his resignation and replacement by Sir Basil Brooke (later Viscount Brookeborough ), although Andrews was recognised as leader of the party until 1946. Lord Brookeborough, despite having felt that Craigavon had held on to power for too long,

13542-516: 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

13664-510: 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

13786-741: Was elected as leader on 17 May 2021. Beattie, a former soldier, is perceived as a progressive unionist, and it was predicted that following his election as leader, the party would reclaim some of the centre ground that they had lost to the Alliance Party. After Beattie became leader, a number of new members joined the party including former Belfast PUP councillor Julie-Anne Corr-Johnston, Derry and Strabane DUP councillor Ryan McCready, former Independent Irish Senator Ian Marshall , Belfast Alliance Party councillor Carole Howard and Belfast PUP councillor John Kyle . In October 2021, Newry and Mourne UUP councillor Harold McKee resigned from

13908-399: Was elected leader on 31 March 2012, beating John McCallister , by 536 votes to 129. In the 2014 European election Jim Nicholson held his MEP seat, although his percentage of the vote decreased to 13.3% (−3.8%). The party gained 15 seats in the local elections that same day. They polled 16.1% (+0.9%), making it the only party to increase its vote share. At the 2015 general election ,

14030-478: 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 ,

14152-651: 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 ...

14274-617: 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

14396-465: Was replaced by Tom Elliott as party leader in the subsequent leadership election . During the leadership election, it emerged that a quarter of the UUP membership came from Fermanagh and South Tyrone , the constituency of Elliott. The Dublin-based political magazine, the Phoenix , described Elliott as a "blast from the past" and said that his election signified "a significant shift to the right" by

14518-675: Was simultaneously leader of the Irish Unionist Alliance MPs and leader of the Ulster Unionist Council in Belfast. In 1906 he was succeeded in both roles by Walter Hume Long , a Dublin MP. Another Dubliner, Sir Edward Carson , one of the two Irish Unionist Alliance MPs for the Dublin University constituency , and Lord Midleton were also southern unionists active in both. Carson went on to become

14640-608: 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

14762-484: Was to organise the defence of Ulster Protestant areas against anticipated Irish Republican Army (IRA) activity, based on the old Ulster Protestant Association immediately after the partition of Ireland in 1920. The new body decided to call itself "Ulster Protestant Action", and the first year of its existence was taken up with the discussion of vigilante patrols, street barricades and drawing up lists of IRA suspects in Belfast and rural areas. The initial executive of

14884-400: Was won by Reg Empey . In May 2006 UUP leader Empey attempted to create a new assembly group that would have included Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) leader David Ervine . The PUP is the political wing of the illegal Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). Many in the UUP, including the last remaining MP, Sylvia Hermon , were opposed to the move. The link was in the form of a new group called

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