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102-592: The Vanguard Unionist Progressive Party ( VUPP ), informally known as Ulster Vanguard , was a unionist political party which existed in Northern Ireland between 1972 and 1978. Led by William Craig , the party emerged from a split in the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) and was closely affiliated with several loyalist paramilitary groups. The party was set up in opposition to compulsory power sharing with Irish nationalist parties. It opposed

204-437: A Bill of Rights Bill but it was not passed into legislation. Australia is the only common law country with neither a constitutional nor federal legislative bill of rights to protect its citizens, although there is ongoing debate in many of Australia's states. In 1973, Federal Attorney-General Lionel Murphy introduced a human rights Bill into parliament, although it was never passed. In 1984, Senator Gareth Evans drafted

306-539: A single-chamber assembly with a committee system to ensure greater participation by all parties. Internal security responsibilities would be restored. However, there would be a bill of rights to safeguard the rights of minorities. It demanded the "extermination" of the Provisional Irish Republican Army and a reversal of the reforms introduced by Brian Faulkner and his predecessor. In a booklet published in late 1972 entitled 'Community of

408-597: A 'Unionist' in Belfast in 1973, announced two days after the election in the local press that he would sit as a VUPP councillor although he stood in 1977 as a UUUP candidate. Finally, Randall Crawford, elected in Coleraine in 1973 and 1977 as a non-party candidate, stood for Londonderry in the 1975 Constitutional convention election as a VUPP candidate. A further councillor, Mrs M. Corrie, elected in Castlereagh as

510-650: 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

612-551: A Bill of Rights, but it was never introduced into parliament, and in 1985, Senator Lionel Bowen introduced a bill of rights, which was passed by the House of Representatives , but failed to pass the Senate . Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard has argued against a bill of rights for Australia on the grounds it would transfer power from elected politicians to unelected judges and bureaucrats . Victoria , Queensland and

714-587: 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

816-552: 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

918-405: 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

1020-615: A United Loyalist, is described in contemporary press reports as a Vanguard councillor, but did not contest the 1977 local elections. 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

1122-551: A common salute led opponents to accuse it of being fascist . In its earliest days, it adopted the style associated with falangist parties with an honour guard, a common salute and a habit of wearing sashes. This led to it being characterised as Mosleyite or even neo-Nazi with the Stormont unionist MP William McConnell claiming that Vanguard rallies involved "a certain Hitlerian-type figure ... walking up and down

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1224-679: 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". Bill of rights Bills of rights may be entrenched or unentrenched . An entrenched bill of rights cannot be amended or repealed by

1326-527: 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

1428-484: A country's legislature through regular procedure, instead requiring a supermajority or referendum; often it is part of a country's constitution, and therefore subject to special procedures applicable to constitutional amendments. The history of legal charters asserting certain rights for particular groups goes back to the Middle Ages and earlier. An example is Magna Carta , an English legal charter agreed between

1530-571: 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

1632-801: 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

1734-563: A meeting of the UUUC with 37 votes against and only Craig voting in favour. Consequently, Craig and the rump of VUPP were expelled from the UUUC. The 1977 local elections were overshadowed by the abortive United Unionist Action Council (UUAC) Strike, which was mainly supported by the DUP and the UUUM. In contrast to 1974, when they had played a prominent role in the previous strike Vanguard criticised

1836-656: A meeting of the right wing Conservative Monday Club during which he claimed he could mobilise 80,000 men "who are prepared to come out and shoot and kill." The party contested a succession of elections: to the brief Sunningdale Assembly, the February 1974 General Election , the October 1974 General Election and the 1975 elections to the Constitutional Convention. The 1973 Sunningdale and local council elections were fought in an informal alliance with

1938-563: A member whilst the other Unionist parties campaigned for withdrawal. Vanguard was firmly supportive of extra-parliamentary activity in the form of direct action to achieve its goals. On 26 January 1972, Craig announced plans to hold large rallies in major centres in Northern Ireland. The culmination was a large rally on 18 March 1972 in Belfast's Ormeau Park, attended by up to 60,000 people, at which Craig said, "We must build up

2040-660: 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

2142-548: 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

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2244-418: 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

2346-659: 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

2448-630: 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

2550-520: 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

2652-471: A year or two." But any idea of power sharing was anathema to many Unionist in the post-Sunningdale climate of 1975. Indeed, in January 1976, Deputy leader Ernest Baird warned that "If Westminster does not accept the Protestants' rejection of power-sharing, it must face the inevitable consequences of a final conflict." As a result, the party was split with only David Trimble and Glenn Barr backing Craig and

2754-852: The Age of Enlightenment , the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen asserted the universality of rights. It was adopted in 1789 by France's National Constituent Assembly , during the period of the French Revolution . The 20th century saw different groups draw on these earlier documents for influence when drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights , the European Convention on Human Rights and

2856-718: 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

2958-696: The DUP as "the loyalist coalition" while the latter three were fought as part of the United Ulster Unionist Council , a more formal arrangement, with the Democratic Unionist Party and the Ulster Unionists, where the anti-Sunningdale wing of the party was now in control. Source : During the 1973–75 period VUPP was able to match or even beat the DUP in several elections. However, their prospect of replacing

3060-689: 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

3162-541: 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

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3264-613: 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

3366-480: 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

3468-636: 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,

3570-475: The Sunningdale Agreement and was involved in extra-parliamentary activity against the agreement. However, in 1975, during discussions on the constitutional status of Northern Ireland in the constitutional convention , William Craig suggested the possibility of voluntary power sharing with the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party . In consequence the party split, with dissenters forming

3672-787: The Thirteen Colonies , the English Bill of Rights was one of the influences on the 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights , which in turn influenced the United States Declaration of Independence later that year. After the Constitution of the United States was adopted in 1789, the United States Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791. The U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights were influenced by British constitutional history . Inspired by

3774-684: 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

3876-717: The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child . The constitution of the United Kingdom remains uncodified. However, the Bill of Rights 1689 is part of UK law. The Human Rights Act 1998 also incorporates the rights contained in the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law. In the 21st century, there were proposals for a British Bill of Rights and the UK Parliament debated

3978-760: The United Ulster Unionist Party . Thereafter Vanguard declined and following poor results in the 1977 local government elections , Craig merged the remainder of Vanguard into the UUP in February 1978. It had its roots in the Vanguard or Ulster Vanguard wing of the Ulster Unionist Party who were opposed to the policies of the party's leader, and last Prime Minister of Northern Ireland , Brian Faulkner . The Ulster Vanguard movement

4080-533: 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

4182-416: 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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4284-428: 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

4386-440: The British Isles', it even flirted with the idea of full independence for Northern Ireland, albeit within a structure which would also include Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland. In late 1973 it rejected the idea of compulsory power-sharing with Irish Nationalists and consequently refused invitations to take part in the conferences which led to the Sunningdale Agreement . In their 1974 Westminster manifesto, they called for

4488-406: 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,

4590-608: 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

4692-417: The DUP as the second party of Unionism ended as a result of events during the Constitutional Convention. The Constitutional Convention was intended to serve as a forum to allow the politicians of Northern Ireland to draw up their own proposals for the political future of the province, though this proved unsuccessful. However, it led to William Craig proposing a voluntary coalition with the nationalist SDLP in

4794-458: 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

4896-459: The King and his barons in 1215. In the early modern period , there was renewed interest in Magna Carta . English common law judge Sir Edward Coke revived the idea of rights based on citizenship (see history of citizenship ) by arguing that Englishmen had historically enjoyed such rights . The Petition of Right 1628 , the Habeas Corpus Act 1679 and the Bill of Rights 1689 (English Bill of Rights) established certain rights in statute. In

4998-470: 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

5100-840: The UUP Rev. Martin Smyth , later a UUP MP and Grand Master of the Orange Order , was deputy leader of the Vanguard movement but declined to join the party. However, in addition to the eleven above, a further thirteen councillors elected in 1973 (usually under a 'loyalist' label) contested the 1977 local elections either for Vanguard or for their splinter party, the United Ulster Unionist Party . This includes seven councillors elected as loyalists in 1973 who ran as VUPP candidates in 1977, namely Seymour, Armstrong, Semple and Stewart ( Larne ); Green and Mary O'Fee ( North Down ); and Glenn Barr ( Londonderry ). A further four sitting councillors elected as Loyalists stood as UUUP candidates in 1977, namely McKeever (Larne), Ritchie ( Carrickfergus ), Scott ( Castlereagh ) and Parke ( Cookstown ). Ben Horan, elected as

5202-425: The UUUP. Craig then applied to rejoin the UUP in February 1978 and subsequently merged the remainder of Vanguard back into the Ulster Unionist Party, where it returned to its origins as a pressure group within the UUP as the Vanguard movement, although this too seems to have quickly faded away. The Democratic Unionist Party subsequently became the main Unionist party offering a more right wing alternative position to

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5304-506: 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

5406-515: The Ulster Unionists. In the 1982 elections for the new Northern Ireland Assembly, Craig, who had once more left the Ulster Unionists after losing his seat at Westminster, revived the name Vanguard for his candidacy in East Belfast . However he failed to get elected. Craig's revived Vanguard was reportedly still in existence at the time of signing of the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement . Several prominent current Ulster Unionist politicians were members of Vanguard, including future UUP MP David Burnside (who

5508-407: 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

5610-585: 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

5712-405: 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

5814-485: 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

5916-444: The affairs in the province, especially over security policy" The strike resulted in high levels of violence with five people, including a fireman, being killed, seven people wounded, several explosions and numerous malicious fires. The strike proved to be a forerunner of the Ulster Workers Council Strike the following year, in which VUPP again played a prominent role, making their headquarters in Hawthornden Road, Belfast, available to

6018-522: 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

6120-409: 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

6222-476: The decades following Catholic Emancipation in 1829 to oppose restoration of a separate Irish parliament . Since Partition in 1921, as Ulster unionism its goal has been to retain Northern Ireland as a devolved region within the United Kingdom and to resist the prospect of an all-Ireland republic . Within the framework of the 1998 Belfast Agreement , which concluded three decades of political violence, unionists have shared office with Irish nationalists in

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6324-433: 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

6426-519: The dossiers on the men and women who are a menace to this country, because one day, ladies and gentlemen, if the politicians fail, it will be our duty to liquidate the enemy." Following the suspension of Stormont and the imposition of direct rule in March 1972, Vanguard organised a general strike which lasted from 27 to 29 March. It affected power supplies, caused businesses to close and halted public transport. About 190,000 people participated and Vanguard members barricaded and took effective control of

6528-419: 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,

6630-426: The event of there being a state of emergency. The move was a considerable surprise, with a confidential government memo commenting: "Mr. Craig appears to some as a knight in shining armour. The fact is that his aims were – and still are – simple: to get a devolved government which would control security policy as quickly as possible, on the basis of a gentleman's agreement that the SDLP would participate in government for

6732-437: 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

6834-404: The imposition of direct rule and in its booklet 'Ulster – A Nation', published in April 1972, it pledged "resistance to an undemocratic and un-British regime" and suggested the possibility of a federal British Isles. At the Darlington Conference in September 1972, held to discuss various constitutional options for Northern Ireland, they proposed the restoration of the Northern Ireland Parliament as

6936-450: 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

7038-438: 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

7140-674: 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

7242-512: The lines, inspecting his so-called storm-troopers." Craig however denied that the party was either neo-nazi or paramilitary. Ulster Vanguard was intended to provide an umbrella organisation for various loyalist groups. It had close links with, and strong support from loyalist paramilitary groups. Vanguard had its own paramilitary grouping called the Vanguard Service Corps (USC), whose main function seemed to be to provide escorts for Vanguard speakers attending rallies. Vanguard strongly criticised

7344-491: 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

7446-401: 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

7548-633: 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

7650-603: 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

7752-457: The more mainstream Unionist option of either devolved government with full security responsibilities or full integration into the UK. However, there were occasions when it did not follow the same course as other right-wing or unionist parties. For example, in the 1975 referendum on the United Kingdom's membership of the-then European Economic Community , it campaigned for the United Kingdom to remain

7854-621: 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

7956-502: 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

8058-549: 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

8160-413: The other eleven convention members challenging Craig's leadership. Craig however claimed that he had the backing of the party's rank and file and this was confirmed when sixty percent of party members backed him at a specially convened meeting. The dissidents then broke away to form what would later become the United Ulster Unionist Party . On 8 September 1975, Craig's proposals were decisively rejected at

8262-607: 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

8364-572: 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

8466-497: 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

8568-608: 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

8670-544: 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,

8772-413: 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

8874-438: The strike and together with the UUP and Orange Order, called for it to be abandoned. The 1977 council elections were seen as a crucial test of Vanguard's ability to survive as a party and ultimately the party failed that test. Although thirteen councillors elected in 1973 stood as VUPP candidates, the party emerged from the election with only five councillors compared to twelve councillors elected in 1977 for their breakaway rival,

8976-523: The strike leaders. with Craig a leading member of the UWC co-ordinating committee In addition to large rallies, Vanguard used other tactics to try to put pressure on the British Government. In July 1972, they called for a rent and rate strike, a proposal which put them at odds with other unionist parties and which was criticised by the DUP . Several months later, on 19 October 1972, Craig addressed

9078-411: 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

9180-572: 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

9282-501: The suspension of the Stormont Parliament , Faulkner moved towards a policy of power-sharing with nationalist and non-sectarian politicians under the Sunningdale Agreement . In opposition to this many in the Ulster Unionists broke away and founded a separate Vanguard Party, with William Craig as the leader. Vanguard is usually considered to have been a right-wing party. The presence of features such as an honour guard and

9384-458: The town of Portadown . Later 100,000 unionists converged on the drive leading to Stormont, where Craig addressed the crowds, but deferred to the outgoing Prime Minister Brian Faulkner, who managed to disperse the crowds. On 3 June 1972, VUPP organised a march in Derry against the creation of no-go areas in nationalist districts, which ended in violence on the city's Craigavon Bridge . Despite

9486-486: 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

9588-477: The violence, Craig pledged to continue the marches stating: "We are no longer protesting – we are demanding action." In February 1973 it was one of the only parties to support the two-day general strike organised by the Loyalist Association of Workers in protest at the internment of Protestants. The strike had the further stated goal to "re-establish some kind of Protestant or loyalist control over

9690-491: Was Vanguard's press officer from 1974 to 1977) while those elected for VUPP in 1975 included future UUP leaders David Trimble (who briefly served as Vanguard Deputy Leader) and Reg Empey , who served as Vanguard chairman from 1974 to 1975. Former deputy speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly, Jim Wilson , served as a Vanguard councillor on Newtownabbey Borough Council from 1975 to 1976 before joining

9792-516: 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

9894-510: 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

9996-527: 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 ,

10098-651: 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 ...

10200-617: 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

10302-643: Was originally a political pressure group within the UUP. It was formed on 9 February 1972 and was led by William Craig (former Minister of Home Affairs at Stormont ) with its deputy leaders Rev Martin Smyth and the former Stormont MP for Carrick , Captain Austin Ardill . At its first meeting in Lisburn , on 13 February 1972, Craig made the first of a number of bellicose pronouncements, declaring, "God help those who get in our way for we mean business." After

10404-608: 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

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