The
Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) –
sometimes referred to as the Official Unionist
Party (OUP) or, in a historic sense,
simply the Unionist Party – is the more moderate
of the two main unionist
political parties in Northern Ireland
. Before the split in Unionism in the late
1960s, when the former
Protestant Unionist Party began to
attract more hard line support away from the UUP, it governed
Northern Ireland between 1921 and 1972 as the sole Unionist party.
It continued to be supported by most unionist voters throughout the
period known as
the Troubles.
The UUP has lost support among Northern Ireland's
unionist and
Protestant community to the more 'hardline'
Democratic Unionist Party
(DUP) in successive elections at all levels of government since
1999. The party is currently led by
Sir Reg
Empey.
In 2009
the party agreed to an electoral
alliance with the Conservative Party, meaning that the
two parties will field joint candidates for elections to the
House of Commons
and the European Parliament
under the banner of "Ulster
Conservatives and Unionists – New Force". Literature and
the web site for the
2009
European Parliament election use "Conservatives and Unionists"
as the short name.
Party leaders
- note: ** denotes leaders of the UUP who were also leaders
of the Irish Unionist Parliamentary
Party.
History
1880s to 1921
The Ulster Unionist Party traces its formal existence back to the
foundation of the
Ulster Unionist Council in 1905.
Before that, however, there had been a less formally organised
Irish Unionist Party since the
late 19th century, sometimes but not always dominated by Unionists
from Ulster. Modern organised Unionism properly emerged after
William Gladstone's introduction
in 1886 of the first of three
Home
Rule Bills in response to demands by the
Irish Parliamentary Party. The
Irish Unionist Party was an
alliance of
Conservatives
and
Liberal Unionists, the
latter having split from the
Liberal
Party over the issue of
home rule. It is this split that
gave rise to the current name of the
Conservative and Unionist Party, to
which the UUP was formally linked to varying degrees until
1985.
The party had a strong association with the
Orange Order, a
Protestant religious institution. The original
composition of the Ulster Unionist Council was 25% Orange
delegates, however this was reduced through the years. Though most
unionist support was based in the geographic area that became
Northern Ireland, there were at one time Unionist enclaves
throughout southern Ireland. Unionists in Cork and Dublin were
particularly influential.
The initial leadership of the Unionist Party
all came from outside the six counties of Ulster, with people such as Colonel Saunderson,
Viscount
Midleton and the Dublin
-born Sir
Edward Carson, members of the Irish
Unionist Party. However, after the
Irish Convention failed to reach an
understanding on home rule and with the
partition of Ireland under the
Government of Ireland Act
1920, Irish unionism in effect split. Many southern unionist
politicians quickly became reconciled with the new
Irish Free State, sitting in its senate or
joining its political parties. Unionism's northern wing evolved
into the separate Ulster Unionist Party.
The leadership of the UUP was taken by Edward Carson in 1910.
Throughout his 11 year leadership he fought a sustained campaign
against Irish Home Rule, including the formation of the
Ulster Volunteers in 1912. During the
various Home Rule crises, Carson moved from being MP for
Dublin University to
Belfast Duncairn, however the
compromise of Irish partition was felt by Carson to be defeat, so
he refused the opportunity to be
Prime Minister of Northern
Ireland or even to sit in the
Northern Ireland House of
Commons. The leadership of the Party and, subsequently,
Northern Ireland was taken by Sir James Craig.
The Stormont era
Until
almost the very end of its period of power in Northern
Ireland the Unionist Party was led by a combination of
landed gentry (Lord Brookeborough
and James Chichester-Clark),
aristocracy (Terence O'Neill) and gentrified industrial
magnates (Lord
Craigavon and John Miller
Andrews — nephew of Viscount Pirrie).
Only its last
Prime
Minister,
Brian Faulkner was from
a middle-class background.
Lord
Craigavon governed Northern Ireland from its inception until his
death in 1940 and is buried with his wife by the east wing of
Parliament Buildings
. His successor, J. M. Andrews, was heavily
criticised for appointing octogenarian veterans of Craigavon's
administration to
his cabinet. His
government was also believed to be more interested in protecting
the statue of Carson at the Stormont Estate than the citizens of
Belfast during the
Blitz. A backbench
revolt in 1943 resulted in his resignation to be replaced by
Sir Basil
Brooke (later Viscount Brookeborough), although he was
recognised as leader of the party until 1946.
Brookeborough, despite having felt that Craigavon had held on to
power for too long, was Prime Minister for one year longer. During
this time he was on more than one occasion called to meetings of
the
Grand Orange Lodge of
Ireland to explain his actions, most notably following the 1947
Education Act which made the state responsible for the payment of
National Insurance contributions
of teachers in Catholic Maintained Schools.
Ian Paisley called for Brookeborough's
resignation in 1953 when he refused to sack
Brian Maginess and
Sir Clarence Graham, Bt. who gave speeches
supporting Catholic membership of 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 and encouraged by attempts at reform under O'Neill,
various organisations campaigned for civil rights, calling for
changes to the system for allocating public housing and the voting
system for the local government franchise (which was restricted to
rate payers
). O'Neill had pushed through some reforms
but in the process the Ulster Unionists became heavily divided. At
the
1969
Stormont General Election UUP candidates stood on both pro and
anti-O'Neill platforms, with several independent pro-O'Neill
Unionists challenging his critics, whilst the
Protestant Unionist Party of Ian
Paisley mounted a hard-line challenge. The result proved
inconclusive for O'Neill, who resigned a short time later. His
resignation was probably caused by that 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 his reforms.
Civil disorder continued to mount,
culminating in August 1969 when republicans clashed with Apprentice Boys in Derry
, sparking
days of riots, and decades of violence. Early in 1971
Chichester-Clark flew to London to request further military aid
following the murder of three off duty soldiers by the IRA. When
this was all but refused, he resigned to be
replaced by
Brian Faulkner.
Faulkner's government struggled though 1971 and into 1972, however
following
Bloody Sunday the
British Government threatened to remove security primacy from the
devolved Government. Faulkner reacted by resigning with his entire
cabinet, and the Government suspended, and eventually abolished the
Northern Ireland Parliament.
The liberal Unionist group the New Ulster Movement, who had
advocated the policies of
Terence
O'Neill left and formed the
Alliance Party in April
1970, while the emergence of
Ian
Paisley's
Protestant
Unionist Party drew off some working-class and more hard-line
support.
1972–1995
In June 1973 the Unionists 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 the Ulster
Unionist leader
Brian Faulkner,
ruptured 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 now led by
Harry West from 1974 until 1979. In the
February 1974
general election, the party participated in the
United Ulster Unionist
Coalition (UUUC) with
Vanguard and the
Democratic Unionists. 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
1974 the UUP was affiliated with the National
Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations, and Ulster
Unionist MPs 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 1974, in protest over the
Sunningdale Agreement, the Westminster
Ulster Unionist MPs withdrew from the alliance. The party remained
affiliated to the National Union but in 1985, they 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.
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 breakup of the
Vanguard Party and its
merger back into 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).
The Trimble Leadership
David Trimble led the party between
1995 and 2005. His support (which some nationalists claim to be
ambiguous) for the
Belfast
Agreement caused a rupture within 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.
The UUP had a Roman Catholic
Member of the Legislative
Assembly (MLA) (the
Northern Ireland
Legislative Assembly), Sir
John
Gorman until the 2003 election. In March 2005, the Orange Order
voted to end its official links with the UUP, while still
maintaining the same unofficial links as other interest groups. Mr
Trimble faced down Orange Order critics who tried to suspend him
for his attendance at a Catholic funeral for a young boy murdered
by the
Real IRA, in the
infamous
Omagh bombing. Trimble and
Irish president Mary McAleese, in a sign of unity, walked into
the church together.
2005 General Election
The party fared poorly in the 2005 general election, losing five of
its six Westminster seats — one MP had previously defected to the
DUP. Only the Labour Party lost more seats in 2005. David Trimble
himself lost his seat in
Upper Bann and
resigned as party leader soon after. The ensuing
leadership
election was won by Sir
Reg
Empey.
2005 - present
In May 2006 UUP leader
Reg 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), a
paramilitary organisation that carried out many murders during the
Troubles and equivalent to the
Provisional Irish Republican
Army for the
Sinn Féin Party.
Many in the UUP, including the last remaining MP,
Sylvia Hermon, were opposed to the move. The
link was in the form of a new group called the 'Ulster Unionist
Party Assembly Group' whose membership was the 24 UUP MLAs and Mr
Ervine. Sir
Reg 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, with their links
to the Provisional IRA.
Following a request for a ruling from the DUP's
Peter Robinson, the Speaker
ruled that the UUPAG was not a political party within the meaning
of the
Political
Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000.
The party did poorly in the
Northern Ireland
Assembly election, 2007. The party retained 18 of its seats
within the assembly. Sir
Reg Empey was the
only leader of one the four main parties not to be re-elected on
first preference votes alone in the Assembly elections of March
2007.
|
Party |
Leader |
Candidates |
Seats |
Change from 2003
|
1st Pref Votes |
1st Pref % |
Change from 2003
|
Executive seats
|
| Reg Empey |
38 |
18 |
−9 |
103,145 |
14.9 |
−7.7 |
2 |
In July 2008, the UUP and Conservative Party announced that a joint
working group had been established to examine closer ties. On 26
February 2009, the Ulster Unionist Executive and area council of
Northern Ireland Conservatives agreed to field joint candidates in
future elections to the House of Commons and European Parliament
under the name "Ulster Conservatives and Unionists - New Force".
The agreement will mean that Ulster Unionist MPs could sit in a
future Conservative Government, renewing its own former
relationship with the Conservatives and that of the
Scottish Unionist Party before its
merger to form the current Conservative Party.
Structure
The UUP is still organised around the Ulster Unionist Council,
which was from 1905 until 2004 the only legal representation of the
party. Following the adoption of a new Constitution in 2004, the
UUP has been an entity in its own right, however the UUC still
exists as the supreme decision making body of the Party. In autumn
2007 the delegates system was done away with, and today all UUP
members are members of the Ulster Unionist Council, with
entitlements to vote for the Leader, party officers and on major
policy decisions.
Each Constituency in Northern Ireland forms the boundary of a UUP
Constituency Association, which is made up of branches formed along
local boundaries (usually District Electoral Areas). There are also
four 'representative bodies', the
Ulster Womens Unionist
Council, the
Ulster
Young Unionist Council, the Westminster Unionist Association
(the party's Great Britain branch) and the
Ulster Unionist
Councillors Association. Each Constituency Association and
Representative Body elects a number of delegates to the Party
Executive Committee, which governs many areas of party
administration such as membership and candidate selection.
The UUP maintained a formal connection with the Orange Order from
its foundation until 2005, and with the
Apprentice Boys of Derry until
1975. Only three of the party's Westminster MPs (
Enoch Powell,
Ken
Maginnis and
Sylvia Hermon) have
not been members of the Orange Order. This was said to be a factor
in discouraging Catholic membership of the party. While the party
was considering structural reforms, including the connection with
the Order, it was the Order itself that severed the connection in
2004. The connection with the Apprentice Boys was cut in a 1975
review of the party's structure as they had not taken up their
delegates for several years beforehand.
Youth wing
The UUP's youth wing is the
Ulster Young Unionist Council,
first formed in 1949. Many of its members have stayed with the
party, such as the present leader of the UUP. Others have left to
start other Unionist parties. Having disbanded twice, in 1974 and
2004, the Council was re-constituted by young activists in March
2004. This resulted in the young unionists (YU) becoming a
representative body of the UUP and subject to its revamp of their
Constitution.
Policy summary
As a party reflecting the centrist ground of Unionist opinion, the
broad policy outlook of the Ulster Unionist Party reflects the
society in which it works and aims to develop and strengthen
Northern Ireland's role as a partner within the United Kingdom.
Under Sir Reg Empey's leadership, the party has stressed the need
for social cohesion and a "Fair Society". It has stated it will
make tackling
poverty and
homelessness a priority in any future Northern
Ireland administration.
Constitutional affairs
- Constitutional monarchist
- Pro-devolution with a strong attachment to British
parliamentary traditions
- Supports in principle the idea of power-sharing with democratic
nationalist parties in Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland
- Seeks to promote and strengthen the constitutional union
between Northern Ireland, England, Scotland, and Wales within the
constitutional framework of the United Kingdom
- Seeks to develop friendly relations between all the peoples of
the British Isles
- Supportive of a positive, co-operative relationship between
Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland
North/South and British/Irish relations
Justice and security
- Opposed the Patten Report (1999)
and the subsequent changes to RUC
- Against 50:50 recruitment in the Police Service of Northern
Ireland (PSNI)
- Favours retention of full-time reserve to keep up police
numbers
- Supports strong UK anti-terrorist legislation, identity cards,
anti-social behaviour orders and a statutory Victims Charter for
victims of crime
- Demands Assets Recovery Agency actions against both loyalist
and republican paramilitaries
- Demands the abolition of Parades Commission, on the grounds
that it restricts Freedom of Assembly.
Culture, social affairs and ethnic minorities
- UUP social policy places an emphasis on social cohesion, on the
role of the family, and on the eradication of poverty and
homelessness from Northern Ireland society.
- Under Sir Reg Empey's leadership, the party has stressed the
need to help integrate ethnic minorities into Northern Irish
life.
- The UUP supported the allocation of additional resources by the
police to tackle Hate Crime against ethnic minorities.
- The party's website contains content in most of Northern
Ireland's ethnic minority languages, including Arabic, Bengali,
Chinese, Hindi, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi and Urdu.
- Established Ulster-Scots
Agency
Agriculture
- The party has proposed a series of measures aimed at addressing
the economic, social and environmental needs of rural communities.
It has called for a Rural White Paper to
bring together the various strands of government policy towards
rural communities in the Province.
Education
- The party promotes a series of measures to reduce the "brain
drain" of educated young Northern Ireland people to the mainland
UK, Republic of Ireland and further afield.
Environment
Health
- The party supports free personal care for the elderly and has
stated it will make its implementation a priority in any future
Northern Ireland administration.
Economic affairs
- Regionalist approach seeks maximum
investment in Northern Ireland economy
Foreign affairs and Europe
Party leadership
Current ministers in the Northern Ireland Executive
Party spokesmen
Presidents
General Secretaries
A list of General Secretaries of the Ulster Unionist Council. From
1998 until 2007, the post was "Chief Executive of the Ulster
Unionist Party".
See also
References
- BBC NEWS | Election 2005 | Northern Ireland | NI
parties step on election trail
-
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/7913967.stm
- John Harbinson (1973) The Ulster Unionist Party, 1882-1973.
Belfast: Blackstaff Press ISBN 0856400076
- BBC NEWS | Northern Ireland | What is the UVF?
- David Ervine | Politics | guardian.co.uk
- http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/uvf.htm
- BBC NEWS | UK | Northern Ireland | Row as Ervine
joins UUP grouping
- BBC NEWS | UK | Northern Ireland | MP 'distressed'
over Ervine move
- BBC NEWS | Northern Ireland | UUP-PUP link 'against the
rules'
- DUP top in NI assembly election, BBC News Online,
12 March 2007
- Daily Telegraph | David Cameron launches biggest
Conservative shake-up for decades
- Noel McAdam, " UUP veteran Wilson back to run the party",
Belfast Telegraph, 30 March 2007
External links
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