Ulster Unionist Party

Ulster Unionist Party, the governing party of Northern Ireland between 1921 and 1972. The party evolved in 1885–6 as a protest movement, united by a broad antipathy to home rule but otherwise highly fissile. After 1921, and the creation of the Northern Ireland parliament, it remained a cumbersome coalition which sustained unity through a trenchant stand on the Union, an implicit anti‐Catholicism, and a passive or reactive approach to most other areas of policy.

The party embraced a broad range of Ulster Protestant opinion, but was led by the commercial elite of eastern Ulster, with a notable residual landed presence. Although the influence of the landed gentry had been decisively countered in the Edwardian party, three of the six Unionist leaders of the period 1921–72 (Brooke, O'Neill, and Major James Chichester‐Clark) were landed gentlemen. However, the Unionist parliamentary party at Stormont, both within the House of Commons and the Senate, was dominated by the Protestant professional classes. Proletarian unionism was never adequately represented within the Ulster Unionist leadership. Catholics have never been effectively courted by the party, and indeed the increasingly parochial nature of Unionism in 20th‐century Ireland has tended to reinforce its anti‐Catholicism.

Hampered by the fragile and diverse nature of its support, the Unionist Party never developed far from its original ideology of protest: unity has often been bought at the price of inactivity. Recurrent IRA violence reinforced the defensive loyalism of the party: this has brought a lasting emphasis on law and order policy, from the Special Powers Act (1922) through to the Prevention of Terrorism Act (1974). In addition, the anti‐partitionism of successive Dublin administrations permitted the Unionist Party to survive on the basis of an uncomplicated appeal to British loyalty: the Irish constitution of 1937 allowed Lord Craigavon (see Craig) to reunite unionism in the Stormont election of 1938, while the declaration of a republic enabled Sir Basil Brooke to perform a similar feat in 1949. The fragile nature of the Unionist coalition, and its socially conservative leadership, has meant that broader social and welfare issues have tended to be relegated within the party's priorities. British welfare legislation, in particular the legislation of Attlee's post‐war government, was duplicated by the Unionist Party, but on Unionist principles, rather than from an intrinsic commitment to reform.

The Unionist Party splintered under the impact of the civil rights movement and the renewal of IRA violence in 1969. Liberal Unionists, dissatisfied with internal opposition to O'Neill, joined the Alliance Party; working‐class loyalists, angered by O'Neill's apparently high‐handed and paternalistic leadership, joined the Democratic Unionist Party. Militant loyalists, dissatisfied with the apparently impotent constitutionalism of the Unionist Party, turned to the Ulster Vanguard movement or to the populist vigilante bodies later unified as the Ulster Defence Association. Under the leadership of James Molyneaux (1979–95) some degree of consolidation was achieved: the party successfully contained the challenge of the DUP, and profited from the failure of the Unionist Party of Northern Ireland and of Vanguard. The election of David Trimble as leader in 1995 at first seemed like an affirmation of hard‐line attitudes; but his endorsement of the Belfast Agreement of 1998 (see peace process) and other reformist impulses provoked a degree of confusion and division among the party's supporters. In 1998, with the splintering of the Unionist vote, the party came second to the Social Democratic and Labour Party in the elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly. It is as yet unclear whether this, and other electoral setbacks, represent more than a temporary downturn in the Ulster Unionists' fortunes.

Bibliography

Buckland, Patrick , The Factory of Grievances: Devolved Government in Northern Ireland, 1921–39 (1979)
Cochrane, Feargal , Unionist Politics and the Politics of Unionism since the Anglo‐Irish Agreement (1997)
Hume, David , The Ulster Unionist Party 1972–1992: A Political Movement in an Era of Conflict and Change (1996)

Alvin Jackson