Unionist Party of Northern Ireland

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Unionist Party of Northern Ireland. Established in September 1974 by the unionist supporters of the Sunningdale agreement (December 1973), which created the power-sharing Northern Ireland executive (January–May 1974). The Ulster Unionist leader Brian Faulkner, who had helped to negotiate the agreement, failed to carry the majority of his party with him: his supporters at first accepted the label ‘Unionist pro-Assembly’, but later organized as UPNI. The party's share of the poll shrank from 7.7 per cent in the Convention elections of 1975 to 1.9 per cent in the council elections of 1981. Consistently weak performances after 1977 brought the dissolution of the party in 1981.

Alvin Jackson

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