The Parliament of Northern Ireland was bicameral, consisting of a House of Commons with 52 seats, and an indirectly elected Senate with 26 seats. The Sovereign was represented by the Governor (initially by the Lord Lieutenant), who granted royal assent to Acts of Parliament in Northern Ireland, but executive power rested with the Prime Minister, the leader of the largest party in the House of Commons.
The House of Commons had 52 members, of which 48 were for territorial seats, and four were for graduates of Queen's University, Belfast (until 1969, when the four university seats were replaced by an additional four territorial seats, alongside the abolition of plural voting). The Government of Ireland Act prescribed that elections to the House of Commons should be by single transferable vote (STV), though the Parliament was given the power to alter the electoral system from three years after its first meeting. The STV system was the subject of criticism from grassroots Unionists, but because the three-year period ended during the Labour government of 1924, the Stormont government decided not to provoke the known egalitarian sympathies of many Labour backbenchers and held the second election on the same basis. The loss of eight Unionist seats in that election caused great acrimony, and in 1929, the system was changed to first-past-the-post for all territorial constituencies, though STV was retained for the university seats.
In the 1925 election, however, Republicans also lost four seats and a substantial proportion of votes. Nationalists gained the same number of seats that Republicans had lost, but had only gained a small percentage of votes. It had been felt by some[who?] that Northern Ireland should use the same first-past-the-post system that was in place in the rest of the UK.
By the time the first-past-the-post system was implemented for the 1929 election, the Republicans had few or no candidates and pro-separatist electors were represented almost solely by the Nationalist Party. Despite the change in the electoral system and accusations of gerrymandering, the Nationalist Party lost 9.5% share of the vote, but still gained a seat. The more moderate Northern Ireland Labour Party and Ulster Liberal Party both gained in vote share but lost seats.
The boundary changes for 1929 were not made by an impartial boundary commission but by the Unionist government, for which it was accused of gerrymandering. The charges that the Stormont seats (as opposed to local council wards) were gerrymandered against Nationalists is disputed by historians[2] (since the number of Nationalists elected under the two systems barely changed), though it is agreed that losses under the change to single-member constituency boundaries were suffered by independent unionists, the Liberals and the Northern Ireland Labour Party.[citation needed] Population movements were so small that these boundaries were used almost everywhere until the Parliament was dissolved in 1972. In 1968 the government abolished the Queen's University constituency (university constituencies had been abolished at Westminster with effect from 1950) and created four new constituencies in the outskirts of Belfast where populations had grown. This change helped the Unionists, as they held only two of the university seats but won all four of the newly created seats. There had, however, long been calls from outside Unionism to abolish the graduate franchise (and other anomalies) and to have "one person one vote".
The Senate was a last-minute addition to the Parliament, after the original plans for a single Senate covering both the Stormont and Dublin Parliaments were overtaken by events.
Twenty-four senators were elected by the House of Commons using the single transferable vote. The elections were carried out after each general election, with 12 members elected for two parliaments each time.[clarification needed] The other two seats were held ex officio by the Lord Mayor of Belfast and the Mayor of Derry. The Senate generally had the same party balance as the House of Commons, though abstaining parties and very small parties were not represented. Because of this, and its dependence on the House of Commons for election, it had virtually no political impact.
Initially the Parliament met in Belfast's City Hall but then moved to the Presbyterian Church's Assembly's College (later Union Theological College), where it remained during the period 1921–1932. The Commons met in the college's Gamble Library and the Senate in the chapel. In 1932, Parliament moved to the new purpose-built Parliament Buildings, designed by Sir Arnold Thornely, at Stormont, on the eastern outskirts of the city. "Stormont" came to be a synecdoche referring both to the Parliament itself and to the Northern Ireland government.
Legislation
Stormont was given power to legislate over almost all aspects of Northern Ireland life, with only a few matters excluded from its remit, the most important of which are: succession to the Crown, making of peace or war, armed forces, honours, naturalisation, some central taxes and postal services (a full list is in section 4 of the Government of Ireland Act 1920). The Parliament did not try to infringe the terms of the Government of Ireland Act; on only one occasion did the United Kingdom government advise the King to withhold royal assent. This was the Local Government Act (Northern Ireland)[which?] which abolished proportional representation in local government elections; the issue was referred to London and royal assent was eventually given. The output of legislation was high for a devolved Parliament, though some of the Acts were adaptations of recently passed acts by the United Kingdom parliament.[citation needed] It was nominally prohibited by section 16 of the Schedule to the Irish Free State (Agreement) Act 1922 from making any law which directly or indirectly discriminated against a religion, although this provision had little effect.[citation needed]
Brief history
Robinson and Cleaver Department Store in Belfast, decorated for the State Opening of the first Northern Ireland parliament. 22 June 1921.George V and Queen Mary during the opening of the Parliament of Northern Ireland (1921)
The 1921 general election was explicitly fought on the issue of partition, being in effect a referendum on approval of the concept of a Northern Ireland administration. Thereafter, general election timing was up to the Prime Minister. Elections almost always took place at a time when the issue of partition had been raised in a new crisis.[citation needed] This generally guaranteed the loyalty of Protestant voters to the Unionist Party. Independent Unionist candidates and the Northern Ireland Labour Party were usually accused of being splitters or dupes of the Nationalists.[citation needed]
The 1925 general election was called to tie in with the expected report of the Boundary Commission required by the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1922. The Boundary Commission was expected to recommend the transfer of many border areas to the Irish Free State, and the Unionist election slogan was "Not an Inch!". They lost eight seats in Belfast and County Antrim, where the issue of the border had far less resonance. Sinn Féin had fought in 1921, but by 1925 was suffering the effects of its split over the Anglo-Irish Treaty. Éamon de Valera's Sinn Féin fought as Republicans but won only two seats. The border was never changed.
A minor row erupted in 1925 when the elections to the Senate took place. Eleven Unionists and one Labour Senator were elected, despite there being a block of three composed of two non-abstaining Nationalists and a dissident Unionist. The latter three had mailed their votes, but due to a public holiday and the practices of the postal service, they arrived an hour after the election. Requests for a recount were denied. (It is doubtful whether the three votes would have been sufficient to elect a Senator under the election system, since they would not have achieved a complete single transferable vote quota alone and the Unionist votes were likely to transfer so heavily to each other that the Nationalist candidate would not reach quota throughout the rounds of counting.)[citation needed] From later in 1925 to 1927, the Nationalist Party members took their seats for the first time.
During the Second World War, the Stormont government called on Westminster to introduce conscription several times, as this was already the case in Great Britain. The British government consistently refused, remembering how a similar attempt in 1918 had backfired dramatically, as nationalist opposition made it unworkable. Much of the population of serving age were either in essential jobs or had already joined up voluntarily, making the potential yield of conscription low.
Stormont was abolished and Direct Rule from Westminster was introduced in March 1972, just six weeks after Bloody Sunday, when the Unionist government refused to hand over responsibility for law and order to Westminster. In its 50-year history, only one piece of legislation was passed that was introduced by a Nationalist member, the Wild Birds Protection Act.[which?][4] In October 1971, as the Troubles worsened, Gerard Newe had been appointed as a junior minister at Stormont, in an attempt to improve community relations. Fifty years after it came into existence, Newe was the first Catholic to serve in a Northern Ireland government, but because he was neither an MP nor a Senator, his appointment could last only six months.
The influence of the Orange Order in the governance of Northern Ireland was far-reaching. All of the six prime ministers of Northern Ireland were members of the Order, as were all but three cabinet ministers until 1969. Three of the ministers later left the Order, one because his daughter married a Catholic, one to become Minister of Community Relations in 1970, and the third was expelled for attending a Catholic religious ceremony. Of the 95 Stormont MPs who did not become cabinet ministers, 87 were Orangemen. Every unionist senator, with one exception, between 1921 and 1969 was an Orangeman. One of these senators, James Gyle, was suspended from the Order for seven years for visiting nationalist MP Joe Devlin on his deathbed.
A fully digitised copy of the Commons' debates (187,000 printed pages of Parliamentary Debates) is available online.[5]
A university constituency is a constituency, used in elections to a legislature, that represents the members of one or more universities rather than residents of a geographical area. These may or may not involve plural voting, in which voters are eligible to vote in or as part of this entity and their home area's geographical constituency.
The Social Democratic and Labour Party is a social democratic and Irish nationalist political party in Northern Ireland. The SDLP currently has eight members in the Northern Ireland Assembly (MLAs) and two members of Parliament (MPs) in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom.
Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland. It was created as a separate legal entity on 3 May 1921, under the Government of Ireland Act 1920. The new autonomous Northern Ireland was formed from six of the nine counties of Ulster: four counties with unionist majorities – Antrim, Armagh, Down, and Londonderry – and two counties with slight Irish nationalist majorities – Fermanagh and Tyrone – in the 1918 General Election. The remaining three Ulster counties with larger nationalist majorities were not included. In large part unionists, at least in the north-east, supported its creation while nationalists were opposed.
The Senate of Northern Ireland was the upper house of the Parliament of Northern Ireland created by the Government of Ireland Act 1920. It was abolished with the passing of the Northern Ireland Constitution Act 1973.
The House of Commons of Northern Ireland was the lower house of the Parliament of Northern Ireland created under the Government of Ireland Act 1920. The upper house in the bicameral parliament was called the Senate. It was abolished with the passing of the Northern Ireland Constitution Act 1973.
The Northern Ireland Labour Party (NILP) was a political party in Northern Ireland which operated from 1924 until 1987.
The Partition of Ireland was the process by which the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (UK) divided Ireland into two self-governing polities: Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland. It was enacted on 3 May 1921 under the Government of Ireland Act 1920. The Act intended both territories to remain within the United Kingdom and contained provisions for their eventual reunification. The smaller Northern Ireland was duly created with a devolved government and remained part of the UK. The larger Southern Ireland was not recognised by most of its citizens, who instead recognised the self-declared 32-county Irish Republic. On 6 December 1922, Ireland was partitioned. At that time, the territory of Southern Ireland left the UK and became the Irish Free State, now known as the Republic of Ireland. Ireland had a large Catholic, nationalist majority who wanted self-governance or independence. Prior to partition the Irish Home Rule movement compelled the British Parliament to introduce bills that would give Ireland a devolved government within the UK. This led to the Home Rule Crisis (1912–14), when Ulster unionists/loyalists founded a large paramilitary organization, the Ulster Volunteers, that could be used to prevent Ulster from being ruled by an Irish government. The British government proposed to exclude all or part of Ulster, but the crisis was interrupted by the First World War (1914–18). Support for Irish independence grew during the war and after the 1916 armed rebellion known as the Easter Rising.
The 1925 Northern Ireland general election was held on 3 April 1925. It was the second election to the Parliament of Northern Ireland. It saw significant losses for the Ulster Unionist Party, although they maintained their large majority. This was the last election for the Stormont parliament conducted using Single transferable voting, a form of Proportional Representation. Fifty-two members were elected in ten districts, which each elected between four and eight members. The Ulster Unionist government abolished proportional representation during this parliament and replaced it with the first-past-the-post system used in Great Britain.
Belfast is the largest city and capital of Northern Ireland. It is partly located in County Antrim and partly in County Down.
North Antrim was a constituency of the Northern Ireland House of Commons.
Down is one of the six counties comprising Northern Ireland.
Henry Cassidy Midgley, PC (NI), known as Harry Midgley was a prominent trade-unionist and politician in Northern Ireland. Born to a working-class Protestant family in Tiger's Bay, north Belfast, he followed his father into the shipyard. After serving on the Western Front in the Great War, he became an official in a textile workers union and a leading light in the Belfast Labour Party (BLP). He represented the party's efforts in the early 1920s to provide a left opposition to the Unionist government of the new Northern Ireland while remaining non-committal on the divisive question of Irish partition.
Belfast West was a borough constituency of the Parliament of Northern Ireland from 1921 to 1929. It returned four MPs, using proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote.
Belfast Central was a constituency of the Parliament of Northern Ireland.
William McMullen was an Irish trade unionist and politician. A member of the Labour movement, McMullen primary work was a trade unionist, but he was also a successful politician who secured office in the Parliament of Northern Ireland. Despite coming from a Presbyterian family, McMullen was also an avowed Irish republican, bitterly opposing the partition of Ireland in the 1920s and joining the Republican Congress in the 1930s. In the 1940s McMullen became the leader of the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union and in the 1950s, he became a member of the Irish senate.
Belfast Victoria was a constituency of the Parliament of Northern Ireland.
The House of Commons Act 1929 was an act of the Parliament of Northern Ireland at Stormont which changed the usual voting system used for the House of Commons of Northern Ireland from single transferable vote (STV) to first past the post (FPTP). As a consequence, the act also subdivided nine of the ten multiple-seat constituencies established by the Government of Ireland Act 1920 into 48 single-seat constituencies. The only exception was the Queen's University constituency, which remained STV under a plural voting system until its 1969 abolition. The act was passed in time for the 1929 Stormont election.
The 2022 Northern Ireland Assembly election was held on 5 May 2022. It elected 90 members to the Northern Ireland Assembly. It was the seventh assembly election since the establishment of the assembly in 1998. The election was held three months after the Northern Ireland Executive collapsed due to the resignation of the First Minister, Paul Givan of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), in protest against the Northern Ireland Protocol.
References
↑ Parliamentary Debates of Northern Ireland (accessed 7 August 2012), Volume 1 (1921) / Page 1, 7 June 1921.
Costello, Frank. "King George V's Speech at Stormont (1921): Prelude to the Anglo-Irish Truce," Eire-Ireland, (1987), pp.43–57.
Follis, Bryan A. A state under siege: the establishment of Northern Ireland, 1920-1925 (1995).
Officer, David. "In search of order, permanence and stability: building Stormont, 1921–32." in Richard English and Graham Walker, eds. Unionism in Modern Ireland (Palgrave Macmillan, London, 1996), pp 130–147.
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