Third Way | |
---|---|
Leader | Patrick Harrington |
Founder | Patrick Harrington |
Founded | 17 March 1990 |
Dissolved | 2006 | (as political party)
Ideology | Anti-capitalism [1] Anti-communism [1] Euroscepticism [2] |
Regional affiliation | Ulster Third Way (formerly) |
Colours | Green |
Website | |
thirdway | |
The Third Way is a think tank and former political party in the United Kingdom, founded on the 17 March 1990. Third Way has supported a system of federalism for the UK [3] with the possibility of a future break-up, [4] an isolationist foreign policy, [5] environmentalism, [6] the wide use of Swiss-style citizens' initiatives [7] and distributism. [8]
It should not be confused with the Third Way ideology promoted by Tony Blair, Bill Clinton and Gerhard Schröder, which it condemns as a revised form of social democracy. [9] It is not related to the Christian Third Way magazine.
Third Way describes itself as:
a think-tank dedicated to creating a society based on Justice, Community and Individual freedom against one that is based on Greed, Globalisation and Tyranny.
Third Way stands against all forms of social injustice, racism and religious bigotry. Third Way is for everyone. We promote positive ideas and apart from this website also publish printed material. We advocate Direct Democracy along Swiss lines using referenda and citizens’ initiatives.
We support small business and co-operative ownership. [10]
The former Northern Ireland wing of the party, Ulster Third Way (U3W) advocated for Northern Irish independence from both the UK and Republic of Ireland before its dissolution in 2005. U3W also supported the re-establishment of the Confederate States of America and neo-confederatism, although it is not clear if this opinion was shared with the rest of the Third Way. [11]
Third Way supported the English Lobby, a pressure group and electoral coalition founded in 2004 that campaigns for the recognition of St George's Day and the creation of an English parliament.
Third Way supporters assisted in the foundation of the trade union Solidarity – The Union for British Workers.
The Third Way has operated, or is closely associated with, various publications and websites, including:
In 1999, new electoral organisation the National Liberal Party was formed by Patrick Harrington and Graham Williamson and registered as National Liberal Party – The Third Way with the Electoral Commission. It fought parliamentary elections in Hornchurch (in 2001 and 2005), Belfast West (2001, as Ulster Third Way), Upminster (2005) and Eastleigh (2010) but obtained below 1% of the vote in each case.
In the 2014 European elections, the National Liberal Party stood with 8 candidates in the London constituency, [12] gaining 6,736 votes. [13]
The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) is a unionist political party in Northern Ireland. The party was founded as the Ulster Unionist Council in 1905, emerging from the Irish Unionist Alliance in Ulster. Under Edward Carson, it led unionist opposition to the Irish Home Rule movement. Following the partition of Ireland, it was the governing party of Northern Ireland between 1921 and 1972. It was supported by most unionist voters throughout the conflict known as the Troubles, during which time it was often referred to as the Official Unionist Party (OUP).
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 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 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 First Minister.
The Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, or simply Alliance, is a liberal and centrist political party in Northern Ireland. Following the 2022 Northern Ireland Assembly election, it was the third-largest party in the Northern Ireland Assembly, holding seventeen seats, and broke through by achieving third place in first preference votes in the 2019 European Parliament election and polling third-highest regionally at the 2019 UK general election. The party won one of the three Northern Ireland seats in the European Parliament, and one seat, North Down, in the House of Commons, the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
The Ulster Democratic Party (UDP) was a small loyalist political party in Northern Ireland. It was established in June 1981 as the Ulster Loyalist Democratic Party by the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), to replace the New Ulster Political Research Group. The UDP name had previously been used in the 1930s by an unrelated party, which on one occasion contested Belfast Central.
Patrick Antony Harrington is a far-right British political activist and writer of Irish Catholic family origins, who has published pamphlets by the Social Credit advocate and former editor of the Liverpool Newsletter, Anthony Cooney, about prominent Catholic writers such as G.K. Chesterton, J.R.R. Tolkien and Hilaire Belloc. He is currently general secretary of Solidarity – The Union for British Workers and a director of the Third Way, a think tank.
Belfast East is a parliamentary constituency in the United Kingdom House of Commons. The current MP is Gavin Robinson (DUP)
David Thomas Kerr is a Northern Irish politician who is the Chairman of the UK-wide Third Way.
Ian Hugh Myddleton Anderson was a leading figure on the British far-right in the 1980s and 1990s.
The Official National Front (ONF) was one of two far-right groups to emerge in the United Kingdom in 1986 following a split within the National Front. Following ideological paths that were mostly new to the British far-right, the ONF stood opposed to the more traditionalist Flag Group.
The Ulster Third Way was the Northern Ireland branch of the Third Way and was organised by David Kerr, who had previously campaigned as an 'independent Unionist' as well as for the British National Front. It followed an Ulster nationalist ideology.
The Irish Unionist Alliance (IUA), also known as the Irish Unionist Party, Irish Unionists or simply the Unionists, was a unionist political party founded in Ireland in 1891 from a merger of the Irish Conservative Party and the Irish Loyal and Patriotic Union (ILPU) to oppose plans for home rule for Ireland within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The party was led for much of its existence by Colonel Edward James Saunderson and later by St John Brodrick, 1st Earl of Midleton. In total, eighty-six members of the House of Lords affiliated themselves with the Irish Unionist Alliance, although its broader membership among Irish voters outside Ulster was relatively small.
Ulster nationalism is a minor school of thought in the politics of Northern Ireland that seeks the independence of Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom without joining the Republic of Ireland, thereby becoming an independent sovereign state separate from both.
The Ulster Independence Movement was an Ulster nationalist political party founded on 17 November 1988. The group emerged from the Ulster Clubs, after a series of 15 public meetings across Northern Ireland. Led by Hugh Ross, a Presbyterian minister from Dungannon, County Tyrone, the UIC sought to end what it saw as the tyranny of rule from London and instead set up an independent Northern Ireland.
The British People's Party (BPP) was a neo-Nazi political party in the United Kingdom, launched in 2005 by Kevin Watmough, Eddy Morrison, John G. Wood and Sid Williamson, former members of Combat 18, British National Party (BNP), National Front (NF) and the White Nationalist Party, as a splinter group from the Nationalist Alliance. Its founding member Eddy Morrison left the BPP and joined the NF in 2009. The party dissolved in 2013.
Hugh Smyth OBE was a Northern Irish Ulster Loyalist and politician who was leader of the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) from 1979 to 2002, as well as during an interim period in 2011. He was Lord Mayor of Belfast from 1994 to 1995, as well as a Belfast City Councillor for the Court DEA from 1972 to January 2014, making him one of the longest-serving members on the Council. Smyth was awarded the Order of the British Empire in the 1996 New Year's Honours list.
Graham Keith Williamson is a long-time political activist in the United Kingdom, having been active at the top levels of various far right groups including the National Front, the Third Way and Solidarity.
Timothy Patrick Bragg is an English author and musician who has worked in politics. He was a founder member of the cultural publication Steadfast. He has been a vegetarian since late childhood. Currently he is perhaps best known as being a drummer/percussionist.
The National Liberal Party is a far right political party formed in the United Kingdom in 1999 with several former National Front activists as its most prominent members. Graham Williamson is listed as Nominating Officer and Upkar Singh Rai is listed as Leader and Treasurer. It has a number of ballot paper descriptions authorised by the Electoral Commission including: 'National Liberal Party – The Radical Centre' and 'National Liberal Party – Liberty, Independence, Democracy'. The group sporadically contested elections until emerging more prominently in the run-up to the 2014 European Parliament election, where it fielded eight candidates for the London constituency, but failed to meet the threshold of votes for its first list-candidate to be elected.