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).
The only official flag for Northern Ireland is the Union Flag or Union Jack, the flag of the United Kingdom; there is no official local flag that represents only Northern Ireland. The flying of various flags in Northern Ireland is a significant sectarian issue, with different communities identifying with different flags.
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 Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) is a minor unionist political party in Northern Ireland. It was formed from the Independent Unionist Group operating in the Shankill area of Belfast, becoming the PUP in 1979. Linked to the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and Red Hand Commando (RHC), for a time it described itself as "the only left of centre unionist party" in Northern Ireland, with its main support base in the loyalist working class communities of Belfast.
Arthur Brian Deane Faulkner, Baron Faulkner of Downpatrick,, was the sixth and last Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, from March 1971 until his resignation in March 1972. He was also the chief executive of the short-lived Northern Ireland Executive during the first half of 1974.
The Sunningdale Agreement was an attempt to establish a power-sharing Northern Ireland Executive and a cross-border Council of Ireland. The agreement was signed by the British and Irish governments at Northcote House in Sunningdale Park, located in Sunningdale, Berkshire, on 9 December 1973. Unionist opposition, violence and a general strike caused the collapse of the agreement in May 1974.
The Ulster Unionist Labour Association (UULA) was an association of trade unionists founded by Edward Carson in June 1918, aligned with the Ulster Unionists in Ireland. Members were known as Labour Unionists. In Britain, 1918 and 1919 were marked by intense class conflict. This phenomenon spread to Ireland, the whole of which was part of the United Kingdom at the time. This period also saw a large increase in trade union membership and a series of strikes. These union activities raised fears in a section of the Ulster Unionist leadership, principally Edward Carson and R. Dawson Bates. Carson at this time was president of the British Empire Union, and had been predisposed to amplify the danger of a Bolshevik outbreak in Britain.
William Craig was a Northern Irish unionist politician and solicitor, best known for forming the Unionist Vanguard movement.
Reginald Norman Morgan Empey, Baron Empey,, best known as Reg Empey, is a Northern Irish politician who served as the acting First Minister of Northern Ireland in 2001. He was the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) from 2005 to 2010 and served as chairman of the party from 2012 to 2019. Empey was a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly (MLA) for East Belfast from 1998 to 2011.
The Northern Ireland flags issue is one that divides the population along sectarian lines. Depending on political allegiance, people identify with differing flags and symbols, some of which have, or have had, official status in Northern Ireland.
The Ulster Progressive Unionist Association or, as it became within two months of its formation in June 1937, the Ulster Progressive Unionist Party (UPUP), was a political group formed to seek greater internal debate within unionism and to secure action on unemployment.
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.
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.
Independent Unionist has been a label sometimes used by candidates in elections in the United Kingdom, indicating a support for British unionism.
Ulster Protestant Action (UPA) was an Ulster loyalist political party and Protestant fundamentalist vigilante group in Northern Ireland that was founded in 1956 and re-formed as the Protestant Unionist Party in 1966.
Trevor Maxwell Ringland, is a Northern Irish solicitor, former rugby union player and unionist politician. From June 2013 to July 2014, he served as co-chairman of the NI Conservatives. After attending Larne Grammar School, he read law at Queen's University Belfast.
Sir Richard Dawson Bates, 1st Baronet, known as Dawson Bates, was an Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) member of the House of Commons of Northern Ireland.
Cecil Harvey was a Northern Irish unionist politician and Church elder.
William Dickson, known as Billy Dickson, is a Northern Irish unionist politician and Belfast tour guide who was a Belfast City Councillor for Belfast Area F from 1977 to 1985, and then for Balmoral from 1985 to 1989.
