Liberal and Secular or Protestant and Orange?

This chapter examines the importance of the Protestant Faith and Church and of the Orange Order to UUP members. Whilst overwhelmingly Protestant, the UUP has always rejected the overtly fundamentalist, Free Presbyterian brand with which the DUP was associated for many years. The chapter analyses whether the Church of Ireland or Presbyterian Church provide most UUP members. The chapter then discusses the religiously conservative attitudes of members, assessing the extent of support for, or opposition to, the legalization of same-sex marriage and abortion, currently still prohibited (other than in exceptional cases for abortion) in Northern Ireland. The extent to which members offer support for ‘mixed’ (Protestant–Catholic) marriages and for unfettered marching rights for the Orange Order, will also be examined. Are older members, politically socialized in an era of fraternal Orange–UUP relations, still more sympathetic to the Orange Order? The survey data allow direct comparisons with the DUP.

Country Before Party

The second chapter reveals how and why the UUP took risks in negotiating the Belfast Agreement. This section documents the flaws and ambiguities which the leadership failed to resolve, notably in respect of the decommissioning of paramilitary weapons. The chapter details the rationale behind the decision of party leader David Trimble to ‘jump first’ into government in advance of IRA decommissioning and assesses the fallout within the UUP. Were internal divisions and disunity within the UUP inevitable and if so why? How important was the issue of paramilitary prisoner releases to Trimble? The chapter analyses whether and how the UUP could have extracted more from the Belfast Agreement and also assesses the structural difficulties confronting Trimble in terms of managing dissent within his own party.

Safeguarding the Union

Chapter 5 offers an analysis of UUP discourses, to understand how the Party attempts to portray itself as the superior custodian of unionist interests compared to its DUP rival. The DUP’s presentation of the Belfast Agreement was primarily through a discourse of concessions to republicanism and losses to unionism, which the UUP struggled to counter. UUP discourse claims to offer sensible and secure unionism, demonstrating that the Party secured peace and constitutional security via the Belfast Agreement. Allied to these claims has been the assertion that the DUP has played catch-up in accepting political arrangements negotiated by the UUP. Articulating this discourse, the UUP claims to be the visionary within unionism, creating civic and liberal forms of the ideology, rather than religiously derived or cultural versions. This outlook was embodied in David Trimble’s assertion that he wished the Northern Ireland Assembly to operate as a ‘pluralist parliament for a pluralist people’.

Conclusion

The book concludes by summarizing the nature of the UUP’s membership, outlook, and vision and evaluating whether the party can ever again become the dominant unionist party in its ongoing battle with the DUP. The conclusion asks whether the UUP’s vision of liberal and civic forms of unionism continues to differ from the cultural unionism articulated by the DUP and assess the UUP’s vision of a ‘shared future’. The conclusion assesses the significance of UUP internal change and modernization. It offers wider assertions concerning how ethnic parties prosper in divided political systems, considering whether it is better to operate as a ‘catch-us’ party, appealing to one’s ethnic kin, or risk a ‘catch-all’ strategy, attempting to broaden political and electoral appeals beyond the communal chasm.

Institutional Structures, Party Selection, and Spotty Tights

Chapter 9 assesses the representation and roles of women in the UUP. Women represent 30 per cent of members of the Northern Ireland Assembly and 25 per cent of local councillors However, compared to other devolved institutions, where female representation is 42 and 35 per cent in the Welsh Assembly and Scottish Parliament respectively, Northern Ireland politics maintains a significant gender deficit, as nationality and religion tend to eclipse a gender focus. The gender deficit within unionist politics is stark when compared with nationalist parties. The chapter accounts for the reasons behind the gender deficit in the UUP, where there is low female party membership and elected representation. The chapter discusses how female participation is promoted. It examines male and female attitudes to women in the party, utilizing survey evidence on views of quotas, on whether female elected representatives can better represent women’s interests, and whether women have significant voice.

Attitudes towards Other Parties

Chapter 7 explores UUP members’ attitudes towards other parties. It explores the degree to which pan-unionism is reality, or whether long-standing hostility to the DUP persists, evidenced by a frequent reluctance to offer the UUP’s rival lower preference votes. Given the apparent extent of policy convergence, what is the basis of this intra-unionist election rivalry? Is it mainly a product of historical enmity? The chapter also analyses attitudes towards Sinn Féin, a party less of a direct electoral threat than the DUP but one whose history attracts the opprobrium of UUP members. Using data and interview material, the chapter assesses the extent of ideological proximity or distance between the UUP and other parties.

Britishness and Northern Irishness

Chapter 6 assesses the basis of British identity held by UUP members. The party adapted to a devolutionary settlement, having been a party often more supportive of direct rule from Westminster during the Troubles than the regional Ulster loyalist DUP. This chapter considers whether the UUP offers a form of Britishness more closely aligned to that found elsewhere in the UK than its unionist rival. The Party has contested elections on the slogan ‘Simply British’. Using the survey data and interviews, the chapter tests the extent of British identification relative to that of Northern Irishness, assessing the rival pulls of UK identity versus regionalism. The chapter also highlights the exclusiveness of identity, in terms of the degree of rejection by UUP members of a sense of Irishness.

Who are the UUP Members—and What do they Believe?

The fourth chapter provides the first detailed data on the demography, geography, and viewpoints of the UUP membership. The chapter examines if the UUP is still in any way the party of ‘Big House’ unionism, one with a more middle-class membership, or with members enjoying higher incomes, than those belonging to the DUP. The chapter profiles the party base in terms of when members joined—and why. This section assesses where the UUP, traditionally strong in middle-class areas and in rural parts of Northern Ireland, such as Fermanagh, continues to attract members. It then considers members’ views of their own political positions and those of their party in terms of left–right distinctions, support for political institutions, and policy preferences.

Introduction

The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) was the dominant party in Northern Ireland from the 1920s until the end of the twentieth century. The twenty-first century has been much more of a struggle. The UUP was punished, not rewarded, by many in the Protestant Unionist British community for conceding too much to Irish nationalists in the 1998 Belfast/Good Friday Agreement. Those concerned about the deal defected to the more militant Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). The story of the UUP during the peace process and in the decades since the 1998 Agreement is examined in subsequent chapters. The volume draws upon the first-ever dataset on UUP members constructed by the authors to examine who belongs to the UUP, explore what they think of their party and others, and assess their views on the political changes which have seen their party come under pressure.

Electoral Politics

Chapter 3 analyses the electoral consequences of the UUP’s support for the Belfast Agreement. The UUP fell from its perch, suffering electoral collapse and the loss of all the party’s Westminster MPs by 2010, before temporarily recovering in 2015 only to lose Westminster representation again two years later. The electoral problems of the UUP arose as unionists lost confidence in the Belfast Agreement. The UUP was engulfed by internal chaos and the DUP picked off the talent from its rival, outwitting the UUP politically and offering impressive internal discipline. The DUP claimed to offer the unionist electorate a better arrangement than the deal negotiated by the UUP, a successful electoral pitch. The chapter assesses the UUP’s attempts to shore up its position, via a variety of alliances—with the Conservatives in 2010, via electoral pacts with the DUP in 2015 and a cross-community pitch for nationalist vote transfers in 2017.