Belfast Shankill was a constituency of the

Parliament of Northern Ireland The Parliament of Northern Ireland was the home rule legislature of Northern Ireland, created under the Government of Ireland Act 1920, which sat from 7 June 1921 to 30 March 1972, when it was suspended because of its inability to restore ord ...

Boundaries

Belfast Shankill was a borough constituency comprising part of northern

Belfast Belfast ( , ; from ga, Béal Feirste , meaning 'mouth of the sand-bank ford') is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan on the east coast. It is the 12th-largest city in the United Kingdo ...

. It was created in 1929 when the

House of Commons (Method of Voting and Redistribution of Seats) Act (Northern Ireland) 1929 The House of Commons (Method of Voting and Redistribution of Seats) Act (Northern Ireland) 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 f ...

introduced

first-past-the-post In a first-past-the-post electoral system (FPTP or FPP), formally called single-member plurality voting (SMP) when used in single-member districts or informally choose-one voting in contrast to ranked voting, or score voting, voters cast thei ...

elections throughout Northern Ireland. Belfast Shankill was created by the division of Belfast North into four new constituencies. It survived unchanged, returning one member of Parliament, until the

was temporarily suspended in 1972, and then formally abolished in 1973.The Northern Ireland House of Commons, 1921-1972
Northern Ireland Elections

Politics

In common with other seats in North Belfast, the seat had little

nationalist Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a group of people), Smith, Anthony. ''Nationalism: Th ...

presence. The seat was strongly Unionist, but there was some

labour movement The labour movement or labor movement consists of two main wings: the trade union movement (British English) or labor union movement (American English) on the one hand, and the political labour movement on the other. * The trade union movement ...

strength. For the first twenty-four years of its existence, the seat was held by an

independent Unionist Independent Unionist has been a label sometimes used by candidates in elections in the United Kingdom, indicating a support for British unionism (not to be confused with trade unionism). It is most popularly associated with candidates in elect ...

Members of Parliament

Election results

:At the 1945 and 1949 general elections,

Tommy Henderson Thomas Gibson Henderson (13 October 1887 – 14 August 1970) was an Independent unionist politician. He served in the House of Commons of Northern Ireland from 1925 to 1953 in vigorous opposition to the Unionist governments on all issues othe ...

was elected unopposed. :At the 1962 Northern Ireland general election,

Desmond Boal Desmond Norman Orr Boal (8 August 1928 – 23 April 2015) was a unionist politician and barrister from Northern Ireland. Boal had a legal career before he entered politics in 1960. He was the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) Member of the Parliament ...

was elected unopposed.

References

{{Authority control Shankill Northern Ireland Parliament constituencies established in 1929 Northern Ireland Parliament constituencies disestablished in 1973