The Northern Ireland Unionist Party (NIUP) was a small unionist

political party A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular country's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific ideological or p ...

Northern Ireland Northern Ireland ( ga, Tuaisceart Éireann ; sco, label= Ulster-Scots, Norlin Airlann) is a part of the United Kingdom, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, that is variously described as a country, province or region. Nort ...

. It was formed in January 1999 as a splinter party from the

UK Unionist Party The UK Unionist Party (UKUP) was a small unionist political party in Northern Ireland from 1995 to 2008 that opposed the Good Friday Agreement. It was nominally formed by Robert McCartney, formerly of the Ulster Unionist Party, to contest the ...

(UKUP). This split was caused by disagreement between the five UKUP members of the Northern Ireland Assembly. Four of the members disagreed with UKUP leader Robert McCartney's policy of resigning from the Assembly should

Sinn Féin Sinn Féin ( , ; en, " eOurselves") is an Irish republican and democratic socialist political party active throughout both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The original Sinn Féin organisation was founded in 1905 by Arthur G ...

become part of the power-sharing executive. Cedric Wilson, Patrick Roche,

Norman Boyd Norman Boyd (born 16 October 1961) is a Unionist politician in Northern Ireland who served as a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly (MLA) for South Antrim from 1998 to 2003. Boyd was born in Belfast and attended Belfast High School and ...

and Roger Hutchinson disagreed with McCartney, wanting to remain in the Assembly to challenge unionists in favour of the

Belfast Agreement The Good Friday Agreement (GFA), or Belfast Agreement ( ga, Comhaontú Aoine an Chéasta or ; Ulster-Scots: or ), is a pair of agreements signed on 10 April 1998 that ended most of the violence of The Troubles, a political conflict in No ...

. McCartney disciplined these members in their absence and, in response, they left the UKUP and formed the NIUP. Led by Wilson, the new party argued that it had the support of the grassroots membership of the UKUP, but McCartney disputed this. Subsequently, Hutchinson left the NIUP on 30 November 1999, sitting as an independent Unionist for a period before joining the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). He then left the DUP and unsuccessfully contested the 2003 Assembly Election as an independent Unionist. The NIUP opposed the Belfast Agreement and the reformation of the Royal Ulster Constabulary to the

Police Service Northern Ireland The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI; ga, Seirbhís Póilíneachta Thuaisceart Éireann; Ulster-Scots: ') is the police force that serves Northern Ireland. It is the successor to the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) after it was reform ...

. They described their position as "principled unionism." In its first electoral test, the party polled very poorly in the 2001 General Election and in local elections held on the same day, winning no Westminster or council seats. In the 2003 Assembly Election, the NIUP won no seats at all. The NIUP consistently had a low level of support and mainly contested the constituencies represented by its four Assembly members. In 2001, it received 1,794 votes in the general election and 1,818 votes in the local elections. This fell to 1,350 in the 2003 Assembly election. Its share of the vote across Northern Ireland was around 0.2% in each case. The party's submission of accounts for 2004 stated that the party was "inactive" during this period and there is no evidence of subsequent activity. Wilson stood as an

independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s * Independ ...

candidate in the Strangford constituency at the 2007 Assembly Election where he polled 305 votes (0.8%), thus finishing last out of the fifteen candidates. The NIUP voluntarily deregistered as a political party on 10 March 2008.

Electoral performance

UK general elections

Northern Ireland Assembly elections

Local elections

References

{{Authority control Political parties established in 1999 Defunct political parties in Northern Ireland 1999 establishments in Northern Ireland