From the time of the introduction of the First and Second Home Rule Bills (1886 & 1893) at Westminster, MPs representing Irish constituencies who supported the Union between Great Britain and Ireland sat, as a group, with the Conservative Party.
Following the 1892 Convention, Unionist Clubs were formed all over Ireland, but mostly in Ulster. These organisations were not formally organised on a constituency basis and many gradually became inactive as the years went on.
However, as the pressure for Home Rule in Ireland gained momentum, Unionists in Ulster began to feel threatened and saw the need for some kind of formal organisation to be established.
On 22nd October 1904, a conference of Unionists in Belfast passed a resolution suggesting that the secretary of the Irish Unionist Parliamentary Party be directed to summons a preliminary meeting in Belfast of Ulster Unionists, to discuss the advisability of forming a central Ulster Unionist Association.
 | The preliminary meeting was organised by William Moore KC: later MP for North Armagh on 2nd December l904 and the following resolution adopted;
"That an Ulster Unionist Council be formed, and that its objects shall be to form an Ulster Union for bringing into line all local Unionist associations in the Province of Ulster with a view to consistent and continuous political action; to act as a further connecting link between Ulster Unionists and their parliamentary representatives and to settle in consultation with them the parliamentary policy, and to be the medium of expressing Ulster Unionist opinion as current events may from time to time require; and generally to advance and defend the interests of Ulster Unionism in the Party." |
The Ulster Unionist Council was constituted formally at a meeting in the Ulster Hall, Belfast on 3rd March 1905 under the Chairmanship of Colonel James McCalmont, MP for East Antrim.
The Duke of Abercorn was elected President of the Council and Dr T H Gibson BL was elected Secretary.
The Council itself consisted of not more than 200 members, of which 100 were nominated by local Unionist associations 50 were nominated by the Orange Order and not more than 50 were co-opted as "distinguished Unionists."
A standing committee was established with a third of its membership of 30 nominated initially by Colonel Saunderson MP, the first leader of the Ulster Unionist Parliamentary Party at Westminster; the rest being elected by delegates to the Council. This body included the Duke of Abercorn, Lord Londonderry, the Earls of Erne and Ranfurly, G Wolff MP; the eminent Liberals, Thomas Sinclair and Thomas Andrews; the leading Orangemen Colonel R H Wallace, W H H Lyons and Sir James Stronge; and Colonel Sharman-Crawford, E M Archdale, R H Reade, Sir William Ewart and W J Allen, leaders of industry and commerce.
This body directed the policy of Ulster Unionism during the next 15 years through the Home Rule crisis and the foundation of the State of Northern Ireland.
Leadership and Policy in the 20th Century
From 1905 to date there have been eleven leaders of the Ulster Unionist Party. Six have been Prime Ministers of Northern Ireland.
The first leader of modern Ulster Unionism was Colonel Edward James Saunderson, from Castle Saunderson in Co. Cavan. He had previously been Liberal MP for Co. Cavan from 1865 until 1974
In 1885 he was returned to represent the constituency of North Armagh which he represented until his death in 1906.
From 1886 Saunderson was leader of the Ulster and Irish Unionist MPs at Westminster, and in his capacity as leader of the Ulster Unionists, he nominated the first members of the Standing Committee of the Ulster Unionist Council in 1905.
The second leader of the Unionist Parliamentary Party at Westminster was an Englishman, the Rt. Hon Walter H Long who represented South County Dublin in Parliament. Chief Secretary for Ireland from March to December 1905, Long recognised the distinct nature of Ulster Unionism and its resistance to Home Rule. He relinquished the Unionist leadership in l 910 when he was elected for the Strand Division of Westminster.
  | Long was succeeded by Sir Edward Carson, MP for Dublin University. Carson later became MP for the Duncairn Division of Belfast. Assisted by James Craig and other members of the Council, Carson led the Ulster people through the great Home Rule crisis of 1912-14 until January 192 l when he stood down as Parliamentary Leader of the Ulster Unionists. Carson was prepared to sanction armed resistance and illegality against the English Crown and Government who were attempting to force Dublin rule on Ulster. He is still regarded by many Ulster British people as the founder of the State of Northern Ireland.
Under Carson’s leadership the Council organised the Ulster Volunteer Force (which later formed the basis of the 36th Ulster Division, sacrificed at the Somme on 1st July 1916) to resist - by force of arms if necessary - the imposition of Dublin rule on Ulster; and to prepare for an Ulster Provisional Government which would have taken over the administration of Unionist controlled areas in the event of Dublin rule being established. |
Carson was also, for a time, First Lord of the Admiralty in the wartime coalition Government.
During Carson’s leadership the Ulster Unionist Council and its affiliated Constituency Associations were organised throughout all the province of Ulster, including Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan, which now form part of the Irish Republic.
However, following the passage of the Government of Ireland Act in 1920 and the establishment of Northern Ireland as it exists today, the three counties mentioned above ceased to have any representation on the Ulster Unionist Council.
| At the Annual General Meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council in the Assembly Hall, Belfast on 24th February 1921, Sir James Craig was unanimously elected leader of the Unionist Party in Ulster, having been proposed by Carson and seconded by Sir James H Stronge.
Following the General Election to the first Northern Ireland Parliament in May 1921 which resulted in an overwhelming Unionist victory, James Craig became the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland. He remained as leader of the Party and Prime Minister until his death in November 1940. In 1926, he was created Viscount Craigavon of Stormont. Under Craig’s leadership Ulster remained within the United Kingdom despite attempts by Lloyd George and the founders of the new Irish Free State to destroy and undermine Northern Ireland at its birth.
|
  |
Under Craigavon, the government of Ulster became firmly established and the Unionist party continued to secure substantial majorities at each General Election to the Northern Ireland Parliament.
Craigavon was succeeded as leader and Prime Minister by John Miller Andrews. The latter resigned as Prime Minister on 30 April 1943, but continued until 1946 to be recognised as leader of the Party by the Standing Committee of the Ulster Unionist Council.
The third Prime Minister of Northern Ireland was Sir Basil Brooke (created Viscount Brookeborough in 19S2). He was Prime Minister for 20 years until his resignation in March 1963. By that time he had established a United Kingdom record by holding government office continuously for over 33 years, including just short of 20 years as Prime Minister. During Brooke’s premiership, Eire became a Republic and left the British Commonwealth. Following this event, Brooke met the British Prime Minister, C R. Attlee and as a result of their negotiations the Ireland Act 1949 was passed by the Westminster Parliaments. One vital section was to the effect that Ulster would remain an integral part of the United Kingdom until the Northern Ireland Parliament decided otherwise.
Captain Terence O’Neill became Prime Minister in March 1963 and remained as Prime Minister and Party Leader until his resignation on 28 April 1969.
His successor was Major James Dawson Chichester-Clark, the first Prime Minister elected by the votes of the members of the Stormont Parliamentary Party. Prime Minister during the early days of the present Republican terrorist campaign, he resigned as Prime Minister and leader of the party in early March 1971, having failed to secure support from the British Government for any effective measures against IRA terrorism.
The last Unionist leader to be Prime Minister of Northern Ireland was Arthur Brian Dean Faulkner. He was elected leader of the Parliamentary Party by his colleagues on 23 March 1971.
In Northern Ireland’s first general Election of 1921 the Unionist Party won 40 of the 52 seats in the House of Commons, which was based at the Presbyterian Theological College building in Belfast. In the twelfth and last General Election to the Ulster Parliament in 1969, the Unionist Party won 36 of the 52 seats, securing 48.2% of the valid poll. With another 3 members returned as Unofficial and Independent Unionists, who all expressed themselves in favour of the Unionist Party’s election manifesto, the Ulster Unionist Government won a further 15.4% of the total vote.
On 28th March 1972, the English Prime Minister, Edward Heath prorogued democracy in Ulster and imposed Direct Rule from Westminster under a Secretary of State, who had never been elected by the Ulster people.
Following the traumatic events of the early 1970’s, Unionism began to fracture into a number of smaller groups and parties. In 1973 Faulkner entered into talks with the UK and Eire Governments and the Republican parties in Ulster and agreed to share power with Irish Republicans at an Assembly in Stormont and take part in a Council of Ireland.
In the 1973 election to the new Assembly, the party was split between those who followed Faulkner’s lead and backed the power-sharing policy and in particular, the "Irish Dimension’ of that policy; and those who opposed the English Government’ s White Paper.
A major crisis for the Party developed in January 1974 and Brian Faulkner resigned as leader of the Unionist Party.
Faulkner was succeeded by Harry West, the former Stormont Minister of Agriculture, on 22nd January 1974. West was elected Leader by the Standing Committee of the Ulster Unionist Council.
Under the West leadership the Party joined with Vanguard and the DUP in the UUUC (United Ulster Unionist Council) and won eleven out of the twelve seats in the Westminster elections of February 1974 with 5l.1% of the total valid poll.
Until this point in time the Ulster Unionist MPs at Westminster had taken the Conservative Party Whip. Furthermore, the Council was represented in the National Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations, and had three delegates on the Executive of the National Union.
This relationship was based, to a degree, upon the historical partnership of Unionists with Conservatives and Liberal Unionists during the Home Rule crisis, and after the formation of the Conservative and Unionist Party in 1922, it was natural to continue this relationship.
Until February l974, Ulster Unionists accepted the Conservative Party line on all major policy issues affecting the United Kingdom. The relationship was also based in part on an aversion, natural in a society with a large rural element, to socialism and the policies of the Labour Party.
Notwithstanding the fact that Ulster Unionists held the Conservative Whip during this period, the Unionist Party was able to assert its independence by producing its own policies as expressed in decisions of the Annual Conference, or more often in the decisions of the devolved legislature at Stormont.
The Conservative Party, under Edward Heath, unilaterally withdrew the Conservative Whip from the Ulster Unionists MP’s immediately after the February 1974 General Election.
After Heath’s break with the Ulster Unionists, they found themselves unaligned for the first time in over half a century. Paradoxically, during the late 1970‘s, the Ulster Unionists were to enjoy perhaps their most influential period in recent times. With a minority Labour Government, they were able to gain key concessions for Ulster, such as a fairer allocation of Parliamentary seats. This stronger Unionist position arose not out of any alliance, but from retaining their independent position, during a period of narrow majority and then minority government at Westminster.
In the October 1974 Westminster General Election, Harry West lost his seat in Fermanagh & South Tyrone but remained as leader of the Party. He led the Party in the Constitutional Convention which met at Stormont in 1975-76.
  | In the first direct elections to the European Parliament in June 1979, Harry West failed to get elected. He immediately tendered his resignation as Party Leader and on 2nd July 1979 - within four weeks of the election - he confirmed this and was succeeded by James Molyneaux MP, who defeated Rev Robert Bradford MP at a meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council held in the Ulster Hall on the 7th September 1979. James Molyneaux remained Leader until September 1995.
Today the Ulster Unionist Party is the fourth largest Party in the Westminster Parliament and holds one of the three Northern Ireland seats in the European Parliament, where it is associated with the European Peoples Party. James Molyneaux led the Party into the 1982 Northern Ireland Assembly which sat at Stormont until it was dissolved in June 1986. The Unionist Party was the largest party grouping in that Assembly with 27 out of 78 seats and a 29.7% share of the total valid poll.
|
Finally, after the Conservatives abandoned any vestige of unionism by signing the Anglo-Eire Agreement in November 1985, the Ulster Unionists concluded that continuing the link with the Tories would be too great an embarrassment and withdrew from the National Union on 25th April 1986.
In September 1995, James Molyneaux retired as Party Leader and was succeeded by David Trimble MP.
Party Headquarters
The Ulster Unionist Council has employed a full-time professional organisation since 1905.
The first offices of the Council were at 1 Lombard Street Belfast.
The first Secretary of the Council Dr T H Gibson, a barrister-at-laws resigned because of ill-health in October 1906, having served less than one year in office.
He was succeeded on a temporary basis by Sir Richard Dawson Bates, a Belfast Solicitor, at an annual salary of £100. Dawson Bates, (later Northern Ireland’s first Minister of Home Affairs from 1921 until 1943, and MP for Victoria until 1945) was an outstanding organiser with a meticulous attention to detail. He was so devoted to the Unionist cause that he even paid for clerical assistance out of his own pocket, although the Council was not short of money at that time!
In late 1908, the Council moved its Belfast offices from Lombard Street to a newly completed of office block at 4 Mayfair, Arthur Square. Over the next few years as organised Unionism spread throughout the constituencies the need for larger and better accommodation became obvious.
Thus at the beginning of 1912 the decision was taken to move to new premises. Later that year the Council moved to the Old Town Hall in Victoria Street, Belfast.
This building is now the Recorder’s Court for the City of Belfast. From this building the Ulster Covenant of 1912 was organised. It also became the Headquarters of the Ulster Volunteer Force and the central Co-ordinating centre of the Provisional Government of Ulster, established to govern Ulster in 1913 after the passage of any Home Rule Bill through Parliament. It was in this building that many of the great strategies of Ulster Unionism were planned, and decisions taken which had profound consequences for Ulster history.
Belfast Corporation, which owned the Old Town Hall, acquired the premises in 1926 for use as offices. New premises were obtained by the Council in a large warehouse and former shirt factory at 3 Glengall Street. After extensive alterations and modernisation the Council moved to Glengall Street in July 1926.
This building - until seriously damaged in an IRA terrorist attack in September 1976 - was four storeys high with a caretakers flat on the top floor, as well as providing accommodation for affiliated bodies such as the Ulster Women‘s Unionist Council, the Ulster Unionist Labour Association, the Ulster Young Unionist Council and the Ulster Volunteer Force Patriotic Fund.
Shortly after the end of World War 2, the Council acquired the adjoining property, No. 1 Glengall Street as additional office space.
There was a Committee room, large enough to seat 150 people on the second floor, with kitchen facilities leading off from it. Offices for the Secretary of the Council, and all the other various departments and affiliated organisations who used the building were housed on the other floors. At the rear of the main building a hall to seat over 350 people, the Glentoran Hall, was built.
The official opening of the Glengall Street Headquarters took place on 30 November 1926, and was performed by the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, Sir James Craig.
Dawson Bates remained Secretary to the Council until 1921, when on the foundation of the State he became Minister of Home Affairs. His successor was Sir Wilson Hungerford, MP for Oldpark at Stormont from 1929 until 1945.
He remained as Secretary until 1941 when he was replaced by William (Billy) Douglas, a superb election strategist and organiser.
Douglas was also Superintendent of the Chief Whip’s office at Stormont and acted as the chief liaison officer between the Parliamentary Party in the Ulster House of Commons and the Ulster Unionist Council.
Billy Douglas retired in April 1963 and was succeeded by his Assistant Secretary from 1961 - James O Bailie. "J.O." was a trained Conservative Party agent who had joined the Glengall Street staff in 1942 and was appointed Organiser in 1946. He was organiser of the Ulster Young Unionist Council and prepared the 1946 Constitution of the Ulster Unionist Council.
He continued the by now established practice of acting as Secretary to the Whip’s Office at Parliament and was responsible for the reorganisation of the administration at Headquarters in the late sixties.
Jim Bailie retired in late 1974 and was succeeded as General Secretary by Norman Hutton.
Hutton, a former businessman, was responsible for planning the party election campaigns and was heavily involved in carrying through constituency reorganisation, to deal with the five extra Westminster seats. He resigned to return to business life in 1983, and was replaced by Frank Millar (Jnr) who had previously been employed as a research officer by Unionist MPs at Westminster.
Millar was the youngest ever General Secretary of the Council and served until September 1987 when he resigned to become a journalist.
In November 1987, Jim Wilson was appointed as Secretary and Chief Executive of the Council and continues to serve in that capacity.
On the night of 1 September 1976 the Glengall Street building was extensively damaged by fire following an IRA terrorist bomb and the Council moved to temporary headquarters at 41/43 Waring Street in Belfast.
On 26 February 1977 tile Council decided to rebuild the old Headquarters No. 1 Glengall Street was sold to the Arts Council for Northern Ireland and No. 3 Glengall Street was completely rebuilt.
The Council moved back in early 1979 to the present headquarters; a three storied office block, consisting of offices fixes for the staff and a large conference room where meetings of more than one hundred persons can be accommodated.
Press Conference facilities are also available, and affiliated bodies like the Ulster Young Unionist Council and the Women‘s Unionist Council, as well as some Constituency Associations continue to meet in the building.
Since moving back to Glengall Street in 1979 the headquarters has continued to be a target for attack by IRA terrorists.
 | On 4th December 1991 a massive car bomb exploded in the street outside causing extensive damage to the building and surrounding premises, including the Grand Opera House.
On the morning of 20th May 1993, just after Ulster’s local government elections, another car bomb exploded outside the building again causing widespread damage. Despite these attacks the Council has continued to operate from this building.
|
Present day structure of the Ulster Unionist Council
Today, as in 1905, the aims and objects of the Ulster Unionist Council remain essentially the same: to best secure the political Interests of the Ulster British people, regardless of class, colour or creed.
The Council currently consists of almost 1000 delegates representing all seventeen Westminster constituencies, the Ulster Women’s Unionist Council, the Ulster Young Unionist Council, the Orange Order, the Queen’s University Unionist Association and the Ulster Unionist Councillors’ Association.
This body meets at least annually and elects a Leader of the Party and other officers at its Annual general Meeting. These officers include the President of the Council, four Vice Presidents, four Honorary Secretaries and a Treasurer who meet regularly with the Party Leader and other Officers to discuss matters of policy and the running of the affairs of the Council.
The Council selects Unionist candidates for all European Parliamentary elections fought in Northern Ireland.
There is also an Executive Committee which endorses and confirms party policy which is formulated under the authority of the party leader. This body which meets on a quarterly basis is made up of representatives from all the Westminster constituencies and the other affiliated bodies of the Council mentioned above. The Chairman, who is in effect Party Chairman, and the Vice-Chairman of this Committee are ex-officio members of the Officer team.
The Orange Order in Northern Ireland is entitled to representation on the Council and on the Executive Committee. However, all their delegates must also be members of local Constituency associations.
Since 1905, the Orange Order has enjoyed a relationship with the Council not dissimilar to that between the British Labour Party and the Trade Union movement.
As time has gone on, bodies such as the Ulster Unionist Labour Association, the Unionist Society, the Political Committee of the Ulster Reform Club and the Apprentice Boys of Derry, which previously have had representation on the Council have either ceased to exist or have allowed their membership on the Council to lapse.
Under the auspices of the Council, an annual Conference is organised at which all members of the Council and the affiliated Constituency associations are entitled to attend. This is an annual occasion on which the grass roots membership of the Council can discuss and debate policy and advance proposals for consideration by the leadership.
Conclusion
The Ulster Unionist Council, having recently celebrated its 90th Anniversary is reviewing its structure and considering its possible reconstruction as an organised political party.
As it prepares to enter the 21 st century, the Ulster Unionist Council continues to represent the political interests of the Ulster British people, and continues to work vigorously to preserve the unity of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, in a period of flux in national and international politics.
