seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Tag Archives: St. Andrews Agreement


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Founding of Traditional Unionist Voice

The Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV), a unionist political party in Northern Ireland, is founded on December 7, 2007, by Jim Allister after he and others had resigned from the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in March of that year. In common with all other Northern Irish unionist parties, the TUV’s political programme has as its sine qua non the preservation of Northern Ireland’s place within the United Kingdom. A founding precept of the party is that “nothing which is morally wrong can be politically right.”

At the time of his resignation, Allister is a prominent figure in the DUP and holds the position of Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the party having been elected to the European Parliament in 2004. The reason for the split is DUP leader Ian Paisley’s March 2007 consent to the St. Andrews Agreement and his willingness to become First Minister of Northern Ireland alongside a deputy First Minister from the Irish republican party Sinn Féin.

Prior to the St. Andrews Agreement, the DUP presents itself as an “anti-Agreement” unionist party opposed to numerous aspects of the Good Friday Agreement, e.g., the release of paramilitary prisoners before the end of their jail sentences, and the participation of Sinn Féin in the Northern Ireland government without complete decommissioning of Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) weapons and cessation of all IRA activity. The TUV has been an exception among Northern Irish unionist parties in consistently opposing the presence of Sinn Féin in the Northern Ireland government. After Allister’s resignation from the DUP, he continues to occupy his European Parliament seat, sitting as an Independent MEP until the 2009 European Parliament election in the United Kingdom, when he is not re-elected.

In terms of electoral success and financial income, Traditional Unionist Voice is the third largest unionist party in Northern Ireland, behind the Democratic Unionist Party and the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP). It is usually considered by political commentators to be a small party and characterised as being more hardline than other Northern Irish unionist parties.

Since 2011, the TUV has occupied one seat in the Northern Ireland Assembly. In 2024, they win their first seat in the United Kingdom House of Commons. The party also holds some seats on local councils in Northern Ireland. Its most prominent elected representative and best-known figure remains Jim Allister whose North Antrim constituency is the heartland of the party.

Since 2008, the party president has been former East Londonderry Westminster MP William Ross.

In March 2024, the party forms an electoral pact with Reform UK, stating that the two parties will stand mutually agreed candidates in Northern Ireland constituencies in the 2024 United Kingdom general election. In this election, the party wins its first Westminster Member of Parliament (MP), electing Jim Allister as MP for North Antrim.

An opinion poll, released by LucidTalk in August 2025, shows the TUV as the third most popular party for the first time, coming ahead of both the Alliance Party and Ulster Unionists, with 13%.


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Ian Paisley Announces Retirement as Northern Ireland’s First Minister

In a March 4, 2008, announcement, the Rev. Ian Paisley signals the end of an era by announcing he will retire as First Minister of Northern Ireland. He also confirms he is stepping down as leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), the party he founded in the early 1970s. The news represents a huge moment in the politics and recent history of Northern Ireland, removing from the scene as it does one of its most striking figures.

The 81-year-old announces he will quit both posts following an international investment conference in Belfast in May 2008 but will remain as an MP and Assembly member.

“I came to this decision a few weeks ago when I was thinking very much about the conference and what was going come after the conference,” Paisley tells Ulster Television. “I thought that it is a marker, a very big marker and it would be a very appropriate time for me to bow out.”

Paisley denies he is leaving in part over allegations that his son, Ian Paisley Jr., lobbied Downing Street on behalf of a wealthy party member. He says his son has been “wrongly accused.” He is also weakened over defeat in a recent by-election – an indication that a section of the DUP’s electorate is uneasy about his historic decision to share power with Sinn Féin.

Significantly, Paisley does not back any contender in the DUP leadership contest to succeed him. “This is not the Church of Rome. I have no right to say who will succeed me. I will not be like Putin in Russia saying to the president – ‘this is the way you have to go.’ When I make a break it will be [a] break.”

Paisley defends his decision to enter into government with Sinn Féin. “It was the right thing to do because it was the only thing to do to save us from a united Ireland. We were threatened that we would be more Irish in our rulership, that there would be more Dublin say in government. That was what the British government threatened. We managed to put that to a rest.”

“We have laid to rest that and republicans have come to see that they have to put up with Paisley and his clan. We took what was meant for our destruction and turned it into our salvation.”

Speaking from Dubai the previous night, the deputy First Minister, Martin McGuinness, says, “It wasn’t unexpected. It was the right decision to go into sharing power with Sinn Féin which changed the politics of Ireland forever.”

The Sinn Féin MP describes Paisley as “courageous” for agreeing to enter into the power-sharing government. “We have had a positive and constructive working relationship,” McGuinness said.

Paisley’s fiercest critic within unionism, the ex-DUP MEP, Jim Allister, claims opposition to his power-sharing with Sinn Féin and his relationship with McGuinness means that Paisley “jumped before he was pushed.”

Allister’s new party, Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV), split the DUP vote in a by-election in February 2008 and cost the party a council seat in County Down. It was Paisley’s first electoral test since he agreed to share power with Sinn Féin following the St. Andrews Agreement at the end of 2006.

In April 2008, Peter Robinson is chosen to succeed Paisley as leader of the Democratic Unionist Party. The 36 DUP members of the Northern Ireland Assembly unanimously select Robinson, who has been MP for Belfast East since 1979 and Paisley’s deputy since 1980. He is the Minister of Finance and Personnel in the Northern Ireland Executive – Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government – for the previous year.

(From: “Paisley to step down as Ulster’s first minister” by Henry McDonald, Ireland correspondent, The Guardian, March 4, 2008)


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Reverend Ian Paisley Elected MP for North Antrim

After having been in prison for unlawful assembly and breach of the peace, the “anti-popery” Reverend Ian Richard Kyle Paisley, loyalist politician and Protestant religious leader from Northern Ireland, is elected to Westminster on July 18, 1970, as an MP for North Antrim.

Paisley is born on April 6, 1926, in Armagh, County Armagh. He becomes a Protestant evangelical minister in 1946 and remains one for the rest of his life. In 1951, he co-founds the fundamentalist Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster and is its leader until 2008. He becomes known for his fiery speeches and regularly preaches and protests against Catholicism, ecumenism and homosexuality. He gains a large group of followers who are referred to as “Paisleyites.”

Paisley becomes involved in Ulster unionist/loyalist politics in the late 1950s. In the mid-late 1960s he leads and instigates loyalist opposition to the Catholic civil rights movement in Northern Ireland. This leads to the outbreak of the Troubles in the late 1960s, a conflict that engulfs Northern Ireland for the next thirty years. In 1970, he becomes Member of Parliament for North Antrim and the following year he founds the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which he leads for almost forty years. In 1979, he becomes a Member of the European Parliament.

Throughout the Troubles, Paisley is seen as a firebrand and the face of hard-line unionism. He opposes all attempts to resolve the conflict through power-sharing between unionists and Irish nationalists/republicans, and all attempts to involve the Republic of Ireland in Northern affairs. His efforts help bring down the Sunningdale Agreement of 1974. He also opposes the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, with less success. His attempts to create a paramilitary movement culminate in Ulster Resistance. He and his party also oppose the Northern Ireland peace process and Good Friday Agreement of 1998.

In 2005, Paisley’s DUP becomes the largest unionist party in Northern Ireland, displacing the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), which has dominated unionist politics since 1905. In 2007, following the St. Andrews Agreement, the DUP finally agrees to share power with republican party Sinn Féin and consent to all-Ireland governance in certain matters. He and Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness become First Minister and deputy First Minister respectively in May 2007. He steps down as First Minister and DUP leader in May 2008 and leaves politics in 2011. He is made a life peer in 2010 as Baron Bannside.

In November 2011, Paisley announces to his congregation that he is retiring as a minister. He delivers his final sermon to a packed attendance at the Martyrs’ Memorial Hall on December 18, 2011, and finally retires from his religious ministry on January 27, 2012.

Paisley dies in Belfast on September 12, 2014. He is buried in Ballygowan, County Down on September 15 following a private funeral and a public memorial for 800 invited guests is held in the Ulster Hall on October 19. An obituary in The New York Times reports that late in life Paisley had moderated and softened his stances against Roman Catholics but that “the legacies of fighting and religious hatreds remained.”


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Birth in Belfast of Ian Paisley

ian-paisley

Ian Richard Kyle Paisley, loyalist politician and Protestant religious leader from Northern Ireland is born on April 6, 1926, in Armagh, County Armagh.

Paisley becomes a Protestant evangelical minister in 1946 and remains one for the rest of his life. In 1951, he co-founds the fundamentalist Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster and is its leader until 2008. Paisley becomes known for his fiery speeches and regularly preaches and protests against Catholicism, ecumenism and homosexuality. He gains a large group of followers who are referred to as “Paisleyites.”

Paisley becomes involved in Ulster unionist/loyalist politics in the late 1950s. In the mid-late 1960s he leads and instigates loyalist opposition to the Catholic civil rights movement in Northern Ireland. This leads to the outbreak of The Troubles in the late 1960s, a conflict that engulfs Northern Ireland for the next thirty years. In 1970, he becomes Member of Parliament for North Antrim and the following year he founds the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which he leads for almost forty years. In 1979, he becomes a Member of the European Parliament.

Throughout the Troubles, Paisley is seen as a firebrand and the face of hard-line unionism. He opposes all attempts to resolve the conflict through power-sharing between unionists and Irish nationalists/republicans, and all attempts to involve the Republic of Ireland in Northern affairs. His efforts help bring down the Sunningdale Agreement of 1974. He also opposes the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, with less success. His attempts to create a paramilitary movement culminate in Ulster Resistance. Paisley and his party also oppose the Northern Ireland peace process and Good Friday Agreement of 1998.

In 2005, Paisley’s DUP becomes the largest unionist party in Northern Ireland, displacing the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), which has dominated unionist politics since 1905. In 2007, following the St. Andrews Agreement, the DUP finally agrees to share power with republican party Sinn Féin and consent to all-Ireland governance in certain matters. Paisley and Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness become First Minister and deputy First Minister respectively in May 2007. Paisley steps down as First Minister and DUP leader in May 2008 and leaves politics in 2011. Paisley is made a life peer in 2010 as Baron Bannside.

In November 2011, Paisley announces to his congregation that he is retiring as a minister. He delivers his final sermon to a packed attendance at the Martyrs’ Memorial Hall on December 18, 2011, and finally retires from his religious ministry on January 27, 2012.

Paisley dies in Belfast on September 12, 2014. He is buried in Ballygowan, County Down on September 15 following a private funeral and a public memorial for 800 invited guests is held in the Ulster Hall on October 19. An obituary in The New York Times reports that late in life Paisley had moderated and softened his stances against Roman Catholics but that “the legacies of fighting and religious hatreds remained.”