|
Showing 1 - 1 of
1 matches in All Departments
The Ulster Unionist Party: Country Before Party? uses unprecedented
access to the party that dominated Northern Ireland politics for
decades to assess the reasons for its decline and to analyse
whether it can recover. Having helped produce the Belfast/Good
Friday Agreement, the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) struggled to
deliver the deal amid unease over aspects of what its leadership
negotiated. Paramilitary prisoner releases, policing changes, and
power-sharing with the republican 'enemy' were all controversial.
As the UUP leader won a Nobel Peace Prize, his party began to lost
elections. For the UUP leadership, acceptance of change was the
right thing to do for Northern Ireland - a case of putting country
before party. The decades since the peace agreement have seen the
UUP eclipsed by the rival Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) even
though most of what the UUP agreed in 1998 has remained in place.
This book examines the travails of the UUP in recent times. It
draws upon the first-ever survey of UUP members and a wide range of
interviews, including with the five most recent leaders of the
party, to analyse the reasons for its reverses and the capacity to
revive. The volume assesses why the UUP's (still sizeable)
membership remains loyal and discusses what the UUP and unionism
means to those members, in terms of loyalty, policy, national and
religious identity, views of other parties and what a shared future
in Northern Ireland will constitute. Amid Brexit and talk of a
border poll, crises of devolved government, rows with republicans
and intra-unionist tensions, how secure and confident does the UUP
membership feel about Northern Ireland's future? Written by the
same expert team that produced an award-winning book on the DUP,
this book is indispensable to understanding parties and political
change in divided societies.
|
|
Email address subscribed successfully.
A activation email has been sent to you.
Please click the link in that email to activate your subscription.