Jonathan Tonge

The Democratic Unionist Party: From Protest to Power

The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in Northern Ireland has undergone a remarkable transformation. Having been a party of opposition and protest for decades following its foundation in 1971, the DUP is now the leading party of government in the region, one which dominates unionist politics. The party moved from a religiously influenced determination to face down the ‘enemies of Ulster’ to acceptance of the need to share power with those ‘enemies’ in the form of Sinn Fein. In so agreeing, via the 2006 St Andrews Agreement, the DUP secured the sharing of power first attempted in the 1998 Belfast Agreement. It was a deal which startled many of even the most loyal followers of the DUP’s leader for decades, the Reverend Ian Paisley, but one which has stuck under his successor, Peter Robinson Yet, despite its colourful past and contemporary prominence, the DUP has rarely been the subject of detailed academic analysis. This unique book is the first to examine who are the DUP’s members and explore what they believe. Drawing upon unprecedented access given by the party, including a Leverhulme Trust-funded survey of the membership and over one hundred detailed interviews, this book analyses what makes individuals join the DUP; who those members are in terms of age, gender, and religion; what they think of the political institutions and power-sharing; attitudes to policing changes and dissident threats and what issues, constitutional or otherwise, concern them most.

Social Class and Party Choice in Northern Ireland's Ethnic Blocs

The peace process in Northern Ireland has not diminished the acute ethnic electoral faultline between the majority Protestant British population, supportive of parties favouring Northern Irelands continuing place in the United Kingdom and the minority Catholic Nationalist population, which backs parties harbouring long-term ambitions for a united Ireland. Within each bloc, however, there has been a dramatic realignment in favour of parties once seen as extreme and militant. The Democratic Unionist Party has emerged as the main representative of the Protestant British population, whilst Sinn Fein, having for many years supported the Provisional IRAs ‘armed struggle’ against British rule, has become the dominant party amongst Catholic Nationalists. As both parties have entered the political mainstream and advanced electorally, to what extent have they moved from their electoral near-confinement among the working class to enjoy broader cross-class support – and how?

New packaging, old deal? New Labour and employment policy innovation

This article examines the extent of employment policy continuity under the Labour government elected in May 1997. It explores four specific questions. First, to what extent has Labour accepted the training orthodoxy permeating employment policy? Second, is the Labour government able to reconcile an interventionist supply-side approach with an institutional framework favouring decentralized employer-led responses to unemployment? Third, to what extent has Labour adopted and advanced the coercive elements of Conservative employment policy. Finally, does Labours support for employment subsidies represent a relegitimation of state intervention in the arena of job creation?

Faultlines in unionism: Division and dissent within the Ulster Unionist Council

Abstract The 1998 Good Friday Agreement (GFA) has exacerbated long‐standing divisions within unionism and heightened party competition within the Unionist bloc, confronting the UUP with a new political and institutional dispensation and increased intra‐communal electoral rivalry. Previous Unionist faultlines that were often viewed through discussions of identity have now shifted post‐GFA to an emphasis on acute political differences. Using data from the first ever membership survey of the effective ruling body of the UUP, the Ulster Unionist Council, this article examines social and attitudinal bases of these divisions, as embodied by the May 2000 Trimble versus Smyth leadership contest. It concludes that whilst specific identity issues, in particular Orange Order membership, still divide unionists, more fundamental social and ideological divisions underlie attitudes to the GFA, threatening party cohesion and heightening the competitive appeal of the DUP for anti‐GFA Unionists.

Conflict, Transformation, and Former Loyalist Paramilitary Prisoners in Northern Ireland

Following the 1998 Belfast Agreement in Northern Ireland, levels of paramilitary violence have declined substantially. Among loyalists, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and associated Red Hand Commando (RHC) have formally renounced violence, and dissolved their ‘military structures’, and perhaps the most reticent of all of the major paramilitary groupings, the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), has taken on board the central tenets of conflict transformation, and ‘stood down’ all of its ‘active service units’ in the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF). Thus, paramilitary violence now is mainly confined to the activities of ‘dissident’ republican groups, notably the Real and Continuity IRAs, although low-level sectarian violence remains a problem. Such dramatic societal and political change has resulted in a focus on the roles of formal party political leadership as agents of social change. This gaze, however, tends to obscure other important events such as the efforts, structures and approaches taken at the grassroots level to uphold and sustain conflict transformation and to maintain a reduction in violence. This article provides analysis of the role played by former loyalist paramilitary combatants in conflict transformation, and draws on material obtained through significant access to those former paramilitaries engaged in processes of societal shifts. In both personal and structural terms there is evidence of former combatants working to diminish the political tensions that remain as a result of the long-term inter-communal hostility developed across decades of violence and conflict.

The Future of the 'Radical Centre' in Northern Ireland after the Good Friday Agreement

The 1998 Good Friday Agreement has provided a new political dispensation in Northern Ireland. Through the management of the competing aims of unionism and nationalism, the Agreement hopes to promote cross-community consensus and forge a new, moderate centre. However, the segmental autonomy evident under the consociationalism of the Agreement poses questions of the existing political centre in Northern Ireland. Traditionally, the centre, as represented by the Alliance Party, has rejected unionism and nationalism, believing either to be ideologies to be overcome, rather than accommodated. Under the post-Agreement political arrangements, Alliance has already been obliged to bolster pro-Agreement unionism, through the temporary tactical redesignation of three of its Assembly members as Unionist and through tacit support for selected unionist election candidates. Using the first ever membership survey of the existing centre party in Northern Ireland, this article examines whether its vision of a radical third tradition is sustainable in a polity in which unionist and nationalist politics are legitimised.

From Abstentionism to Enthusiasm: Sinn Féin, Nationalist Electors and Support for Devolved Power-sharing in Northern Ireland

The Northern Ireland peace process saw remarkable change in the policies of Sinn Féin. Having pledged to end Northern Ireland as a political entity, Sinn Féin accepted the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and has since been a strong supporter of the political institutions created under that deal. The partys backing for political institutions has amounted to the zeal of converts, the one-time ‘unequivocal support’ for the IRAs ‘armed struggle’ and repudiation of ‘partitionist institutions’ long displaced by participatory politics. This article shows how, in agreeing to work within political institutions, Sinn Féin was following the desires of the nationalist electorate, assisting the party in capturing majority support within that community. Drawing upon electoral survey data from 1998 and beyond, the article illustrates how, controlling for other demographic and socio-economic variables, it is Sinn Féin supporters who are now the most enthusiastic backers, if only marginally more than those of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, of the devolved power-sharing government in Northern Ireland.

Shared Identity and the End of Conflict? How Far Has a Common Sense of ‘Northern Irishness’ Replaced British or Irish Allegiances since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement?

Abstract Despite political progress in Northern Ireland, the polity may arguably only fully stabilise when its population regards themselves as ‘Northern Irish’ rather than merely as subsets of British and Irish parent nations. Power-sharing and relative peace since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement may have offered the possibility of the development of a common Northern Irish identity, to allow consolidation of a political entity challenged by sections of the nationalist minority since its formation in 1921. Alternatively, the consociational nature of the Agreement may have legitimised ‘separate but equal’ identity politics constructed on the British versus Irish faultline. This articles tests whether there has been a significant growth of cross-community Northern Irishness since the Agreement, capable of eroding inter-communal rivalry.

From Sunningdale to the good Friday agreement: Creating devolved government in northern Ireland

The 1998 Good Friday Agreement has been described as ‘Sunningdale for slow learners’, in that it uses many of the ideas originating in that 1973 agreement. This article examines what historical lessons have been learned from Sunningdale and applied to the Good Friday Agreement. The piece examines three items: the similarities and dissimilarities of the two agreements; the evolution of attitudes within the Labour party, in government and opposition, to the prospect of a return to devolved government for Northern Ireland; and the different political contexts within which the agreements were constructed. The article argues that the most crucial difference between the Sunningdale and Good Friday agreements is the inclusivity of the latter, while acknowledging that other important variations exist.

A Campaign Without End? Dissident Republican Violence in Northern Ireland

The greatest threat to stability in Northern Ireland comes from dissident republicans opposed to the peace process. But are these rejectionists a dying gasp or another phase of a centuries-old struggle against British rule in Ireland? Jon Tonge investigates.