Editing Parliament of Northern Ireland (section)

==Brief history==
[[File:Ulster Welcomes Her King & Queen (10990906846).jpg|thumbnail|left|Robinson and Cleaver Department Store in Belfast, decorated for the State Opening of the first Northern Ireland parliament. 22 June 1921.]]
[[File:De Britse koning George V en koningin Mary tijdens de eerste opening van het Noord-Ierse, SFA022822086.jpg|thumb|George V and Queen Mary during the opening of the Parliament of Northern Ireland
 (1921)]]
The [[1921 Northern Ireland general election|1921 general election]] was explicitly fought on the issue of [[Partition of Ireland|partition]], being in effect a referendum on approval of the concept of a Northern Ireland administration. Thereafter, general election timing was up to the Prime Minister. In the 1921 election the Nationalist Party did not take their seats, employing a policy of [[Abstentionism]]. Just before the election the southern  nationalist (and future [[Father of the House (United Kingdom)]]) [[T. P. O'Connor]] made clear his feelings on nationalists taking their seats in the Parliament of Northern Ireland: "...the Nationalists are determined not to give even the fig leaf of respectability to the whole rotten arrangement by attending the [northern] Parliament."<ref>{{cite book |last=McCluskey |first=Fergal |date=2014 |title=The Irish Revolution, 1912-23 |url= |location=Dublin |publisher=Four Courts Press |page=102 |isbn=978-1-84682-300-8 |access-date=}}</ref> Elections almost always took place at a time when the issue of partition had been raised in a new crisis.{{Citation needed|date=May 2010}} This generally guaranteed the loyalty of [[Protestant]] voters to the [[Ulster Unionist Party|Unionist Party]]. Independent Unionist candidates and the [[Northern Ireland Labour Party]] were usually accused of being splitters or dupes of the [[Irish nationalists|Nationalists]].{{Citation needed|date=May 2010}}

The [[1925 Northern Ireland general election|1925 general election]] was called to tie in with the expected report of the [[Irish Boundary Commission|Boundary Commission]] required by the [[Anglo-Irish Treaty]] of 1922. The Boundary Commission was expected to recommend the transfer of many border areas to the [[Irish Free State]], and the Unionist election slogan was "Not an Inch!". They lost eight seats in Belfast and [[County Antrim]], where the issue of the border had far less resonance. [[History of Sinn Féin|Sinn Féin]] had fought in 1921, but by 1925 was suffering the effects of its split over the [[Anglo-Irish Treaty]]. [[Éamon de Valera]]'s Sinn Féin fought as [[Irish republicanism|Republicans]] but won only two seats. The border was never changed.

A minor row erupted in 1925 when the elections to the Senate took place. Eleven Unionists and one Labour Senator were elected, despite there being a block of three composed of two non-abstaining Nationalists and a dissident Unionist. The latter three had mailed their votes, but due to a public holiday and the practices of the postal service, they arrived an hour after the election. Requests for a recount were denied. (It is doubtful whether the three votes would have been sufficient to elect a Senator under the election system, since they would not have achieved a complete [[single transferable vote]] quota alone and the Unionist votes were likely to transfer so heavily to each other that the Nationalist candidate would not reach quota throughout the rounds of counting.){{Citation needed|date=May 2010}} From later in 1925 to 1927, the [[Nationalist Party (Northern Ireland)|Nationalist Party]] members took their seats for the first time.

For the [[1929 Northern Ireland general election|1929 general election]] the Unionists replaced the [[proportional representation]] system blamed for their bad performance in 1925.{{Citation needed|date=March 2010}} The new boundaries set the pattern for politics until Stormont was abolished; the Unionists never fell below 33 seats. In the 1930s, the phrase "[[A Protestant Parliament for a Protestant People]]" was a debated term.<ref>{{stormont|date=24 April 1934|volume=16|page=1095|accessdate=7 August 2012}}</ref>{{Dubious|date=May 2010}} The [[1938 Northern Ireland general election|1938 general election]] was called when the [[Prime Minister of the United Kingdom]] [[Neville Chamberlain]] was negotiating a settlement of outstanding disputes with Éamon de Valera, whose new [[Constitution of Ireland|constitution]] laid claim to Northern Ireland, and the [[1949 Northern Ireland general election|1949 election]] was called when the [[Irish government]] declared itself a [[Republic of Ireland|republic]].

During the [[Second World War]], the Stormont government called on Westminster to introduce [[conscription]] several times, as this was already the case in Great Britain. The [[British government]] consistently refused, remembering how a similar attempt in 1918 had backfired dramatically, as [[Irish nationalism|nationalist]] opposition made it unworkable. Much of the population of serving age were either in essential jobs or had already joined up voluntarily, making the potential yield of conscription low.

1965 saw a significant change, in that the Nationalists accepted office as the [[Official Opposition]]. This was intended as a reward for the attempts made by [[Terence O'Neill]] to end discrimination against [[Catholic]]s and normalise relations with the Republic. However, the Unionists split over O'Neill's tentative reforms at the [[1969 Northern Ireland general election|1969 general election]] and [[Ian Paisley]]'s [[Protestant Unionist Party]] began to win by-elections. The new nationalist party, the [[Social Democratic and Labour Party]], withdrew from Stormont in July 1971 over the refusal of an inquiry into [[Royal Ulster Constabulary]] actions in [[Derry]].

Stormont was abolished and [[Direct rule over Northern Ireland|Direct Rule]] from Westminster was introduced in March 1972, just six weeks after [[Bloody Sunday (1972)|Bloody Sunday]], when the Unionist government refused to hand over responsibility for law and order to [[Parliament of the United Kingdom|Westminster]]. In its 50-year history, only one piece of legislation was passed that was introduced by a Nationalist member, the Wild Birds Protection Act.{{which|reason= The Wildlife (Northern Ireland) Order 1985 refers to the "Wild Birds Protection Acts (Northern Ireland) 1931 to 1968" so there must have been more than one|date=September 2019}}<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/ashorthistory/archive/intro234.shtml |title=BBC iPlayer – TV – Factual – History |publisher=Bbc.co.uk |access-date=26 May 2013 }}{{dead link|date=March 2018 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref> In October 1971, as the [[Troubles]] worsened, [[Gerard Newe]] had been appointed as a junior minister at Stormont, in an attempt to improve community relations. Fifty years after it came into existence, Newe was the first Catholic to serve in a Northern Ireland government, but because he was neither an MP nor a Senator, his appointment could last only six months.

The influence of the [[Orange Institution|Orange Order]] in the governance of Northern Ireland was far-reaching. All of the six prime ministers of Northern Ireland were members of the Order, as were all but three cabinet ministers until 1969. Three of the ministers later left the Order, one because his daughter married a Catholic, one to become Minister of Community Relations in 1970, and the third was expelled for attending a Catholic religious ceremony. Of the 95 Stormont MPs who did not become cabinet ministers, 87 were Orangemen. Every unionist senator, with one exception, between 1921 and 1969 was an Orangeman. One of these senators, [[James Woods Gyle|James Gyle]], was suspended from the Order for seven years for visiting nationalist MP [[Joseph Devlin|Joe Devlin]] on his deathbed.

A fully digitised copy of the Commons' debates (187,000 printed pages of Parliamentary Debates) is available online.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://stormontpapers.ahds.ac.uk/index.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070102210053/http://stormontpapers.ahds.ac.uk/index.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=2 January 2007 |title=The Stormont Papers – Home |publisher=ahds.ac.uk |access-date=23 October 2018 }}</ref>