The Ulster Unionist Party

Thomas Hennessey is Professor of Modern British and Irish History at Canterbury Christ Church University. His publications include The Democratic Unionist Party (with Jonathan Tonge, Maire Braniff, James W. McAuley, and Sophie Whiting, 2014, OUP), Britain's Korean War (Manchester University Press, 2013), and The Evolution of the Troubles 1970-72 (Irish Academic Press).


Máire Braniff is Director of INCORE and a Senior Lecturer at the University of Ulster. Her publications include The Democratic Unionist Party (with Jonathan Tonge, Thomas Hennessey, James W. McAuley, and Sophie Whiting, 2014, OUP), Integrating the Balkans (IB Tauris, 2008), and Conflict and Commemoration (with J. McDowell, Palgrave, 2014).


James W McAuley is Professor of Political Sociology and Irish Studies at the University of Huddersfield. His publications include The Democratic Unionist Party (with Jonathan Tonge, Thomas Hennessey, Maire Braniff, and Sophie Whiting, 2014, OUP), Very British Rebels (2015, Bloomsbury), Britishness, Identity, and Citizenship (edited with Catherine McGlynn and Andy Mycock, Peter Laing, 2014), and Loyal to the Core? Contemporary Orangeism and Politics in Northern Ireland (with Jonathan Tonge and Andy Mycock, Irish Academic Press, 2011).

Jonathan Tonge is Professor of Politics at the University of Liverpool. His publications include The Democratic Unionist Party (with Thomas Hennessey, Maire Braniff, James W. McAuley, and Sophie Whiting, 2014, OUP), Britain Votes 2017 (edited with Cristina Leston-Bandeira and Stuart Wilks-Heeg, OUP, 2017), Comparative Peace Processes (Polity, 2014), and Loyal to the Core? Contemporary Orangeism and Politics in Northern Ireland (with James W. McAuley and Andy Mycock, Irish Academic Press, 2011).


Sophie A Whiting is a Lecturer in Politics at the University of Bath. Her publications include The Democratic Unionist Party (with Thomas Hennessey, Maire Braniff, James W. McAuley, and Jonathan Tonge 2014, OUP), and Spoiling the Peace: Dissident Republicanism in Northern Ireland (Manchester University Press, 2014).

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.

This volume provides the first-ever membership study of the Ulster Unionist Party.