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This page is about the pre-1972 Parliament of Northern Ireland. For the modern successor, see Northern Ireland Assembly.

Parliament of Northern Ireland Pairlimint Thuaisceart na hÉireann
Type
Type	Bicameral
Houses	Senate, House of Commons
History
Established	1920
Disbanded	1973
Preceded by	Parliament of Ireland/ Parliament of the United Kingdom
Succeeded by	Northern Ireland Assembly (1973)
Seats	78 26 Senators 52 Members of Parliament (MPs)
Elections
Senate voting system	STV
House of Commons voting system	STV/FPTP
Last House of Commons election	Northern Ireland general election, 1969
Meeting place
The Senate, now used as a committee room by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Footnotes
See also: Parliament of Southern Ireland

The Parliament of Northern Ireland (Irish: Pairlimint Thuaisceart na hÉireann) was a home rule legislature set up by the British Government during the Irish War of Independence under the Fourth Home Rule Bill. It was designed to legislate for Northern Ireland, a political entity which was created by the British Government to solve the issue of rising Irish nationalism and the issue of partitionism, whilst retaining Ireland as part of the United Kingdom.

The Parliament of Northern Ireland was bicameral, consisting of a House of Commons with 52 seats, and an indirectly-elected Senate with 26 seats.. The Sovereign was represented by the Governor, who granted Royal Assent to Acts of Parliament in Northern Ireland, but executive power rested with the Prime Minister, the leader of the largest party in the House of Commons. From 1932 the Parliament was located in purpose built Parliament Buildings, designed by Arnold Thornley, at Stormont, on the eastern outskirts of the city. The Parliament sat from 22 June 1921 to 30 March 1972, when it was suspended. It was subsequently abolished under the Northern Ireland Constitution Act 1973.

Background

Under the Act of Union 1800 the separate Kingdoms of Ireland and Great Britain were merged on 1 January 1801, to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Throughout the 19th century Irish opposition to the Union was strong, occasionally erupting in violent insurrection with the South being far more nationalist than the North.

In the 1870s the Home Rule League under Isaac Butt sought to achieve a modest form of self-government, known as Home Rule. This was considered far more acceptable and as Ireland would still remain part of the United Kingdom but would have limited self-government. The cause was then pursued by Charles Stewart Parnell and two attempts were made by Liberal ministries under British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone to enact home rule bills, accompanied by a revival of Ulster's Orange Order to resist any form of Home Rule. The First Home Rule Bill was defeated in the Commons by 30 votes; while the second Second Home Rule Bill was passed, but then defeated in the Lords.

Ulster Unionist Party leader Walter Long who proposed the creation of two Irish home rule entities.

On 11 April 1912, the Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith, introduced the Third Home Rule Bill which allowed for more autonomy than its two predecessors has.. It was defeated twice, but after its defeat for the third time in the Lords the Government used the provisions of the Parliament Act 1911 to override the Lords and send it for Royal Assent, which was recieved and placed on the statute books on 18 September 1914. However, with the outbreak of World War One it was decided that the bills implementation should be suspended, leading to the passing of the Suspensory Act 1914, which was presented for Royal Assent simultaneously with both the Home Rule Bill and the Welsh Church Act 1914, and ensured that Home Rule would be postponed for the duration of the conflict and would not come into operation until the end of the war.. Initially the suspension was not considered an issue by Nationalists, who believed independent self-government had finally been granted and that the war was to be a short one.

Two attempts were made by the H. H. Asquith to implement the Third Home Rule Act, during the war, first in May 1916 which failed on reaching agreement with Unionist Ulster, then again in 1917 with the calling of the Irish Convention chaired by Horace Plunkett. It consisted of Nationalist and Unionist respresentatives who, by April 1918, only succeeded in agreeing a report with an 'understanding' on recommendations for the establishment of self-government. Starting in September 1919, with the Government, now led by David Lloyd George, committed under all circumstances to implementing Home Rule, the British cabinet's Committee for Ireland, under the chairmanship of former Ulster Unionist Party leader Walter Long, pushed for a radical new idea. Long proposed the creation of two Irish home rule entities, Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland, each with unicameral parliaments. An amendment to the bill in the House of Lords submitted by Geoffrey Browne, 3rd Baron Oranmore and Browne added a Senate for Southern Ireland, intended to bolster representation of the southern Unionist and Protestant minorities. The government opposed this on the grounds that it would weaken the function of the inter-parliament Council of Ireland, but it was passed, as was an amendment adding a Senate of Northern Ireland.

History

The 1921 general election was explicitly fought on the issue of 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. Elections almost always took place at a time when the issue of partition had been raised in a new crisis. This generally guaranteed the loyalty of Protestant voters to the Unionist Party. Independent Unionist candidates and the Northern Ireland Labour Party were usually accused of being splitters or dupes of the Nationalists.

The 1925 general election was called in order to tie in with the expected report of the 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. 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 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.) From later in 1925 to 1927, the Nationalist Party members took their seats for the first time.

For the 1929 general election the Unionists replaced the proportional representation system blamed for their bad performance in 1925. 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. The 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 laid claim to Northern Ireland, and the 1949 election was called when the Irish government declared itself a 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 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 Roman Catholics and normalise relations with the Republic. However, the Unionists split over O'Neill's tentative reforms at the 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 just six weeks after Bloody Sunday, when the Unionist government refused to hand over responsibility for law and order to Westminster. In its 50-year history, only one piece of legislation was passed that originated from the Nationalists (concerning wildlife). 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 due to the fact that he was neither an MP nor a Senator, his appointment could last only six months.

Northern Ireland, Sweden and Canada are alone in the democratic world in having spent more than half the 20th century under one-party rule. The influence of the 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 Gyle, was suspended from the Order for seven years for visiting nationalist MP Joe Devlin on his deathbed.

A fully digitised copy of the parliament's debates (187,000 printed pages of Parliamentary Debates) is available online.

House of Commons

Main article: House of Commons of Northern Ireland

The House of Commons had 52 members, of which 48 were for territorial seats and four were for graduates of Queen's University, Belfast (until 1969, when the four university seats were replaced by an additional 4 territorial seats). The Government of Ireland Act prescribed that elections to the House of Commons should be by single transferable vote (STV), though the Parliament was given power to alter the electoral system from three years after its first meeting. The STV system was the subject of criticism from grassroots Unionists but because the three-year period ended during the Labour government of 1924, the Stormont government decided not to provoke the known egalitarian sympathies of many Labour backbenchers and held the second election on the same basis. The loss of eight Unionist seats in that election caused great acrimony and in 1929 the system was changed to first-past-the-post for all territorial constituencies, though STV was retained for the university seats.

The boundary changes were not made by an impartial boundary commission but by the Unionist government, for which it was accused of gerrymandering. The charges that the Stormont seats (as opposed to local council wards) were gerrymandered against Nationalists is disputed by historians (since the number of Nationalists elected under the two systems barely changed), though it is agreed that losses under the change to single-member constituency boundaries were suffered by independent unionists, the Liberals and the Northern Ireland Labour Party. Population movements were so small that these boundaries were used almost everywhere until the Parliament was dissolved in 1972. In 1968 the government abolished the Queen's University constituency (long after university constituencies had been abolished at Westminster) and created four new constituencies in the outskirts of Belfast where populations had grown. This change helped the Unionists, as they held only two of the University seats but won all four of the newly-created seats. There had, however, long been calls from outside Unionism to abolish the graduate franchise (and other anomalies) and to have "one person one vote".

Senate

Main article: Senate of Northern Ireland

The Senate was a last-minute addition to the Parliament, after the original plans for a single Senate covering both the Stormont and Dublin Parliaments were overtaken by events.

Twenty-four senators were elected by the House of Commons using the single transferable vote. The elections were carried out after each general election, with 12 members elected for two parliaments each time. The other two seats were held ex officio by the Lord Mayor of Belfast and the Mayor of Londonderry. The Senate generally had the same party balance as the House of Commons, though abstaining parties and very small parties were not represented. Because of this, and its dependence on the House of Commons for election, it had virtually no political impact.

Location

Initially the Parliament met in Belfast's City Hall but moved immediately to the Presbyterian Church's Assembly's College (later Union Theological College), where it remained during the period 1921-32. The Commons met in the College's Gamble Library and the Senate in the Chapel. In 1932, Parliament moved to the new purpose-built Parliament Buildings, designed by Arnold Thornley, at Stormont, on the eastern outskirts of the city. The city boundaries were extended slightly to include Stormont within the capital city. "Stormont" came to be a nickname referring both to the Parliament itself and to the Northern Ireland government.

File:DSCF1500.JPG

Stormont

The British monarch was meant to have been represented in both Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. However the replacement of Southern Ireland by the Irish Free State led to the abolition of the post of Lord Lieutenant. Instead, a new office - Governor of Northern Ireland - was created on 12 December 1922.

Crown-in-Parliament

Main article: Crown-in-Parliament

Buckingham Palace, official residence of the British Monarch, the third tier of the Parliament of Northern Ireland.

The King was the same individual who held the position of King of the United Kingdom. Until 1927 he reigned in the Irish Free State as "King in Ireland". However from 1927 onwards he technically reigned in Free State on a separate throne as "King of Ireland". The Oireachtas was dissolved by the King acting on the 'advice' of the Executive Council. Members of either house had to take an oath of fidelity to the King known as the "Oath of Allegiance" before taking their seats. The King was the third compenent and constitute part of the Oireachtas in the same manner as in the Parliament of the United Kingdom

Tim Healy, The first Governor-General of the Irish Free State.

The King was represented in Northern Ireland by the Governor-General of the Irish Free State who was the viceregal representative of the Monarch and carried out the duties and roles offically asigned to the monarch.

The 'Governor-General's Address' or 'Governor-General's Speech' was a formal address delivered by the Governor-General to Dáil Éireann, modelled on the speech from the throne given in other Dominions of the British Commonwealth. The address was a brief, businesslike event, lacking the pomp and ceremony of the State Opening of Parliament reflecting the general lack of enthusiasm for the Monarchy in the Irish Free State. It was written by the Executive Council and outlined the bills it intended to introduce. Technically the address was only to the Dáil, not to a joint session of both Houses of the Oireachtas. However, members of Seanad Éireann were invited into the Dáil chamber to attend the address, and subsequently discussed it after returning to their own chamber. Only the first two sessions of the Free State Oireachtas, in 1922 and 1923, had such an address.

The Governor-General was also the official who granted Royal Assent to Bills. A Bill, having duly passed or having been deemed to pass, in the Dáil and the Seanad, would be presented to the Governor-General by the President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State. Unlike in the United Kingdom, no parliamentary ceremony was invoked to confirm that the Royal Assent had been given. Its details would instead be published in Iris Oifigiúil.

The process of Royal Assent was abolished by the Constitution (Amendment No. 27) Act, 1936. The Act was the last to receive Royal Assent. The new Act instead required that the Ceann Comhairle sign bills into law. Under the new 1937 constitution Bunreacht na hÉireann, which came into force almost exactly one year later, the role of signing bills into law was given to the President of Ireland. This in particular is one of the reasons why their is some confusion in who was the Irish head of state from 1936 to 1949.

Legislation

Stormont was given power to legislate over almost all aspects of Northern Ireland life, with only a few matters excluded from its remit: succession to the Crown, making of peace or war, armed forces, honours, naturalisation, some central taxes and postal services were the most important (a full list is in section 4 of the Government of Ireland Act 1920). The Parliament did not try to infringe the terms of the Government of Ireland Act; on only one occasion did the United Kingdom government advise the King to withhold Royal Assent. This was the Local Government Act (Northern Ireland) which abolished proportional representation in local government elections; the issue was referred to London and Royal Assent was eventually given. The output of legislation was high for a devolved Parliament, though some of the Acts were adaptations of recently-passed acts by the United Kingdom parliament. Stormont was an innovator in much of its legislation. It was nominally prohibited by section 16 of the Schedule to the Irish Free State (Agreement) Act 1922 from making any law which directly or indirectly discriminated against a religion, although this provision had little effect.

General elections

• Northern Ireland general election, 1921
• Northern Ireland general election, 1925
• Northern Ireland general election, 1929
• Northern Ireland general election, 1933
• Northern Ireland general election, 1938
• Northern Ireland general election, 1945
• Northern Ireland general election, 1949
• Northern Ireland general election, 1953
• Northern Ireland general election, 1958
• Northern Ireland general election, 1962
• Northern Ireland general election, 1965
• Northern Ireland general election, 1969