Democratic Unionist Party

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Democratic Unionist Party
Party leader	Arlene Foster
Deputy Chairman	Nigel Dodds
founding	September 30, 1971
Headquarters	91 Dundela Avenue Belfast Northern Ireland
Alignment	National Conservatism Social Conservatism Unionism EU Skepticism
Colours)	Red  white blue
British House of Commons	8/650
British House of Lords	3/794
Northern Ireland Assembly	28/90
Local government in Northern Ireland	125/462
Website	www.mydup.com

Democratic Unionist Party ( DUP , Irish Páirtí Aontachtach Daonlathach ) is the largest Protestant and unionist party in Northern Ireland . Its supporters represent anti-Catholicism and oppose unification of Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland . The DUP calls for the complete disarmament of the IRA . At the same time she calls on the Irish Republican party Sinn Féin to distance itself from armed violence and thus from the IRA. The party was founded in 1971 by Pastor Ian Paisley (1926–2014); Arlene Foster has been chairman since December 17, 2015 .

The DUP advocates the legal status quo , i.e. a province of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom . The background to this is the Protestant majority in Northern Ireland and Great Britain, while the majority in the Republic of Ireland is Catholic. Ian Paisley himself had founded a small evangelical free church, the Free Presbyterian Church , as a split from the dominant Presbyterian Church .

aims

The DUP rigorously rejects homosexuality , abortion and gambling as sin . Even creationists are included in the DUP.

The party takes EU-skeptical positions and supported the plan of a referendum on whether the United Kingdom should remain in the European Union . When the date for the referendum became concrete on June 23, 2016, she recommended that her voters vote in favor of leaving the EU. The DUP advocates a significant increase in defense spending to 2 percent of gross domestic product , including the fact that 20 percent of the British Army would be recruited in Northern Ireland, even though this is only 3 percent of the population of the United Kingdom.

history

The party was formed in 1971 as a split from the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) after Desmond Boal , then MP for the constituency of Shankill (Belfast), was expelled from the UUP. She succeeded the Protestant Unionist Party, also founded by Ian Paisley . While she took a clearly right-wing position on constitutional and security matters, she represented the interests of her clientele, which came mainly from the working class and the petty bourgeoisie, on social issues. In the 1970s, the party rejected any form of power-sharing with the Catholic minority.

In the regional elections in November 2003, the DUP succeeded for the first time in surpassing the UUP in favor of the voters. Observers saw this as a radicalization of the majority population in Northern Ireland; others thought they could see a personal vote of confidence in paisley. In the general election on May 6, 2010 , the party received 25% of the vote and 8 (out of 18) seats in Northern Ireland. It provided almost half of the Northern Irish contingent in the House of Commons. From the election to the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2007 , the DUP went as expected as the strongest party and won 36 of the total 108 seats. In the subsequent election to the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2011 , the DUP received 38 seats.

In the general election on May 7, 2015 , the DUP made constituency agreements with the UUP in the run-up to the election, after which they refrained from nominating their own candidates in the constituencies of Fermanagh and South Tyrone and Newry and Armagh and their supporters to elect the respective UUP candidates called. In return, the UUP decided not to list its own candidates in Belfast East and Belfast North . The DUP was able to win back the constituency of Belfast East, in which the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland had been successful in 2010 . The UUP, however, won the constituency of Fermanagh and South Tyrone , so that overall the unionist camp was strengthened.

In addition, in the 2015 general election, the DUP called on voters in neighboring Scotland to select unionist candidates, i.e. H. not the Scottish National Party to vote for.

After the murder of the ex- Provisional IRA man Kevin McGuigan on the night of August 13, 2015 in Belfast, speculation arose that the Provisional IRA continued to exist as an institution and was responsible for the murder, which Sinn Féin denied. The DUP called for the Northern Ireland Assembly to be suspended , and when that did not take place, three DUP Ministers including First Minister Peter Robinson resigned on September 10, 2015. Finance Minister Arlene Foster remained the only DUP minister in the government, on the grounds that the important finance department and the office of First Minister should not be left to the republican parties (Sinn Féin and SDLP ). Foster temporarily assumed the office of First Minister from September 10, 2015 to October 20, 2015. On December 17, 2015, Arlene Foster was elected as the new party leader after Peter Robinson announced his retirement from politics for health reasons.

The DUP played a role in the run-up to the UK's exit from the EU, known as “Brexit” . The party funded an expensive pre-EU referendum advertising campaign in the UK newspaper Metro . Since the DUP does not have to disclose its donations under the laws of Northern Ireland, the source of the funds for it initially remained unclear until it became known in February 2017 that the party had been transferred half a million pounds by a businessman from Scotland for the campaign in the newspaper although the newspaper does not appear in Northern Ireland. The businessman refused to disclose the origin of the funds, but denied the influence of foreign financiers (Saudi Arabia, Russia), which had been speculated as possible donors.

After the 2017 general election , in which the DUP achieved its best result so far in terms of mandates it won, the party agreed with the conservatives to tolerate a minority government under Prime Minister Theresa May . In the 2019 general election, however, the DUP lost 2 seats and moved into the House of Commons with 8 MPs

Election results

The election results in the following table refer to Northern Ireland (also for the all-British elections). General elections were carried out consistently by majority voting , elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly from 1998 and elections to the European Parliament by preferential suffrage .

year	choice	Share of votes	Seats
1973	Northern Ireland Assembly 1973	10.8%	8/78
1974	General election Feb. 1974	8.2%	1/12
1974	General election October 1974	8.5%	1/12
1979	European elections 1979	29.8%	1/3
1979	General election 1979	10.2%	3/12
1982	Northern Ireland Assembly 1982	23.0%	21/78
1983	General election 1983	20.0%	3/17
1984	European elections in 1984	33.6%	1/3
1987	General election 1987	11.7%	3/17
1989	European elections 1989	29.9%	1/3
1992	General election 1992	13.1%	3/17
1994	European elections in 1994	29.2%	1/3
1997	General election 1997	13.6%	2/18
1998	Northern Ireland Assembly 1998	18.1%	20/108
1999	European elections 1999	28.4%	1/3
2001	General election 2001	22.5%	5/18
2003	Northern Ireland Assembly 2003	25.6%	30/108
2004	2004 European elections	32.0%	1/3
2005	General election 2005	33.7%	9/18
2007	Northern Ireland Assembly 2007	30.1%	36/108
2009	European elections 2009	18.2%	1/3
2010	General election 2010	25.0%	8/18
2011	Northern Ireland Assembly 2011	30.0%	38/108
2014	European elections 2014	20.9%	1/3
2015	General election 2015	25.7%	8/18
2016	Northern Ireland Assembly 2016	29.2%	38/108
2017	Northern Ireland Assembly 2017	28.1%	28/90
2017	General election 2017	36.0%	10/18
2019	European elections 2019	21.8%	1/3
2019	General election 2019	30.6%	8/18

Web links

Commons : Democratic Unionist Party  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Homepage of the DUP

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Reinhard R. Doerries: Ireland and Ulster. In: Frank Wende: Lexicon on the history of the parties in Europe . Kröner Verlag, Stuttgart 1981, ISBN 3-520-81001-8 , p. 263.
2. ↑ Northern Irish Unionists as a Power Factor in London. Here come troubles. In: Manager Magazin . June 9, 2017.
3. ^ Never mind the SNP. The real danger is if the DUP are in government. In: The Guardian . April 24, 2015.
4. ↑ NI parties outline EU referendum position. (No longer available online.) U TV, February 21, 2016, archived from the original on February 23, 2016 ; accessed on February 22, 2016 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
5. ↑ BBC debate: 'The voice from Northern Ireland was missing'. In: BBC News. April 16, 2015, accessed April 16, 2015 . 
6. ^ Geoffrey Bell: The Protestants of Ulster. 2nd Edition. Pluto Press, London 1978, ISBN 0-904383-08-3 , p. 45.
7. ↑ WD Flackes: Northern Ireland: a Political Directory . Ariel Books / BBC, London 1983, ISBN 0-563-20209-2 , p. 76.
8. ^ Election 2015: DUP and UUP agree pact in four constituencies. In: BBC News. March 18, 2015, accessed May 9, 2015 . 
9. ^ Nicholas Watt: Conservative party is losing our support over Scotland, warns DUP. In: The Guardian. April 26, 2015, accessed May 9, 2015 . 
10. ^ NI first minister Peter Robinson steps aside in Stormont crisis. In: BBC News. September 10, 2015, accessed September 10, 2015 . 
11. ^ Arlene Foster set to be first woman elected as leader of DUP. In: BBC News. December 17, 2015, accessed December 17, 2015 . 
12. ^ Ian Johnston: The strange tale of the DUP, Brexit, a mysterious £ 425,000 donation and a Saudi prince. In: The Independent . June 10, 2017.
13. ↑ Minority government in Great Britain. www.faz.net, June 26, 2017, accessed June 26, 2017 . 
14. ↑ General Election Results. December 13, 2019, accessed December 13, 2019 . 
15. ↑ Who Won What When and Where? ark.ac.uk (Nicholas Whyte), January 1, 2015, accessed March 8, 2015 . 
16. ↑ Martin Melaugh, Fionnuala McKenna: CAIN Web Service: Results of Elections Held in Northern Ireland Since 1968. cain.ulst.ac.uk, February 9, 2014, accessed on March 8, 2015 . 
17. ^ European election 2009. In: BBC News. June 14, 2004, accessed March 8, 2015 . 
18. ^ European election 2009. In: BBC News. June 8, 2009, accessed March 8, 2015 . 
19. ^ European election 2009. In: BBC News. May 27, 2014, accessed March 8, 2015 .