Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention
Encyclopedia
The Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention (NICC) was an elected body set up in 1975 by the UK
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 Labour
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...

 government of Harold Wilson
Harold Wilson
James Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, KG, OBE, FRS, FSS, PC was a British Labour Member of Parliament, Leader of the Labour Party. He was twice Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the 1960s and 1970s, winning four general elections, including a minority government after the...

 as an attempt to deal with constitutional issues surrounding the status of Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...

.

Formation of the Constitutional Convention

The idea for a constitutional convention was first mooted by the Northern Ireland Office
Northern Ireland Office
The Northern Ireland Office is a United Kingdom government department responsible for Northern Ireland affairs. The NIO is led by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and is based in Northern Ireland at Stormont House.-Role:...

 in its white paper
White paper
A white paper is an authoritative report or guide that helps solve a problem. White papers are used to educate readers and help people make decisions, and are often requested and used in politics, policy, business, and technical fields. In commercial use, the term has also come to refer to...

 The Northern Ireland Constitution, published on 4 July 1974. The paper laid out plans for elections to a body which would seek agreement on a political settlement for Northern Ireland. The proposals became law with the enactment of the Northern Ireland Act 1974
Northern Ireland Act 1974
The Northern Ireland Act 1974 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that made provision for the government of Northern Ireland following the collapse of the Sunningdale Agreement...

 later that month. With Lord Chief Justice
Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland
The Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland is the head of the judiciary in Northern Ireland, presiding over the Courts of Northern Ireland. The present Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland is Sir Declan Morgan...

 Robert Lowry
Robert Lowry, Baron Lowry
Sir Robert Lynd Erskine Lowry, Baron Lowry PC , often known as Robbie Lowry, was a Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland and a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary...

 appointed to chair the new body, elections were announced for 1 May 1975.

The elections were held for the 78-member body using the Single Transferable Vote
Single transferable vote
The single transferable vote is a voting system designed to achieve proportional representation through preferential voting. Under STV, an elector's vote is initially allocated to his or her most preferred candidate, and then, after candidates have been either elected or eliminated, any surplus or...

 system of proportional representation
Proportional representation
Proportional representation is a concept in voting systems used to elect an assembly or council. PR means that the number of seats won by a party or group of candidates is proportionate to the number of votes received. For example, under a PR voting system if 30% of voters support a particular...

 in each of Northern Ireland's twelve Westminster
Parliament of the United Kingdom
The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body in the United Kingdom, British Crown dependencies and British overseas territories, located in London...

 constituencies. Initially the body was intended to be purely consultative, although it was hoped that executive
Executive (government)
Executive branch of Government is the part of government that has sole authority and responsibility for the daily administration of the state bureaucracy. The division of power into separate branches of government is central to the idea of the separation of powers.In many countries, the term...

 and legislative
Legislature
A legislature is a kind of deliberative assembly with the power to pass, amend, and repeal laws. The law created by a legislature is called legislation or statutory law. In addition to enacting laws, legislatures usually have exclusive authority to raise or lower taxes and adopt the budget and...

 functions could be devolved
Devolution
Devolution is the statutory granting of powers from the central government of a sovereign state to government at a subnational level, such as a regional, local, or state level. Devolution can be mainly financial, e.g. giving areas a budget which was formerly administered by central government...

 to the NICC once a cross-community agreement had been reached.

Results

Unionists
Unionism in Ireland
Unionism in Ireland is an ideology that favours the continuation of some form of political union between the islands of Ireland and Great Britain...

 opposed to the NICC once again banded together under the umbrella of the United Ulster Unionist Council
United Ulster Unionist Council
The United Ulster Unionist Council was a body that sought to bring together the Unionists opposed to the Sunningdale Agreement in Northern Ireland.-Formation:The UUUC was established in January 1974...

 (UUUC) and this coalition proved the most successful, taking 46 seats.
(UUUC)> > (UUUC)> (UUUC)> > > > > > > >
Party Leader Votes % Seats +/-
Harry West
Harry West
Henry William West was a politician in Northern Ireland who served as leader of the Ulster Unionist Party from 1974 until 1979.West was born in County Fermanagh and educated at Portora Royal School in Enniskillen...

167,214 25.4 19 +10
Gerry Fitt
Gerry Fitt
Gerard Fitt, Baron Fitt was a politician in Northern Ireland. He was a founder and the first leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party , a social democratic and Irish nationalist party.-Early years:...

156,049 23.7 17 −2
Ian Paisley
Ian Paisley
Ian Richard Kyle Paisley, Baron Bannside, PC is a politician and church minister in Northern Ireland. As the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party , he and Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness were elected First Minister and deputy First Minister respectively on 8 May 2007.In addition to co-founding...

97,073 14.8 12 +4
William Craig 83,507 12.7 14 +7
Oliver Napier
Oliver Napier
Sir Oliver Napier was the first leader of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland. In 1974 he served as the first and only Legal Minister and head of the Office of Legal Reform in the Northern Ireland power-sharing executive set up by the Sunningdale Agreement.-Early life:Napier was educated at St...

64,657 9.8 8 0
Brian Faulkner
Brian Faulkner
Arthur Brian Deane Faulkner, Baron Faulkner of Downpatrick, PC was the sixth and last Prime Minister of Northern Ireland from March 1971 until his resignation in March 1972...

50,891 7.7 5 −19
Tomás Mac Giolla 14,515 2.2 0 0
David Bleakley
David Bleakley
The Right Hon. David Bleakley, OBE is a politician in Northern Ireland.Born in the Strandtown district of Belfast, Bleakley worked as an electrician in the Harland and Wolff dockyards while becoming increasingly active in his trade union. He studied economics at Ruskin College in Oxford, where he...

9,102 1.4 1
David Bleakley
The Right Hon. David Bleakley, OBE is a politician in Northern Ireland.Born in the Strandtown district of Belfast, Bleakley worked as an electrician in the Harland and Wolff dockyards while becoming increasingly active in his trade union. He studied economics at Ruskin College in Oxford, where he...

0
Independent Loyalist (UUUC)
Frank Millar
Frank Millar was a Northern Irish unionist politician.Millar worked in the shipyards, where he became a shop steward, before becoming a founder member of Ulster Protestant Action in 1956....

N/A 5,687 0.9 1
Frank Millar
Frank Millar was a Northern Irish unionist politician.Millar worked in the shipyards, where he became a shop steward, before becoming a founder member of Ulster Protestant Action in 1956....

+1
N/A 4,453 0.6 1
Hugh Smyth
Cllr Hugh Smyth is a former leader of the Progressive Unionist Party. He is a long-serving member of Belfast City Council and former Lord Mayor of Belfast. He is also the longest-serving member of the council, having represented the Upper Shankill areas since 1973...

−2
Ulster Unionist Party (non-UUUC)
Roy Bradford
Roy Hamilton Bradford was a Unionist politician in Northern Ireland and a government minister in both the Parliament of Northern Ireland and the Northern Ireland Assembly, 1973....

Harry West
Harry West
Henry William West was a politician in Northern Ireland who served as leader of the Ulster Unionist Party from 1974 until 1979.West was born in County Fermanagh and educated at Portora Royal School in Enniskillen...

2,583 0.4 0 N/A
N/A 2,052 0.3 0 0
Michael O'Riordan
Michael O'Riordan
Michael O'Riordan was the founder of the Communist Party of Ireland and also fought with the Connolly Column in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War.-Early life:...

378 0.1 0 0


Source: Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention Elections 1975

Votes summary

Seats summary

Leading Members

A number of leading Northern Ireland politicians were elected to the NICC, increasing hope that the body might achieve some of its aims. Also elected were a number of younger figures who would go on to become leading figures in the future of Northern Ireland politics. These included:

Progress of the NICC

The elections left the body fundamentally weakened from its inception as an overall majority had been obtained by those Unionists who opposed power sharing as a concept. As a result the Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention Report published on 20 November 1975 recommended only a return to majority rule as had previously existed under the old Parliament of Northern Ireland
Parliament of Northern Ireland
The Parliament of Northern Ireland was the home rule legislature of Northern Ireland, created under the Government of Ireland Act 1920, which sat from 7 June 1921 to 30 March 1972, when it was suspended...

 government. As such a solution was completely unacceptable to the nationalist parties, the NICC was placed on hiatus.

Hoping to gain something from the exercise, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland
Secretary of State for Northern Ireland
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, informally the Northern Ireland Secretary, is the principal secretary of state in the government of the United Kingdom with responsibilities for Northern Ireland. The Secretary of State is a Minister of the Crown who is accountable to the Parliament of...

 Merlyn Rees announced that the NICC would be reconvened on 3 February 1976. However, a series of meetings held between the UUUC and the SDLP failed to reach any agreement about SDLP participation in government, and so the reconvened NICC once again failed to achieve a solution with cross-community support. As a result, Rees announced the dissolution of the body on 4 March 1976 and Northern Ireland remained under direct rule
Direct Rule
Direct rule was the term given, during the late 20th and early 21st centuries, to the administration of Northern Ireland directly from Westminster, seat of United Kingdom government...

.

Significance of the NICC

On the face of it, the NICC was a total failure as it did not achieve its aims of agreement between the two sides or of introducing 'rolling devolution' (gradual introduction of devolution as and when the parties involved saw fit to accept it). Nevertheless, coming as it did not long after the Conservative
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...

-sponsored Sunningdale Agreement
Sunningdale Agreement
The Sunningdale Agreement was an attempt to establish a power-sharing Northern Ireland Executive and a cross-border Council of Ireland. The Agreement was signed at the Civil Service College in Sunningdale Park located in Sunningdale, Berkshire, on 9 December 1973.Unionist opposition, violence and...

, the NICC indicated that no British government would be prepared to re-introduce majority rule in Northern Ireland. During the debates William Craig accepted the possibility of power-sharing with the SDLP, a move that split the UUUC and precipitated the eventual collapse of Vanguard.

The idea of electing a consultative body to thrash out a deal for devolution was also retained and in 1996 it was revived when the Northern Ireland Forum
Northern Ireland Forum
The Northern Ireland Forum was a body set up in 1996 as part of a process of negotiations that eventually led to the Belfast Agreement in 1998....

 was elected on largely the same lines and with the same overall purpose. Given that the Forum led to the Belfast Agreement
Belfast Agreement
The Good Friday Agreement or Belfast Agreement , sometimes called the Stormont Agreement, was a major political development in the Northern Ireland peace process...

 and the Northern Ireland Assembly
Northern Ireland Assembly
The Northern Ireland Assembly is the devolved legislature of Northern Ireland. It has power to legislate in a wide range of areas that are not explicitly reserved to the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and to appoint the Northern Ireland Executive...

, the importance of the NICC as a model for this second body is clear.

External links

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