Northern Ireland Assembly, 1982

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The Northern Ireland Assembly of 1982-6 represented an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to restore devolution to the Province which had been suspended 10 years previously.

Contents 1 Origins 2 Electoral Controversy 3 Response of political parties 4 Results 5 Aftermath

[edit] Origins

The Assembly emerged as a result of initiatives by the then Secretaries of State for Northern Ireland, Humphrey Atkins and James Prior. The first step in this process was a white paper called The Government of Northern Ireland: A Working Paper for a Conference, published on 20 November 1979. This established a conference, attended the following year by the Democratic Unionist Party, the Alliance Party and the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP). (The UUP refused to become involved in protest at a decision to allow discussions on an Irish dimension, discussions which the DUP also boycotted.) Talks between the DUP, Alliance and SDLP took place between 7 January and 24 March 1980, but failed to reach agreement.

In July 1980, the British government published a discussion document, The Government of Northern Ireland: Proposals for Further Discussion [7950)] which suggested creating a devolved Assembly either with compulsory power sharing or Majority Rule. The power sharing option proved unacceptable to Unionists while Nationalists and the Alliance Party were reluctant to return to the Majority Rule model. Consequently on 27 November 1980 Humphrey Atkins, reported to the House of Commons that there little prospect for a devolved government in Northern Ireland due to a lack of consensus amongst the parties.

With 1981 dominated by the Hunger Strikes and the Prisons issue, constitutional initiatives took a back seat to the security situation. However on 5 April 1982, Atkin's successor James Prior published a white paper 'Northern Ireland: A Framework for Devolution' [[1]] which proposed what was referred to as partial or rolling devolution. Under the proposals a 78 member assembly would be elected by proportional representation using the Single Transferable vote as in 1973. The Assembly's role at first would only be to scrutinise Government Departments as the white paper stated its role would be "consultative and deliberative, including scrutiny of draft legislation and making reports and recommendations to the Secretary of State which he will lay before Parliament." An executive would be formed consisting of not more than 13 members.

However powers could be gradually devolved to the Assembly if 70 per cent of Assembly members agreed. These powers would be transferred back to the Secretary of State if that consent was later withdrawn. Furthermore some powers functions such as Law and Order would remain with the Secretary of State, even if full devolution was achieved. Cross border issues would remain the prerogative of the Westminster Parliament.

[edit] Electoral Controversy

The electoral system proved to be hugely controversial. While there was general acceptance that the elections should take part using the Single Transferable Vote system, the decision to use the same 12 constituency boundaries used in 1973 rather than the new 17 constituency boundaries which were later adopted in 1983 was heavily criticised. The problem was that the Boundary Commissions Final Recommendations, which recommended that all future Assembly elections should be held using 17 constituencies each electing 5 members, had not yet been approved by Parliament and therefore remained, technically, provisional recommendations. The consequence of this was that the elections were held using constituencies which varied greatly in size and electorate, ranging from Belfast West with an electorate of 57,726 to South Antrim with an electorate of 131,734. In the latter constituency this resulted in huge administrative problems with a record 27 candidates standing necessitating 23 counts over 36 hours with the count not completed until 2 days after the election. A further result of the disparity in electorates was that the number of members returned for each constituency varied widely, from 4 members in Belfast West to 10 members in South Antrim.

[edit] Response of political parties

On the Unionist side, the Assembly was welcomed, with some hailing it nostalgically as " a new Stormont. Consequently many Nationalists were suspicious of the new body. The Irish Independence Party which had moderate electoral success in the elections of the previous year immediately announced that they would boycott the elections and called on other nationalists to follow suit. However Sinn Féin was keen to test it's electoral support and both it and the SDLP announced that they would contest the elections but refuse to take any seats which they won. The smaller People's Democracy which had won two council seats the previous year did likewise. Great interest centred on the performance of Sinn Féin, fighting its first full election in many decades and on the inter-Unionist rivalry between the DUP and the UUP. The former had pulled ahead in the European election of 1979 and the Local Council Elections of 1981 but had suffered a setback in the 1982 by-election which followed the murder of Robert Bradford.

[edit] Results

The results were seen as a triumph for the new electoral strategy of Sinn Féin which gained 5 seats and narrowly missed winning seats in Belfast North and Fermanagh and South Tyrone. The SDLP were disappointed with their 14 seats and one of these was subsequently lost in a by-election to the UUP as Seamus Mallon was disqualified following a successful UUP election petition on the grounds that he was ineligible as he was a member of the Irish Senate at the time. On the Unionist side the UUP gained a clear lead over the DUP, while the UUUP failed to make an impact and, as a result, folded two years later. In the centre Alliance consolidated with 10 seats including unexpected wins in North and West Belfast. The Workers Party failed to make a breakthrough despite respectable vote shares in places like North and West Belfast.

Party		Leader	Seats	+/-	Number	% of vote	Rank
	Ulster Unionist	James Molyneaux	26	+7	188,277	29.7	1
	Democratic Unionist	Ian Paisley	21	+9	145,528	23.0	2
	Social Democratic & Labour	John Hume	14	-3	118,891	18.8	3
	Sinn Féin	Gerry Adams	5	+5	64,191	10.1	4
	Alliance (NI)	Oliver Napier	10	+2	58,851	9.3	5
	Workers Party	Seámus Lynch	0	0	17,216	2.7	6
	Ulster Popular Unionist	James Kilfedder	1	+1	14,916	2.3	7
	United Ulster Unionist	Ernest Baird	0	0	11,550	1.8	8
	Other Unionists	N/A	1	-6	6,207	1.0	9
	Vanguard Progressive Unionist	William Craig	0	-14	2,274	0.4	10
	Independent SDLP	N/A	0	0	1,180	0.2	11
	Ulster Loyalist Democratic Party	John McMichael	0	0	1,086	0.2	12
	Others		0	-1	2,953	0.5	N/A
Total			78	0	0	100.0

All parties with over 1,000 votes shown.

NB Changes in number of seats above are shown for Vanguard, although the majority of Vanguard members elected in 1975 subsequently joined the United Ulster Unionist Party.

Unionist Party of NI seats won in 1975 are included with 'Other Unionists' While Northern Ireland Labour Party seats are included with Others.

Others breaks down as follows : Independent 745 votes 0.1%, Ecology 707 votes 0.1%, Labour 560 votes 0.1% , People's Democracy 442 votes 0.1%, Communists 415 votes 0.1%, Liberal 65 votes 0.01%, Peace 19 votes 0.003%

[edit] Aftermath

The boycott by the Nationalist parties meant that the planned devolution never took place, while the UUP also intermittedly boycotted proceedings. Following the Anglo-Irish Agreement of November 1985, Unionists insisted on using the debating chamber to protest at the Agreement, resulting in an Alliance walk-out and subsequent boycott. As a result, the government abolished the Assembly in 1986 and it would be over a decade before a new Assembly was restored to Northern Ireland

Elections in Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland Assembly: 1998 | 2003 | 2007
Northern Ireland House of Commons: 1921 | 1925 | 1929 | 1933 | 1938 | 1945 | 1949 | 1953 | 1958 | 1962 | 1965 | 1969
Other elections: 1973 Assembly | 1975 Constitutional Convention | 1982 Assembly | 1996 Forum