Unionism in Ireland
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Unionism in Ireland is a political tradition that professes loyalty to the crown of the United Kingdom and to the union it represents with England, Scotland and Wales. The overwhelming sentiment of Ireland's Protestant minority, unionism mobilised in the decades following Catholic Emancipation in 1829 to oppose restoration of a separate Irish parliament. Since Partition in 1921, as Ulster unionism its goal has been to retain Northern Ireland as a devolved region within the United Kingdom and to resist the prospect of an all-Ireland republic. Within the framework of the 1998 Belfast Agreement, which concluded three decades of political violence, unionists have shared office with Irish nationalists in a reformed Northern Ireland Assembly. As of February 2024, they no longer do so as the larger faction: they serve in an executive with an Irish republican First Minister.
Hazards of separation from Great Britain. Unionist postcard (1912)
Detail of the Battle of Ballynahinch 1798 by Thomas Robinson. Government Yeomanry prepare to hang United Irish insurgent Hugh McCulloch, a grocer.
1899 penny print of Henry Cooke's 1841 speech in "reply to Daniel O'Connell"
God Save the Queen, Erin Go Bragh, Ulster Unionist Convention, Belfast, 1892
Sinn Féin
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Sinn Féin is an Irish republican and democratic socialist political party in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Arthur Griffith is credited as the main founder of the party
The campaign car of Joseph McGuinness, who won the 1917 South Longford by-election whilst imprisoned. He was one of the first Sinn Féin MPs to be elected.
Ruairí Ó Brádaigh (pictured in 2004) was the president of Provisional Sinn Féin from 1970 until 1983.
Bobby Sands mural in Belfast. Sands, a member of the Provisional IRA, stood on an Anti H-Block ticket.