Political Parties
Political parties in Northern Ireland can be divided into three distinct categories:
- unionist parties, such as the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), the Ulster Unionist Party, and other smaller parties such as the Progressive Unionist Party and Traditional Unionist Voice
- republican/nationalist parties like Sinn Féin and the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP)
- cross-community parties such as the Alliance Party and the Green Party.
There are some parties who could fit comfortably in more than one of these groups, or about whom it could be argued which group they would fall into, such as the Conservative Party who, while pro-union, stated an intention before the 2007 election to designate as "other" should they gain any seats in the Assembly (which they did not).
Read more about this topic: Demography And Politics Of Northern Ireland
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“Politics is, as it were, the gizzard of society, full of grit and gravel, and the two political parties are its two opposite halves,—sometimes split into quarters, it may be, which grind on each other.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955)
“Remorse—is Memory—awake—
Her Parties all astir—”
—Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)