The Volunteer Political Party (VPP) was a loyalist political party launched in Northern Ireland on 22 June 1974 by members of the then recently legalised Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). The Chairman was Ken Gibson from East Belfast, an ex-internee and UVF chief of staff at the time. The success of the Ulster Workers Council Strike had shown some UVF leaders the political power they held and they sought to develop this potential further. The UVF had been banned by the unionist government in 1966, but was legalised at the same time as Sinn Féin by Labour Secretary of State Merlyn Rees in April 1974 in order to encourage a political path for unionist and republican paramilitary groups.
It launched its manifesto "The Volunteer Political Party - a progressive and forward thinking unionist party" at a press conference on 27 September. Influenced by the thinking of the Northern Ireland Labour Party, it opposed internment without trial and the idea of independence for Northern Ireland and supported the idea of a more equitable distribution of resources to deprived parts of the United Kingdom. The party applied to join the United Ulster Unionist Council (UUUC) but was rebuffed, with the mainstream unionist parties wary of being linked to paramilitaries.
Ken Gibson contested the West Belfast seat, which included parts of the Shankill district, in the October 1974 general election. The VPP claimed to stand for the working class and an election pamphlet attacked the disgraceful social conditions on the Shankill. In the election, Gibson was supported by Glen Barr of Vanguard, Charles Harding Smith, the leader of the West Belfast Ulster Defence Association and the independent Shankill councillor Hugh Smyth, who went on to become one of the founders of the Progressive Unionist Party. Standing against the official UUUC candidate, Johnny McQuade of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), they won only 2,690 votes (6%), 14% of the total unionist vote.
Because of this failure, the party was dissolved the following month by a meeting of all UVF commanders. A statement announced; "The low poll for the VPP candidate indicates that the general public does not support the political involvement of the UVF. It would therefore be fruitless to promote the Volunteer Party as a party political machine". Most of its members returned to the UVF (some of whom were later to form the Progressive Unionist Party). The UVF turned back to violence and was banned again by the British government on the 4th October 1975.
Famous quotes containing the words volunteer, political and/or party:
“We should have an army so organized and so officered as to be capable in time of emergency, in cooperation with the National Militia, and under the provision of a proper national volunteer law, rapidly to expand into a force sufficient to resist all probable invasion from abroad and to furnish a respectable expeditionary force if necessary in the maintenance of our traditional American policy which bears the name of President Monroe.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“The science, the art, the jurisprudence, the chief political and social theories, of the modern world have grown out of Greece and Rome—not by favor of, but in the teeth of, the fundamental teachings of early Christianity, to which science, art, and any serious occupation with the things of this world were alike despicable.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“It is a well-settled principle of the international code that where one nation owes another a liquidated debt which it refuses or neglects to pay the aggrieved party may seize on the property belonging to the other, its citizens or subjects, sufficient to pay the debt without giving just cause of war.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)