The Alliance Party of Northern Ireland is a liberal and nonsectarian political party in Northern Ireland. It is Northern Ireland's fifth-largest party overall, with eight seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly and one in the House of Commons.
Founded in 1970 from the New Ulster Movement, the Alliance Party originally represented moderate and non-sectarian Unionism. However, over time, particularly in the 1990s, it moved towards neutrality on the Union, and has come to represent wider liberal and non-sectarian concerns. It opposes consociational power sharing as deepening the sectarian divide, and, in the Northern Ireland Assembly, it is designated as neither unionist nor nationalist, but 'Other'.
In May 2010 the Alliance Party won their first Westminster seat in a General Election, in Belfast East, unseating Peter Robinson, leader of the DUP and First Minister of Northern Ireland. Naomi Long, the successful candidate, is the first MP from the Alliance Party since Stratton Mills who had joined the party from the Ulster Unionist Party in 1973.
Read more about Alliance Party Of Northern Ireland: Aims and Objectives, Philosophy, Regionalisation of Alliance's Vote, Leaders of Alliance, Deputy Leaders, MPs, MLAs, Young Alliance and Alliance Youth
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“... in Northern Ireland, if you don’t have basic Christianity, rather than merely religion, all you get out of the experience of living is bitterness.”
—Bernadette Devlin (b. 1947)
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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“There exists in a great part of the Northern people a gloomy diffidence in the moral character of the government. On the broaching of this question, as general expression of despondency, of disbelief that any good will accrue from a remonstrance on an act of fraud and robbery, appeared in those men to whom we naturally turn for aid and counsel. Will the American government steal? Will it lie? Will it kill?—We ask triumphantly.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)