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)
“Ah! how much a mother learns from her child! The constant protection of a helpless being forces us to so strict an alliance with virtue, that a woman never shows to full advantage except as a mother. Then alone can her character expand in the fulfillment of all life’s duties and the enjoyment of all its pleasures.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)
“A party is perpetually corrupted by personality.”
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“Our ancestors were savages. The story of Romulus and Remus being suckled by a wolf is not a meaningless fable. The founders of every state which has risen to eminence have drawn their nourishment and vigor from a similar wild source. It was because the children of the Empire were not suckled by the wolf that they were conquered and displaced by the children of the northern forests who were.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Out of Ireland have we come,
Great hatred, little room
Maimed us at the start.
I carry from my mother’s womb
A fanatic’s heart.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)