Early growth and the 1974 Northern Ireland Executive The party was formed in April 1970 as an alternative to the established parties. In the context of a rapidly worsening political crisis, it aimed not only to present an alternative to what they perceived as
sectarian parties and expressly aimed to act as a bridge between the
Protestant and
Catholic sections of the community and heal the divisions in
Northern Ireland society. The Party's founding principles were expressly in favour of Northern Ireland remaining part of the United Kingdom, although, in contrast to other
unionist parties, that was expressed in socio-economic rather than
ethnic terms. On 5 February 1973, prior to the
1973 Northern Ireland border poll, the party's chairman,
Jim Hendron, stated that: "Support for the position of Northern Ireland as an integral part of the United Kingdom is a fundamental principle of the Alliance Party, not only for economic reasons but also because we firmly believe that a peaceful solution to our present tragic problems is only possible within a United Kingdom context. Either a Sinn Fein all-Ireland republic or a
Vanguard-style Ulster republic would lead to disaster for all our people." The party's prominence increased in 1972 when three members of the
Northern Ireland House of Commons defected to Alliance. The MPs were drawn from across Northern Ireland's political divide and included
Bertie McConnell, an independent
Unionist, the
Ulster Unionist Phelim O'Neill and
Tom Gormley who sat as an independent
Nationalist. In 1973,
Lord Dunleath joined the party in the
House of Lords.
Stratton Mills, who had been elected as an
Ulster Unionist/
Conservative MP at
Westminster for
North Belfast also joined that year, becoming the party's sole MP between 1973 and 1974 and did not have another MP until 2010. Its first electoral challenge was the
District Council elections of May 1973 when they managed to win 13.6% of the votes cast. In the elections to the
Northern Ireland Assembly, which followed the
Sunningdale Agreement, the party polled 9.2% and won eight seats. After the elections, Alliance entered the power sharing
Northern Ireland Executive.
Oliver Napier became Legal Minister and Head of the Office of Law Reform and
Bob Cooper took the junior role of Minister for Manpower Services. In its manifesto for the elections to the
Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention in 1975, the Alliance Party stated "Alliance supports the constitutional position of Northern Ireland as an integral part of the United Kingdom. We know that this belief is shared by the overwhelming majority of our people and that provocative debate about it has been the primary cause of all our most fundamental troubles. The link is in the best economic and social interests of all the people of Northern Ireland, and we will maintain that only the people of Northern Ireland have the right to decide any change by voting in a referendum." Alliance's vote increased significantly in the
1977 local elections, when it obtained 14.4% of the vote and had 74 Councillors elected. In 1979, Party Leader
Oliver Napier came closer than Alliance had previously come to electing a Westminster MP, polling just 928 votes short of
Peter Robinson's winning total in
East Belfast, albeit placing third in a three-way marginal.
Stabilisation and decline Alliance was seriously damaged by the
1981 Irish Hunger Strike, which deeply polarised Northern Ireland politics, and led to the emergence of
Sinn Féin as a serious political force. The party supported the 1985
Anglo-Irish Agreement, and despite claims that this would fatally damage its soft unionist support, Alliance rebounded to pick up 10.0% of the vote in Northern Ireland in the
1987 United Kingdom general election.
John Alderdice polled 32.0% of the vote in
East Belfast, while Alliance came within 15,000 votes of both the
Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Féin across Northern Ireland. He would go on to become leader after the election, replacing John Cushnahan. In 1996 Alderdice accepted a peerage, becoming the Alliance Party's only representation in Parliament.
Lord Alderdice took the
Liberal Democrat whip on wider UK and European issues but remained free from the whip's control on issues impacting Northern Ireland. In 1988, in Alliance's keynote post-Anglo Irish Agreement document,
Governing with Consent, Alderdice called for a devolved power-sharing government. Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, Alliance's vote stabilised at between 7% and 10%. After the IRA and
loyalist ceasefires in 1994, Alliance became the first non-nationalist party to enter into talks with Sinn Féin, as an active participant in the
Northern Ireland peace process negotiations leading to the
Good Friday Agreement, which it strongly supported. Alliance polled poorly in the 1996 elections for the
Northern Ireland Forum, and the
1998 election for the
Northern Ireland Assembly winning around 6.5% of the vote each time. This did enable the party to win six seats in the Assembly, although this was somewhat of a let-down given that it had been expected to do much better.
The Good Friday Agreement era 1998–2004 John Alderdice resigned as party leader in 1998 to take up the post of the Assembly's
Presiding Officer. He was replaced by
Seán Neeson, who himself resigned as party leader in September 2001. Neeson was replaced by
David Ford, a member of the Assembly for
South Antrim. It was predicted that Alliance would suffer electorally as a new centrist challenger established itself in Northern Irish politics, the
Northern Ireland Women's Coalition. Another problem for the APNI was that the rules of the Assembly require major votes (such as the election of the
First Minister and deputy First Minister) to have the support of both a majority of unionist and nationalist MLAs, thus diminishing the importance of parties such as Alliance which are not aligned to either of these two blocs. In the
2003 Assembly elections, Alliance held all their seats, while the Women's Coalition lost both of theirs. Alliance's vote fell to just 3.7%. In the
European Parliament Elections in 2004, Alliance gave strong support to Independent candidate John Gilliland who polled 6.6% of the vote, the highest for a non-communal candidate in a European election since 1979. In the early years of the peace process, the centre ground was relentlessly squeezed in Northern Ireland politics. The support for Gilliland's candidature, which was also supported by parties such as the
Workers' Party and Northern Ireland Conservatives, reflected a desire to reunite the fragmented and weakened non-communal bloc in Northern Ireland politics.
2004–2016 led the Alliance between 2001 and 2016. In the 5 May
2005 United Kingdom general election, they contested 12 seats and polled 3.9% of the vote. In the simultaneous elections to Northern Ireland's local authorities, they polled 5.0% of first preference votes and had 30 Councillors elected, a gain of two seats relative to the previous elections. The 2006–2007 period saw some signs of an Alliance upturn, topping the poll and gaining a seat in a by-election for
Coleraine Borough Council. In the
2007 Northern Ireland Assembly elections, Alliance put in a strong media campaign and polled 5.2%, up from 3.6% in the previous election and gaining a seat in Belfast South following the successful candidature of
Anna Lo, the first ethnic Chinese public representative in a national assembly anywhere in Western Europe. In an election cycle where many pundits had predicted that the Alliance Party would struggle to hold on to the six seats it won in the 2003 election, the party pulled off a credible performance which included Deputy Leader Naomi Long doubling her share of the vote in Belfast East. In 2008, during the deadlock between Sinn Féin and the DUP over the devolution of policing, the two parties came to an agreement that the Minister of Justice would not come from either party. The Alliance Party was the obvious choice but party leader
David Ford said "it's a very definite and a very emphatic no". Ford further stated, "this executive is incompetent, it's time they got on with doing the job that they were set up to do". Following further negotiations, Ford assumed office on 12 April 2010. At the
2009 European elections, Alliance candidate
Ian Parsley achieved the party's best European election vote share in 30 years with 5.5% of the vote. In the
2010 general election, the party won its first seat in Westminster, with Naomi Long taking the seat of sitting First Minister
Peter Robinson. The 2011 Northern Ireland Assembly Election resulted in eight Assembly members being returned with a gain in
Belfast East. It overtook the UUP on Belfast City Council. In a poll conducted in November 2012, Alliance (on 11.6%) overtook the UUP (11.4%) for the first time. During the
2016 elections to the Assembly, in spite of initially confident predications from
David Ford that Alliance would see a surplus of up to 11 seats, the party's share of the popular vote stagnated somewhat, from 7.7% in
2011 to 7.0%. Ultimately, its 8 MLAs from their original respective constituencies were returned to Stormont for the fifth Assembly term. Ford later resigned as Alliance Party leader on 6 October 2016, on his 15th anniversary as leader of the party.
2016–2019: Opposing Brexit On 26 October 2016,
Naomi Long officially became the new leader of the Alliance Party. In the snap
2017 Assembly election, Alliance increased its vote share to 9.1% and retained all eight of their MLA seats in a reduced Assembly. For the
2017 general election, the party advocated a confirmatory
referendum on the Brexit withdrawal agreement and remaining in the
European Single Market. In April 2018, the party joined the
Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party as an associate member. Alliance increased its vote share by 5 percentage points in the
2019 local elections and broke out of its traditional Greater Belfast heartlands by taking seats on
Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council and
Derry City & Strabane District Council where the party had not previously been represented. During the election campaign, the party had urged a break from "orange and green politics" and was vocal in its opposition to
Brexit using the slogan "Demand Better". In the
2019 European election, Naomi Long became the Alliance Party's first ever
MEP, receiving the second of three seats allocated to Northern Ireland and securing the best ever result for Alliance with 18.5% of first-preference votes. The party greatly increased its vote share at the
2019 general election, from 7.9% to 16.8% of Northern Ireland, over-taking the
SDLP and
UUP to come third overall. The party re-gained a seat in the House of Commons (
North Down, previously held by the retiring independent
Sylvia Hermon), and was second in another four constituencies.
2020–present: COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent elections Long became Stormont's justice minister in January 2020, holding the position throughout the
COVID-19 pandemic. In March 2022, Long told the Alliance Party conference in
Belfast that the DUP and Sinn Féin were "addicted to crisis and conflict", and hoped that her party could bring an end to the "binary system" at Stormont. The Alliance Party fought the
2022 Northern Ireland Assembly election on a platform of reforming the Stormont institutions, health transformation,
integrated education, a
Green New Deal and tackling
paramilitarism. Alliance would go on to win the third highest number of seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly, 4.5% more of the vote than they did in the 2017 election and also gaining nine seats. In all, the 2022 election saw the party win 17 seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly, more than double the number of seats than what they previously had after the
2017 Northern Ireland Assembly election. but the party still gained 14 seats overall, increasing its councillor total to 67. ==Ideology and policies==