Active before the
First World War, the Ulster Liberal Association sought to avoid a position on the question of
Home Rule (the restoration of an Irish parliament in Dublin) which had seen
Liberal Unionists split and join Conservatives in the
Irish Unionist Alliance. In 1908, the Association dismissed the former
Independent Orangeman and Liberal candidate for
Mid Armagh in the 1906 parliamentary election,
R. Lindsay Crawford as editor of its paper,
Ulster Guardian, because it could not allow its pages "to be used directly or indirectly in support of devolution or
Home Rule". After the creation of
Northern Ireland as a home-ruled division of the
United Kingdom in 1921, the Association was restyled the
Northern Ireland Liberal Association, and in May 1928 relaunched itself as the Ulster Liberal Party. It nominated candidates in the
1929 UK general election, including future
Seanad Éireann member
Denis Ireland and
Unbought Tenants' Association MP
George Henderson, before the party became inactive. The party was re-founded by
Albert McElroy in 1956, as (again) the
Ulster Liberal Association. From 1961 to 1969, the party had one seat in the
House of Commons of Northern Ireland, when
Sheelagh Murnaghan held one of the four seats allocated to
Queen's University, Belfast. In 1969
Claude Wilton became a senator for the party in the
Senate of Northern Ireland. After 1970, it suffered the loss of many of its members to the
Alliance Party of Northern Ireland. after which its last remnants joined the
Labour '87 group. The
Liberal Democrats, successor to the British Liberal Party, later formed links with the
Alliance Party. There is also a small local party of the
Liberal Democrats in Northern Ireland, who do not contest elections. ==Leadership==