Alliance has 40 Councillors in local government and six Members of the Northern Ireland Assembly. Our former Party Leader, John Alderdice, sits in the House of Lords. Alliance is committed to the creation of a just, fair, peaceful and prosperous society in Northern Ireland, based on respect for all sections of our community and on the widest possible participation in government. We are committed to the protection of human rights, and we utterly oppose the use of violence. We believe that the people of Northern Ireland must decide their own future, and that there should be no change in the constitutional position without their consent.
Alliance is neither.
It offers a clear alternative to all the parties that are either Unionist or Nationalist. While their primary objective is either to work towards a United Ireland or towards keeping Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom, Alliance's primary objective is meeting the needs of all the people of Northern Ireland. Yes, and because the constitutional debate does not top our agenda, those policies are more developed than most other parties in Northern Ireland. ELDR is made up of liberal parties from across Europe, all of whom contest the elections to the European Parliament on a joint platform. Throughout the Talks processes that followed over the next ten years the Party negotiated towards the Agreement eventually reached in 1998.