page_title: Unionism in Ireland
section_title: Sunningdale Agreement and the Ulster Workers strike
hierarchical_section_title: Unionism in Ireland / Negotiating the Irish Dimension: 1973–2020 / Sunningdale Agreement and the Ulster Workers strike
caption_attribution_description: English: "Dublin is just a Sunningdale Away" (Ulster Unionist Party, 1974), Troubled Images Exhibition, Linen Hall Library, Donegall Square North, Belfast, Northern Ireland, August 2010
context_page_description: Unionism in Ireland is a political tradition on the island that professes loyalty to the Crown and Constitution of the United Kingdom. The overwhelming sentiment of a once ascendant minority Protestant population, in the decades following Catholic Emancipation it mobilised to oppose the restoration of an Irish parliament. As "Ulster unionism," in the century since Partition, its commitment has been to the retention within the United Kingdom of the six Ulster counties of Northern Ireland. Within the framework of a peace settlement for Northern Ireland, since 1998 unionists have reconciled to sharing office with Irish nationalists in a devolved administration, while continuing to rely on the connection with Great Britain to secure their cultural and economic interests.
context_section_description: In October 1972 the British government brought out a Green Paper, The Future of Northern Ireland. It articulated what were to be the enduring principles of the British approach to a settlement. 
  It is a fact that an element of the minority in Northern Ireland has hitherto seen itself as simply part of the wider Irish community. The problem of accommodating that minority within the political of Northern Ireland has to some extent been an aspect of a wider problem within Ireland as a whole.
  It is therefore clearly desirable that any new arrangements for Northern Ireland should, whilst meeting the wishes of Northern Ireland and Great Britain, be so far as possible acceptable to accepted by the Republic of Ireland.
  Northern Ireland must and will remain part of the United Kingdom for as long as that is the wish of a majority of the people, but that status does not preclude the necessary taking into account of what has been described in this paper as the 'Irish Dimension.'
  
  A Northern Ireland assembly or authority must be capable of involving all its members constructively in way which satisfy them and those they represent that the whole community has a part to pay in the government of the Province. ...[T]here are strong arguments that the objective of real participation should be achieved by giving minority interests a share in the exercise of executive power ...
  In June 1973 PR elections were held for an Assembly. Following negotiations at Sunningdale in England, attended by the Dublin government, on 1 January 1974 the former Unionist prime minister Brian Faulkner agreed to form an Executive in coalition with Hume's new Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) and the smaller "cross-community" Alliance Party. Faulkner's later successor as party leader, James Molyneaux, argued that the difficulty for most unionists was not an arrangement in which "Protestants and Catholics must consent"—that "would be comparatively simple." It was that, despite a promise not share power with parties "whose primary aim is a united Ireland", Faulkner had committed them to agreement with "Republican Catholics"
  Having drawn on both the Republican and Northern Ireland, Labour parties, the SDLP had sought to "accommodate progressive Protestants". But with PIRA continuing to draw on public outrage over internment and Bloody Sunday, the SDLP was under pressure to present Sunningdale as a means to achieving the goal of Irish unity. The new Health and Social Service Minister, Paddy Devlin, conceded that "all other issues were governed" by a drive to "get all-Ireland institutions established" that would "produce the dynamic that would lead ultimately to an agreed united Ireland."
  The Sunningdale Agreement envisaged a Council of Ireland comprising, with equal delegations from Dublin and Belfast, a Council of Ministers with "executive and harmonising functions" and a Consultative Assembly with "advisory and review functions." As they would only have a plurality of representation on the Northern side, Unionists feared these created the possibility of their being manoeuvred into a minority position. "In retrospect", Devlin regretted the SDLP had not "adopted a two stage approach, by allowing power sharing at Stormont to establish itself", but by the time he and his colleagues recognised the damage they had caused to Faulkner's position by prioritising the "Irish Dimension" it was too late.
  Within a week of taking office as First Minister, Faulkner was forced to resign as UUP leader. A surprise Westminster election at the end of February was a triumph for the United Ulster Unionist Coalition, in which the bulk of his old party stood as "Official Unionists" with William Craig's Ulster Vanguard and Paisley's new Democratic Unionists. Faulkner's pro-Assembly grouping was left with just 13% of the unionist vote. Arguing that they had deprived Faulkner of any semblance of a mandate, the victors called for new Assembly elections.
  When in May the Assembly affirmed the Sunningdale Agreement, a loyalist coalition, the Ulster Workers' Council (UWC) , called a general
caption: Anti-Faulkner Unionist election poster
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