Traditional Unionist Voice

**Traditional Unionist Voice** (**TUV**) is a unionist political party in Northern Ireland. In common with all other Northern Irish unionist parties, the TUV's political programme has as its sine qua non the preservation of Northern Ireland's place within the United Kingdom. A founding precept of the party is that 'nothing which is morally wrong can be politically right'.

The TUV was formed in December 2007 by Jim Allister after he and others had resigned from the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in March of that year. At the time of his resignation, Allister was a prominent figure in the DUP and held the position of Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the party having been elected to the European Parliament in 2004. The reason for the split was DUP leader Ian Paisley's March 2007 consent to the St Andrews Agreement and his willingness to become First Minister of Northern Ireland alongside a deputy First Minister from the Irish Republican party Sinn Féin.

Prior to the St Andrews Agreement, the DUP had presented itself as an 'anti-Agreement' unionist party opposed to numerous aspects of the Good Friday Agreement e.g. the release of paramilitary prisoners before the end of their jail sentences and the participation of Sinn Fein in the Northern Ireland government without complete decommissioning of IRAweapons and cessation of all IRA activity. The TUV has been an exception among Northern Irish unionist parties in consistently opposing the presence of Sinn Fein in the Northern Ireland government. After Allister's resignation from the DUP, he continued to occupy his European Parliament seat, sitting as an Independent MEP until the following European election in 2009 when he was not re-elected.

In terms of both electoral success and financial income  Traditional Unionist Voice is the third largest unionist party in Northern Ireland, behind the Democratic Unionist Party and the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP). It is usually considered by political commentators as being a 'small party' and characterised as being more 'hardline' than other Northern Irish unionist parties.

Since 2011, the TUV has occupied one seat in the Northern Ireland Assembly. The party also holds a small number of seats on local councils. Its most prominent elected representative and best-known figure remains Jim Allister whose North Antrim constituency is the heartland of the party.

Since 2008, the party President of the TUV has been former East LondonderryWestminster MP William Ross.

## Ideology

Traditional Unionist Voice is more hardline than the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which it split from, criticising it for compromising too much with Irish republicans. TUV is a right-wingunionist and loyalist party. It opposes the Good Friday Agreement, particularly unionists (traditionally the largest bloc) having to share power with Irish nationalists, arguing that coalition governments should be voluntary. It opposes the participation of former IRA members in Northern Ireland politics and Sinn Féin members in government, and sees the majority of their leadership as terrorists. The Good Friday Agreement offered amnesties to both sides, but TUV opposes amnesties for Irish republicans. It also wants to reduce political co-operation with the Republic of Irelandthrough North-South bodies.

TUV espouses national conservatismand social conservatism. Jim Allister opposed a motion pardoning gay men convicted for formerly illegal homosexual acts.

It also took a hard Eurosceptic stance in the Brexit debate.

## Election history

Main article: Traditional Unionist Voice election results

### Local by-elections

The party's first electoral contest was the Dromore local government by-election for Banbridge District Council which took place on 13 February 2008 with its candidate being Dromore solicitor, Keith Harbinson. He took 19.5% of the first preference votes cast.

TUV was the last party to be eliminated, and more of its votes transferred to the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) than to the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), enabling the former to retain its seat.

At a Craigavon Borough Council local by-election in Lurgan on 14 January 2010, the TUV candidate won 19.3% of first preference votes. The UUP candidate, Jo-Anne Dobson, won with 63.9%. The DUP did not contest the seat.

### 2009 European Parliament election

Jim Allister, leader of TUV, contested the European Parliament election on 4 June 2009. He stood on a ticket of opposition to the DUP/Sinn Féin-led Northern Ireland Executive. The election turned out to be hotly contested, with the unionist vote split three ways. Sinn Féin's sitting MEP Bairbre de Brún topped the poll (a first for any Irish nationalist candidate). The Ulster Conservative and Unionist candidate Jim Nicholson took the second seat, with Diane Dodds of the DUP coming in third place, defeating Allister. TUV polled 66,000 votes. Allister called the results a victory for unionism and indicated his intention to stand TUV candidates in future Northern Ireland Assembly and parliamentary elections. He additionally argued that the election represented the "depth of feeling that there is among many unionists who refuse to be rolled over in the era of Sinn Féin rule, who have quite rightly a resentment against those who betrayed them, deceived them, conned them, in the assembly election."

### 2010 Westminster general election

On 6 May at the 2010 general election for the Westminster parliament, TUV received 26,300 votes across Northern Ireland, a large drop on what it had received in the previous year's European elections. In the same election, the DUP received 168,216 votes and the UCUNF received 102,361 votes. The TUV failed to win any of the 10 seats it contested. A week after the election, TUV acknowledged on their website that the results had been "disappointing".

### 2011 council elections

Traditional Unionist Voice fielded 41 candidates in the 2011 Northern Ireland local elections. It received 2% of the overall vote. Two TUV candidates were elected in Ballymena, and one each in Moyle, Ballymoney, Larne and Limavady.

### 2011 Northern Ireland Assembly election

The party fielded 12 candidates for the 2011 Northern Ireland Assembly election. TUV received 16,480 votes or 2.5% of the poll, which was a drop in the number of votes received in the 2010 election. Eleven candidates were unsuccessful but in the North Antrim constituency Jim Allister received 4,061 first preference votes (10.1%), and on the ninth and last count was deemed to be elected without reaching the quota of 5,760 votes.

### 2014 European Parliament election

In the 2014 European Parliament election, Allister once again contested the Northern Ireland constituency. On this occasion he polled 75,806 first preference votes, 12.1% of the total. This represented an increase in the number of votes, but a decrease of just over one percentage point in terms of vote share. Allister again failed to be elected, with Sinn Féin, the DUP and UUP all retaining their seats. Allister was eliminated in the sixth of eight counts.

### 2014 council elections

In the 2014 Northern Ireland local elections(held on the same day as the European election) for the eleven new local councils in Northern Ireland, TUV candidates polled a total of 28,310 first preference votes, or 4.5%, an increase on the previous council elections. The party had 13 successful candidates. They achieved their largest number of councillors in Mid and East Antrim, where they became the third-largest party with five seats. They won three seats in Causeway Coast and Glens, two in Antrim and Newtownabbey and one each in Belfast, North Down and Ards and Lisburn and Castlereagh.

### 2015 United Kingdom general election

The party stood in seven constituencies in the 2015 general election, taking second in North Antrim but failing to place in the top four elsewhere.

### 2016 Northern Ireland Assembly election

The party stood 15 candidates in 14 constituencies in the 2016 Northern Ireland Assembly election, winning 23,776 first-preference votes (3.4% of the overall vote share). Jim Allister retained his seat in North Antrim, but the party was unable to gain any additional MLAs.

### 2017 Northern Ireland Assembly election

Jim Allister retained his seat in North Antrim in the 2017 Northern Ireland Assembly election.

### 2017 United Kingdom general election

In 2017, the party stood a single candidate in the 2017 general election.

### 2019 United Kingdom general election

TUV chose not to stand any candidates in the 2019 general election.

### 2022 Northern Ireland Assembly election

The TUV campaign for the 2022 Northern Ireland Assembly election prioritised a theme of opposition to the Northern Ireland Protocol. The party's candidates were designated on the ballot paper as representing "TUV - No Sea Border". For the first time in the party's history it stood a candidate in each of the 18 constituencies which elect the Northern Ireland Assembly.

TUV candidates won 65,788 first preference votes, more than three times the party's score in the 2017 Assembly election and 7.5% of the total first preference vote but only one of the 90 members elected to the new Northern Ireland Assembly was a TUV candidate; Jim Allister in the North Antrimconstituency. Under the Single Transferable Vote system of proportional representation used in Northern Irelanda disproportionality between outcome in seats and first preference vote share can arise when a party is eliminated from the count because it has been less successful at obtaining lower preference votes on the ballot paper than at obtaining first preference votes.

## Controversies

In November 2009, the party caused controversy when it referred to the Irish language as a "leprechaun language" on its website. The statement was issued under the name of TUV vice-chairman Keith Harbinson and condemned the Department of Education for "wasting" money on teaching of the Irish language. The party later removed the phrase, but the original page had already been spread on numerous other websites.

In December 2009, TUV member Trevor Collins promoted a petition to release former Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) member Torrens Knight from prison where the latter was serving a four month sentence for assault on two people in Coleraine. Torrens Knight had previously served seven years imprisonment for taking part in the Greysteel and the Castlerock terrorist killings but had been given early release from his jail sentence in 2000 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. At the time, the TUV was widely criticised for refusing to suspend Collins from the party. Their response was that Collins had acted in a 'misguided' fashion which they did not support but that members of government in Northern Ireland had done or had excused actions much worse than those committed by Torrens in this instance.

In November 2012, former Irish rugby union international and then Ballymena TUV councillor David Tweed was convicted on 13 counts of sexual offences against two young girls. Pending sentencing he remained a member of Ballymena Borough Council and of TUV. TUV stated that the sex offences related "to a period long before he was a member of this party".In January 2013, Tweed was sentenced to eight years' imprisonment. TUV chose one of its unsuccessful 2011 candidates, Timothy Gaston, to replace Tweed as councillor. David Tweed's conviction was quashed in October 2016.

In August 2021, TUV defended comments by its East Belfast candidate John Ross, a former paratrooper, who was criticized for calling the Bloody Sunday massacre "a very successful operation". Fourteen unarmed Catholic civilians were shot dead by paratroopers. A representative of the victims said "Bloody Sunday has been the subject of a meticulous public inquiry which found that all those killed and wounded were innocent". TUV replied that there had been "various conflicting judicial findings".