National Democrats (Northern Ireland)

The National Democrats were a small party in Northern Ireland founded by members of the National Unity movement linked to the Nationalist Party who previously attempted to get the Nationalists to adopt a constituency based structure with a party conference and agreed party programme. The party was formed in 1965 and operated mainly in the Belfast area. [ [http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/othelem/organ/norgan.htm CAIN: Abstracts of Organisations - 'N' ] ]

John Joseph Brennan held the constituency of Belfast Central for the National Democrats in the Parliament of Northern Ireland from 1966 to 1969. The party was absorbed into the Social Democratic and Labour Party in 1970.

Although never politically significant in their own right, the National Democrats were part of the break up of the political arrangements that had dominated Northern Ireland from 1922 to the early 1960s - a dominant and largely monolithic Ulster Unionist Party using sectarianism, discrimination and gerrymandering as instruments of policy and a sullen and largely timid Catholic minority electing politicians who regarded participation in a state they regarded as illegitimate as a waste of time.

In the 1960s this set up was challenged from all sides: by a more progressive Unionist leader, Terence O'Neill, by a resurgent Northern Ireland Labour Party as well as other Labour figures such as Gerry Fitt and Paddy Devlin, by progressive Nationalists such as the National Democrats and individuals such as John Hume and Austin Currie and other civil rights activists and at what seemed like the more extreme fringes, hard line Unionists such as Ian Paisley and a growing and Communist-inspired IRA.

This grouping had no connection to the National Democrats that fielded a candidate in the East Londonderry constituency in the 1997 general election. This second grouping was a UK-wide breakaway from the British National Front that had no connection to the first.

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