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The Alliance Party of Northern Ireland (APNI), is a political party in Northern Ireland. It has long sought to bridge the gap between the province's two main communities and is avowedly non-sectarian.

Philosophy

History
It was formed in April 1970 as an alternative to the established parties, particularly the Ulster Unionist Party. In the context of a rapidly worsening political crisis, the party aimed not only to present an alternative to what they perceived as sectarian parties, but to make sure that the primary policy of the party was in contrast to the Northern Ireland Labour Party and Ulster Liberal Party. Alliance expressly aimed to act as a bridge between the Protestant and Catholic sections of the community, with a secondary goal of attracting support from Northern Ireland's Jewish community and its small but steadily growing Asian (Chinese, Indian, Pakistani) population, the vast majority of whom are neither Catholic nor Protestant.
The Party's founding principles were expressly in favour of Northern Ireland remaining part of the United Kingdom, although in contrast to the Unionist parties, this was expressed in socio-economic rather than ethnic terms. It also placed great emphasis on the consent principle and therefore only supported the Northern Ireland's position within the UK as long as the people of NI wished it.
The party was boosted in 1972 when three Members of the Parliament of Northern Ireland joined the party (one from the Nationalist Party, one from the Ulster Unionist Party and one Independent). Stratton Mills, an Ulster Unionist/Conservative member of the Westminster Parliament for North Belfast also joined, providing Alliance with its only House of Commons representation to date. Its first electoral challenge was the District Council elections of May 1973 when they managed to win a respectable 13.6% of the votes cast. In the elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly which followed the next month the party polled 9.2% and won eight seats. The then party leader, Oliver Napier and his deputy Bob Cooper became part of the short-lived power sharing executive body. Alliance's vote peaked in the 1977 District Council elections when it obtained 14.4% of the vote and had 74 Councillors elected. In 1979, Party Leader Oliver Napier came closer than Alliance have come before or since to electing a Westminster MP, polling just 928 votes short of Peter Robinson's winning total in East Belfast, albeit placing third in a three-way marginal.

Early growth
Alliance was seriously damaged by the Provisional Irish Republican Army Hunger Strike of 1981, which deeply polarised Northern Ireland politics, and indirectly led to the emergence of Sinn Féin as a serious political force. The Party supported the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, and despite claims that this would fatally damage its soft Unionist support, Alliance rebounded to pick up 10.0% of the vote in the 1987 British General Election, with some voters rejecting the tacit mainstream Unionist support for violence in the aftermath of the Agreement. New leader, John Alderdice, polled 32.0% of the vote in East Belfast, the highest percentage ever achieved in an individual seat in a Westminster election, while Alliance came within 15,000 votes of both the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and Sinn Féin across Northern Ireland. In 1988, in Alliance's keynote post-Anglo Irish Agreement document, "Governing with Consent", Alderdice called for a devolved power-sharing government. Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, Alliance's vote stabilised at between 7% and 10%.
After the IRA and Loyalist ceasefires in 1994, Alliance became the first non-Nationalist party to enter into talks with Sinn Féin, as an active participant in the talks which led to the Good Friday Agreement, which it strongly supported.
The Alliance Party polled poorly for the 1996 elections for the Northern Ireland Forum, and the 1998 election for the Northern Ireland Assembly winning around 6.5% of the vote each time. This did enable the party to win six seats in the Assembly, although this was somewhat of a let down given that the party had been expected to do much better with their surprise defeat in Belfast South being particularly disappointing for supporters.

Stabilisation and decline
John Alderdice resigned as party leader in 1998 to take up the post of the Assembly's Presiding Officer. He was replaced by Seán Neeson, who himself resigned as party leader in September, 2001. Neeson was replaced by current party leader David Ford, a member of the assembly for South Antrim.
It was predicted that Alliance would suffer electorally as a new centrist challenger established itself in Northern Irish politics, the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition, whilst the main Unionist and Nationalist parties both moderated their position on cross-community co-operation. Another problem for the APNI was that the rules of the Northern Ireland Assembly require major votes (such as the election of a First Minister) to have the support of both a majority of Unionist assembly members and a majority of Nationalist assembly members, thus diminishing the importance of parties such as Alliance which are not aligned to either of these two blocs.
Nevertheless, in the 2003 Assembly elections, Alliance held all their seats, while the Women's Coalition lost both of theirs. However Alliance's vote fell to just 3.7%. In the European Elections of 2004, Alliance gave strong support to Independent candidate John Gilliland [1] who polled 6.6% of the vote, the highest for a non-communal candidate in a European election since 1979. In the early years of the Northern Ireland peace process, the centre ground was relentlessly squeezed in Northern Ireland politics. The support for Gilliland's candidature, which was also supported by parties such as the Workers' Party and Northern Ireland Conservatives, reflected a desire to reunite the fragmented and weakened non-communal bloc in Northern Ireland politics.
In the 5 May 2005 British General Election, they contested 12 seats and polled 3.9% of the vote. In the simultaneous elections to Northern Ireland's local authorities, they polled 5.0% of first preference votes and had 30 Councillors elected, a gain of two seats relative to the previous elections.
The 2006-2007 period saw some signs of an Alliance upturn with Alliance topping the poll and gaining a seat in a by-election for Coleraine borough council up from 3.6% in the previous election with Alliance gaining a seat in Belfast South following the successful candidature of Anna Lo. In an election cycle where many pundits had predicted that the Alliance Party would struggle to hold on to the 6 seats it won in the 2003 election, the Party pulled off a credible performance which included Deputy Leader Naomi Long doubling her share of the vote in Belfast East.

The Good Friday Agreement era
One trend over time with Alliance's vote is that in contrast to 1973, when Alliance support was dispersed across Northern Ireland, APNI have increasingly polled best in the Greater Belfast hinterland. For example the 1977 elections, while representing an overall increase for Alliance, masked a sharp decline in vote share in many Western councils. In the 12 councils covering the former counties of Londonderry, Tyrone, Armagh and Fermanagh their vote only rose in Omagh, it remained static in Magherafelt and fell in the other ten councils (these being Fermanagh, Dungannon, Cookstown, Strabane, Londonderry, Limavady, Coleraine, Newry&Mourne, Armagh and Craigavon.) Overall in these 12 councils the number of Alliance councillors fell from 18 in 1973 to ten in 1977. In contrast, in the rest of the province Alliance increased their number of councillors from 45 to 60.
This trend continued in the 1980s and early 1990s as Alliance lost their last remaining councillors in North Antrim (Ballymoney in 1985 and Ballymena in 1981 - although the seat was temporarily regained in 1989.)
The party won eight council seats across Belfast in 1985 although that has been reduced today to four and the party has been virtually wiped out in North and West Belfast. Both seats in the Falls Road area of West Belfast were lost after the death and resignation of their councillors there in 1987 while their seat in North Belfast was lost in 1993 regained four years later and lost again, seemingly for good, in 2001. In the neighbouring areas of Dunmurry Cross (Twinbrook/Dunmurry) and Macedon (Rathcoole) Alliance lost their councillors in 1989 and 1994 respectively.
Today Alliance have councillors in ten of the 18 Westminster parliamentary constituencies, following the regaining of a seat on Coleraine Borough Council. (In contrast in 1973 Alliance had representation in 16 out of the 18 current Westminster constituencies.)

Regionalisation of Alliance's vote

Phelim O'Neill 1972-1979
Oliver Napier 1979-1984
John Cushnahan 1984-1987
John Alderdice 1987-1998
Seán Neeson 1998-2001
David Ford 2001-present MLAs

Contributions to liberal theory
Demographics and politics of Northern Ireland
Liberal democracy
Liberalism
Liberalism in the United Kingdom
Liberalism worldwide
List of liberal parties
Secularism
Young Alliance