Ulster Unionist Party

(UUP)

   The UUP was for many years the largest party in Northern Ireland. It formed the governing party in the Stormont administration from 1921 to 1972. Members were united in their desire to maintain the Parliament and remain under British rule. After the fall of Stormont, the UUP suffered from a series of schisms that led to secession by breakaway groups, the issue of power-sharing often proving a thorny one. From the early 1980s, the UUP faced stiff electoral competition from the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).

   Led by David Trimble, the UUP continued to experience divisions over the party’s constitutional policy and his willingness to engage in talks in which the Sinn Féin Party were represented, sign the Good Friday Agreement and lead the power-sharing Executive which has subsequently been suspended. Trimble resigned the leadership in 2005. UUP fortunes have been on the wane in recent local, devolved, European and general elections, its paramountcy among unionists having been ceded to the DUP which – in the eyes of many inhabitants – adopted a tougher view in its approach to Sinn Féin, particularly over decommissioning. ultra vires Literally, beyond the scope or in excess of the legal power or authority of an agency, corporation or tier of government. The legal doctrine which states that any public authority must act within the powers accorded it. In British constitutional law, an act may be judicially reviewable if the administrator did not have the power to make a decision or the process of decision-making was conducted with procedural defects, or if there was an abuse of power (for example, through unreasonableness or bad faith). In municipal law, attempts at local legislation that go beyond the powers granted to local authorities are said to be ultra vires. In running and operating a school, the relevant local authority must comply with the procedural standards of administrative law. If it fails to do so – in other words, if the authority is acting beyond its powers – then the actions taken have no legal standing and will be actionable.