Post by therealriga on Nov 19, 2023 10:45:06 GMT
Upper Bann was one of the new constituencies that emerged as part of Northern Ireland’s increase in representation for the 1983 election. It is a largely urban constituency, comprising the northern part of County Armagh, a western strip of County Down and a small part of County Antrim around Aghagallon. The main towns are Lurgan, Portadown and Banbridge, plus the failed new city project of Craigavon, which was intended to rival Belfast as a regional hub. It consists of the central part of Armagh, Banbridge & Craigavon council. Apart from small changes to realign ward boundaries, it has been unchanged since its creation.
Despite a significant nationalist minority, the constituency has been a safe unionist seat, with little to no demographic change. Social and sectarian divisions have often been stark with particular polarisation in the North Armagh section.
Craigavon was planned as a new city in the 1960s, modelled on similar developments such as Cumbernauld or Milton Keynes and based on the existing towns of Lurgan and Portadown. Population projections, later shown to be inaccurate, suggested the need for substantial new housing. The idea was to create a continuous urban area in North Armagh on modernist principles and attract investment and Belfast overspill to live in religiously mixed communities. From the beginning, the development was controversial. Nationalist politicians questioned why money should be spent there, in the Unionist East, rather than develop Derry city. Unionist politicians questioned the viability of the project and similarly suggested that the funds be used in existing towns instead. The criticisms proved correct. Most of Craigavon was not built, with instead a sprawl of estates called Brownlow constructed.
The latter area is predominantly Catholic. Lurgan and Portadown are sharply divided, with a Catholic north half and a Protestant southern half. The south shore of Lough Neagh is almost entirely Catholic, while the towns immediately south of Lurgan, such as Waringstown and Donaghcloney are over 90% Protestant. Banbridge is more mixed, with the Catholic community reaching nearly 40%. Lawrencetown is over 85% Catholic, while Gilford and Loughbrickland have a slight Catholic majority. Overall, the sectarian balance is close to the NI average. 44% had a Catholic community background at the 2011 census, tenth of the 18 constituencies.
These divisions led to bitter infighting during The Troubles and beyond. Tensions over Orange Order marching routes at Drumcree in Portadown saw the area become the unwelcome focus of national headlines in the late 1990s. As well as IRA activity, the Mid Ulster UVF was one of the organisation's more violent branches and some of its members rejected the UVF ceasefire, forming the LVF centred around Portadown.
While Upper Bann’s socio-economic indicators are around or slightly better than the Northern Ireland average, this obscures stark divisions. In 2017, seven of the 54 Super Output Areas in Upper Bann (including parts of Woodville, Drumgask and Court wards), were ranked in the 10% most deprived wards in Northern Ireland. Banbridge is slightly more prosperous than average.
At the 2011 census, the average age was 36.7 years, the sixth youngest. In the 2016 Brexit referendum, 52.6% backed leave: the fifth highest leave vote in NI.
Banbridge council was a UUP bastion, with the party maintaining rare single-party control from 1973 until 2001. Though they came close to outright control of Craigavon council, this was never achieved. Besides a Nationalist vote of close on 40%, the DUP always maintained a significant presence on the council. Alliance were usually able to win a council seat or two and until the late 1990s, the Workers’ Party counted this as one of their strongest areas, finally disappearing at the 1997 council elections.
The DUP and Sinn Féin overtook their UUP and SDLP rivals at the 2005 local elections and have widened that gap in recent times. At the 2023 local elections, the DUP won a 4th seat in Lurgan, taking the UUP's only seat there. The UUP only managed to stay ahead of the DUP in Banbridge. The SDLP were wiped out, losing all 4 council seats within the constituency.
Like Craigavon, Upper Bann’s creation was controversial, as it packed the best Unionist areas of Armagh and South Down into one constituency, tilting the rump of the latter two constituencies towards the SDLP. (Though both the parent constituencies would probably have had slight Nationalist majorities by now.) At the local enquiries following the provisional recommendations, the UUP and DUP instead suggested constituencies of Newry & Mourne and Armagh & Banbridge, though how Craigavon council would have made up the numbers for the third seat is not specified in the reports.
From the outset, Upper Bann was tipped to be the seat of the future UUP leader. This did occur, but not in the way foreseen. Former Armagh MP Harold McCusker won the first contest in the constituency. Seen as a leading light of the party, he served as deputy leader of the UUP group in the NI Assembly. A comfortable victory, with 57% of the vote in 1983, was followed by 80% in a two-way contest in the 1986 by-election in which his Workers’ Party opponent achieved that party’s highest ever vote share in such an election. However, McCusker died a few days after his 50th birthday in 1990.
The resultant by-election was won by the UUP’s David Trimble, who became UUP leader 5 years later. Trimble’s “victory jig” hand-in-hand with Ian Paisley after an Orange Parade had gone through the Catholic Garvaghy Road area, and his background as deputy leader of the more militant Vanguard Party led most observers to label him as a hardliner. Dissenting voices pointed out that Trimble had backed Vanguard leader Bill Craig’s suggestions of a voluntary coalition with the SDLP which had split the party.
Trimble’s tenure as UUP leader was a turbulent time. He was instrumental in the negotiations which led to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, receiving a Nobel Peace Prize as a result. He became First Minister in the Northern Ireland Assembly which was the result of the Agreement. However, these moves towards power-sharing, which included significant concessions to Sinn Féin, earned him the ire of the DUP and various loyalist groups.
In 2001 there was intense speculation that DUP leader Ian Paisley would move from his North Antrim base to challenge Trimble, but in the end this did not materialise. Trimble nonetheless saw his majority slashed to just over 2,000 in a bitter contest against the new DUP candidate David Simpson, in which Trimble was heckled and jostled at the count. In the 2005 election the DUP had moved further ahead across the region and Simpson comfortably unseated Trimble by over 5,000 votes. The two elections in 2010 and 2015 saw the UUP close the gap, with Simpson’s majority cut to 2,264 votes in 2015. However, the two most recent elections have seen the UUP fall away, with the DUP polling just over 40% and around 8,000 votes ahead of their nearest rivals.
While in office, Simpson attracted controversy for his opposition to homosexuality, support of homeopathy and creationism, and Evangelical Protestant views. This provided ammunition for his opponents when it emerged that he was leaving his wife of 30 years following his extra-marital affair. He retired before the 2019 election. His successor is former Lurgan councillor and Upper Bann Assembly member Carla Lockhart, the first woman to represent a County Armagh constituency at Westminster since the Act of Union.
Upper Bann was oversized. One of the zombie reviews controversially suggested radically redrawing the constituency by adding parts of East Tyrone such as Dungannon, but the final recommendations are more modest. The wards of Aghagallon and Magheralin are transferred to Lagan Valley, with the Loughbrickland ward going to South Down. In compensation, Loughgall is gained from Newry & Armagh. For the first time, Sinn Féin overtook the DUP to become the largest party at the 2022 Assembly election and followed this up with an 8% increase at this year's locals. Though the unionist side leads overall, Lockhart will need UUP tactical votes to stave off the Sinn Féin challenge.
Despite a significant nationalist minority, the constituency has been a safe unionist seat, with little to no demographic change. Social and sectarian divisions have often been stark with particular polarisation in the North Armagh section.
Craigavon was planned as a new city in the 1960s, modelled on similar developments such as Cumbernauld or Milton Keynes and based on the existing towns of Lurgan and Portadown. Population projections, later shown to be inaccurate, suggested the need for substantial new housing. The idea was to create a continuous urban area in North Armagh on modernist principles and attract investment and Belfast overspill to live in religiously mixed communities. From the beginning, the development was controversial. Nationalist politicians questioned why money should be spent there, in the Unionist East, rather than develop Derry city. Unionist politicians questioned the viability of the project and similarly suggested that the funds be used in existing towns instead. The criticisms proved correct. Most of Craigavon was not built, with instead a sprawl of estates called Brownlow constructed.
The latter area is predominantly Catholic. Lurgan and Portadown are sharply divided, with a Catholic north half and a Protestant southern half. The south shore of Lough Neagh is almost entirely Catholic, while the towns immediately south of Lurgan, such as Waringstown and Donaghcloney are over 90% Protestant. Banbridge is more mixed, with the Catholic community reaching nearly 40%. Lawrencetown is over 85% Catholic, while Gilford and Loughbrickland have a slight Catholic majority. Overall, the sectarian balance is close to the NI average. 44% had a Catholic community background at the 2011 census, tenth of the 18 constituencies.
These divisions led to bitter infighting during The Troubles and beyond. Tensions over Orange Order marching routes at Drumcree in Portadown saw the area become the unwelcome focus of national headlines in the late 1990s. As well as IRA activity, the Mid Ulster UVF was one of the organisation's more violent branches and some of its members rejected the UVF ceasefire, forming the LVF centred around Portadown.
While Upper Bann’s socio-economic indicators are around or slightly better than the Northern Ireland average, this obscures stark divisions. In 2017, seven of the 54 Super Output Areas in Upper Bann (including parts of Woodville, Drumgask and Court wards), were ranked in the 10% most deprived wards in Northern Ireland. Banbridge is slightly more prosperous than average.
At the 2011 census, the average age was 36.7 years, the sixth youngest. In the 2016 Brexit referendum, 52.6% backed leave: the fifth highest leave vote in NI.
Banbridge council was a UUP bastion, with the party maintaining rare single-party control from 1973 until 2001. Though they came close to outright control of Craigavon council, this was never achieved. Besides a Nationalist vote of close on 40%, the DUP always maintained a significant presence on the council. Alliance were usually able to win a council seat or two and until the late 1990s, the Workers’ Party counted this as one of their strongest areas, finally disappearing at the 1997 council elections.
The DUP and Sinn Féin overtook their UUP and SDLP rivals at the 2005 local elections and have widened that gap in recent times. At the 2023 local elections, the DUP won a 4th seat in Lurgan, taking the UUP's only seat there. The UUP only managed to stay ahead of the DUP in Banbridge. The SDLP were wiped out, losing all 4 council seats within the constituency.
Like Craigavon, Upper Bann’s creation was controversial, as it packed the best Unionist areas of Armagh and South Down into one constituency, tilting the rump of the latter two constituencies towards the SDLP. (Though both the parent constituencies would probably have had slight Nationalist majorities by now.) At the local enquiries following the provisional recommendations, the UUP and DUP instead suggested constituencies of Newry & Mourne and Armagh & Banbridge, though how Craigavon council would have made up the numbers for the third seat is not specified in the reports.
From the outset, Upper Bann was tipped to be the seat of the future UUP leader. This did occur, but not in the way foreseen. Former Armagh MP Harold McCusker won the first contest in the constituency. Seen as a leading light of the party, he served as deputy leader of the UUP group in the NI Assembly. A comfortable victory, with 57% of the vote in 1983, was followed by 80% in a two-way contest in the 1986 by-election in which his Workers’ Party opponent achieved that party’s highest ever vote share in such an election. However, McCusker died a few days after his 50th birthday in 1990.
The resultant by-election was won by the UUP’s David Trimble, who became UUP leader 5 years later. Trimble’s “victory jig” hand-in-hand with Ian Paisley after an Orange Parade had gone through the Catholic Garvaghy Road area, and his background as deputy leader of the more militant Vanguard Party led most observers to label him as a hardliner. Dissenting voices pointed out that Trimble had backed Vanguard leader Bill Craig’s suggestions of a voluntary coalition with the SDLP which had split the party.
Trimble’s tenure as UUP leader was a turbulent time. He was instrumental in the negotiations which led to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, receiving a Nobel Peace Prize as a result. He became First Minister in the Northern Ireland Assembly which was the result of the Agreement. However, these moves towards power-sharing, which included significant concessions to Sinn Féin, earned him the ire of the DUP and various loyalist groups.
In 2001 there was intense speculation that DUP leader Ian Paisley would move from his North Antrim base to challenge Trimble, but in the end this did not materialise. Trimble nonetheless saw his majority slashed to just over 2,000 in a bitter contest against the new DUP candidate David Simpson, in which Trimble was heckled and jostled at the count. In the 2005 election the DUP had moved further ahead across the region and Simpson comfortably unseated Trimble by over 5,000 votes. The two elections in 2010 and 2015 saw the UUP close the gap, with Simpson’s majority cut to 2,264 votes in 2015. However, the two most recent elections have seen the UUP fall away, with the DUP polling just over 40% and around 8,000 votes ahead of their nearest rivals.
While in office, Simpson attracted controversy for his opposition to homosexuality, support of homeopathy and creationism, and Evangelical Protestant views. This provided ammunition for his opponents when it emerged that he was leaving his wife of 30 years following his extra-marital affair. He retired before the 2019 election. His successor is former Lurgan councillor and Upper Bann Assembly member Carla Lockhart, the first woman to represent a County Armagh constituency at Westminster since the Act of Union.
Upper Bann was oversized. One of the zombie reviews controversially suggested radically redrawing the constituency by adding parts of East Tyrone such as Dungannon, but the final recommendations are more modest. The wards of Aghagallon and Magheralin are transferred to Lagan Valley, with the Loughbrickland ward going to South Down. In compensation, Loughgall is gained from Newry & Armagh. For the first time, Sinn Féin overtook the DUP to become the largest party at the 2022 Assembly election and followed this up with an 8% increase at this year's locals. Though the unionist side leads overall, Lockhart will need UUP tactical votes to stave off the Sinn Féin challenge.
