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The Parliament of Northern Ireland was the home rule legislature created under the Government of Ireland Act 1920, which existed from June 7, 1921 to March 30, 1972, when it was suspended. It was subsequently abolished under the Constitution of Northern Ireland Act, 1973.The Parliament of Northern Ireland was bicameral, consisting of a House of Commons with 52 seats, and an indirectly-elected Senate with 26 seats.
1 House of Commons
The House of Commons had 52 members, of which 48 were for territorial seats and four were for graduates of Queen's University, Belfast. The Government of Ireland Act prescribed that elections to the House of Commons be by the Single Transferable Vote (STV), though the Parliament was given power to alter the electoral system from three years after its first meeting. The STV system was the subject of criticism from grassroots Unionists but because the three year period ended during the Labour government of 1924, the government decided not to provoke the known nationalist sympathies of many Labour backbenchers and held the second election on the same basis. The loss of eight Unionist seats in that election caused great acrimony and in 1929 the system was changed to first past the post for all territorial constituencies, though STV was retained for the university seats.
The boundary change was not made by an impartial boundary commission but by the Unionist government, for which it was accused of gerrymandering. The charges that the Stormont seats (as opposed to local council wards) were gerrymandered against Nationalists is disputed by historians (since the number of Nationalists elected under the two systems barely changed), though it is agreed that losses under the change to single member seats boundaries were suffered by Independent Unionists, the LiberalsThe Liberal Party was one of the two major British political parties from the early 19th century until the 1920s, and a third party of varying strength and importance up to 1988, when it merged with the Social Democratic Party to form a new party which wo and the Northern Ireland Labour PartyThe Northern Ireland Labour Party was a political party which operated from 1924 until the 1980s. It was founded as a socialist political party and found its main bed of support amongst working class voters in Belfast. It initially declined to take a posi. Population movements were so small that these boundaries were used almost everywhere until the Parliament was dissolved in 1972. In 1968Events Undated Booker Prize for Fiction is established by Booker plc. 1968 is known as the year of the Prague Spring and also the year of the Paris riots. The ASCII character code is standardized as ANSI Standard X3. Nauru adopt his national anthem of the the government abolished the Queen's University constituency (long after university constituenciesUniversity constituencies existed from 1603 until 1950 to allow a University to be represented in the United Kingdom Parliament. King James I of England, on ascending the English throne, brought to the English Parliament a practice which had been used in had been abolished at WestminsterThe Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme (it alone has parliamentary sovereignty) legislative institution in the United Kingdom and British overseas territories. At its head is the Sovereign; it also includ) and created four new constituencies in the outskirts of Belfast. This change helped the Unionists, as they held only two of the University seats but won all four of the newly created seats. However there had long been calls outside Unionism to abolish the graduate franchise (and other anomalies) and to have "one person one vote".
2 Senate
The Senate was very much a last minute addition to the Parliament, after the original plans for a single senate covering both the Stormont and Dublin Parliaments was deemed impractical.
Twenty-four senators were elected by the House of Commons using the Single Transferable Vote. The elections were carried out after each general election, with 12 members elected for two Parliaments each time. The other two seats were held ex officio by the Lord Mayors of BelfastThis article is about the city of Belfast in Northern Ireland. See also: Belfast (disambiguation). Belfast is the largest city in Northern Ireland and the Irish Province of Ulster, with a population of 277,391. It is the seat of government for Northern Ir and Londonderry. The Senate generally had the same party balance as the House of Commons, though abstaining parties and very small parties were not represented. Because of this, and its dependence on the House of Commons for election, it had virtually no impact.
