The Northern Ireland Women's Coalition (NIWC) was a minor political party in Northern Ireland. It was founded in 1996 by Catholic academic Monica McWilliams and Protestant social worker Pearl Sagar to contest the elections to the Northern Ireland Forum, the body for all-party talks which led to the Belfast Agreement. The party did not espouse a particular ideology and campaigned principally around the fact that it was led by women rather than men. It declined to take any position on whether Northern Ireland should be part of the United Kingdom or the Republic of Ireland, but strongly opposed sectarian violence from both sides. It attracted support from former supporters of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, but also the Social Democratic and Labour Party and the Ulster Unionist Party.
In the 1996 Forum elections McWilliams, Sagar and eight other Coalition candidates secured 7,731 votes (1.03% of the total) and did not win any constituency seats, but under a 'top-up' mechanism to ensure the representation of minor parties they were awarded two seats as Members of the Northern Ireland Forum, taken by McWilliams and Sagar. They attended the negotiations dominated by the other 108 representatives and supported (but did not, as often reported, sign) the ensuing intergovernmental Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement. The party claimed credit for the inclusion of a commitment to integrated education in the agreement, as did the much larger Alliance Party.
In the Northern Ireland Assembly election, 1998, the NIWC secured 13,018 votes (1.6%) and McWilliams, representing South Belfast, and Jane Morrice, representing North Down, were elected to the inaugural Northern Ireland Assembly. The party secured 3,301 votes (0.4%) and one council seat in the Northern Ireland local elections, 2001; McWilliams also stood unsuccessfully as a candidate in the United Kingdom general election, 2001, securing 2,968 votes (0.4% of the Northern Ireland total).
Both its MLAs lost their seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly Elections, 2003, when the party's vote fell to 5,785 (0.8%), and its last remaining elected representative lost her seat on North Down Borough Council in 2005 when the NIWC secured 0.1% of the Northern Ireland vote. The party never contested another election and on May 11, 2006 the Women's Coalition was formally wound up at a function held in Belfast.
Famous quotes containing the words northern ireland, northern, ireland and/or women:
“For generations, a wide range of shooting in Northern Ireland has provided all sections of the population with a pastime which ... has occupied a great deal of leisure time. Unlike many other countries, the outstanding characteristic of the sport has been that it was not confined to any one class.”
—Northern Irish Tourist Board. quoted in New Statesman (London, Aug. 29, 1969)
“The note of the white-throated sparrow, a very inspiriting but almost wiry sound, was first heard in the morning, and with this all the woods rang. This was the prevailing bird in the northern part of Maine. The forest generally was alive with them at this season, and they were proportionally numerous and musical about Bangor. They evidently breed in that State.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There is no topic ... more soporific and generally boring than the topic of Ireland as Ireland, as a nation.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)