Unionism after Good Friday and St Andrews

The period of the peace process was one of division and instability within Unionism. The pro-active Unionism proposed by the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, David Trimble, was an essential prerequisite for the signing of the Good Friday Agreement but it divided his own party and provided a major impetus to the emergence of the DUP as the dominant Unionist Party. The protracted process that culminated in the IRA's decommissioning of weapons sealed the fate of the UUP while providing the basis for a more stable form of duopolistic shared government with Sinn Fein. Since St Andrews Unionism has appeared more confident and consolidated but this masks long-term strategic and ideological problems