We are the unholy alliance

What this is

United Ulster is the name under which a defined circle of residents of the nine counties issues discussion papers and high-level strategic advice. The papers do not speak for every person who lives here. They claim the right of citizens and residents of this place to examine incentives, costs and consequences in public.

We are not a government office, a political party, a campaign for office, or a charity. We do not collect members, votes or money through this site. You may register public support for the papers. That register is a count of support for the documents, not a membership list and not a party roll.

A separate page sets out the home-rule plan — a common holding of the people, so that those who join in own a part of the land and the yield, and that part can pass to their children. That model is not the papers, not an offer of shares, and not a request for money on this site.

Read the home rule plan

Register support for the papers

Continuity on this island

The historic population of Ireland was largely shaped by the Early Bronze Age and has shown substantial genetic continuity since. The first whole genomes that demonstrated this were recovered in Ulster — Ballynahatty in County Down and Rathlin Island in County Antrim. That is background for a people who live here, not a fourth policy paper and not a racial test of citizenship.

Read the background note

How a paper is authentic

A United Ulster paper is issued under the authenticating emblem, carries a date, and is published as a PDF on this site. That is the whole test. Comments, interviews and social posts are not papers. Only the dated PDF, bearing the emblem, is the text we stand over.

Why these papers

The first three papers follow the order in which a place is changed: who may come, who may own and employ, and who belongs. Immigration, land and business control, and citizenship are not separate hobbies. They are one structure. The fourth paper is the method: how the people who live here are notified, question officials, and decide on the street-level matters that follow from those structures. We started with substance, then with the manner of decision, because a territory of this size cannot afford distant capture of either.

The nine counties

One continuous historic territory. Two sovereign jurisdictions. An open land border and the Common Travel Area.

The Belfast / Good Friday Agreement

We work within the Agreement, not against it. It is an international treaty between the British and Irish governments, and a settlement among parties in Northern Ireland. It is also widely asked to carry meanings it does not contain.

What it does say is specific. It recognises the birthright of the people of Northern Ireland to identify as Irish, or British, or both, and to hold both citizenships. For that purpose the “people of Northern Ireland” are persons born in Northern Ireland who, at birth, had at least one parent who was a British citizen, an Irish citizen, or otherwise entitled to reside in Northern Ireland without restriction on their period of residence. It requires that sovereign power there be exercised with impartiality, equality of rights, freedom from discrimination for citizens, and parity of esteem for both communities. It assumes an open land border as part of the peace. It does not name the Common Travel Area, which predates 1998, but the CTA is the practical companion of that open border: it is an arrangement for British and Irish citizens, not a world ticket.

What it does not say is just as important. The Agreement does not create an open-door immigration policy. It does not enact “asylum for all”. It does not give the world a right to settle in the nine counties. It does not transfer immigration or asylum competence away from London and Dublin. As a matter of current law, those remain powers of the two sovereign governments, under their own statutes and under international refugee law, which is a law of protection for persons with a well-founded fear of persecution — not a general right of entry, family reunification, or citizenship by presence.

Confusing the birthright of the people of Northern Ireland with a duty to receive the world is a category error. The first is a guarantee to this place. The second is a policy choice, and it is one the Agreement does not make. An open border between the United Kingdom and Ireland makes third-country rules on either side a shared problem. That is an argument for coordination, not for pretending the treaty already forbade the conversation.

What we seek

Description of present law is not assent to it. We seek independent home rule for the historic nine counties: public power brought inward, exercised from Stormont, from Derry / Londonderry, and from Cavan — not from London, Dublin or Brussels.

That includes immigration and asylum. We do not accept that the people who live here must remain spectators while two external capitals — and, where it still binds, European rule — decide who may enter, stay, own, and belong. Those decisions should be made here, for this territory, by institutions seated in this territory.

Stormont already exists as a legislature of Northern Ireland. Derry / Londonderry is named because home rule for all nine counties cannot be a Belfast-only conversation, and cannot stop at the present six-county line. Cavan is named because the three Ulster counties of the Republic are part of the same continuous territory. Three offices — Stormont, Derry / Londonderry, Cavan — are the seats of that inward order: east, west, and south of the historic province. Bringing government inward means one home-rule order for the nine, not permanent partition of competence between Whitehall, Iveagh House and a devolved remainder.

This is a political object, not a claim that such a state already exists. Until it does, we write as residents, we publish papers, and we intend to be read in London and Dublin as well as from the three offices. We do not pretend the Agreement already delivered nine-county home rule. We also do not pretend that the present arrangement is the last word.

The economic counterpart is the home-rule plan: a common holding of the people, so land, yield and work stay here and pass to children, while public power is argued inward. That structure is described separately. It is not a live company and it is not a request for money here.

Read the home rule plan

What we ask of the reader

Read the papers. Think. Write to us if you have a correction or a serious question. Share them with representatives if you judge that useful. We are not asking for your vote, your money, or your membership.

Three offices

Home rule for the nine counties is written from three seats: east, west, and south. No street addresses or named officers are published. Correspondence is through one public email.

How to write

Correspondence is by form on this site, or by email to [email protected]. There is no named directory of representatives. The three offices are Stormont, Derry / Londonderry, and Cavan.

These documents are discussion papers and high-level strategic policy advice. They are not statute. They are designed to operate within the existing constitutional settlement, the Common Travel Area, the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement, and post-Brexit arrangements.