[6] The TUV was formed in December 2007 by Jim Allister after he and others had resigned from the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in March of that year.
[8] Prior to the St Andrews Agreement, the DUP had presented itself as an 'anti-Agreement' unionist party[9] opposed to numerous aspects of the Good Friday Agreement, e.g., the release of paramilitary prisoners before the end of their jail sentences, and the participation of Sinn Féin in the Northern Ireland government without complete decommissioning of Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) weapons and cessation of all IRA activity.
Its most prominent elected representative and best-known figure remains Jim Allister whose North Antrim constituency is the heartland of the party.
[8] In 2008, the TUV began to contest elections as a political party with the declared aim of building a democratic opposition to what they described as "the DUP/Sinn Fein regime".
Its policies on matters beyond the Northern Ireland constitutional question can be described as right-wing and socially conservative, and they emphasise a strong attachment to "traditional family values".
The TUV advocates an economically liberal, low taxation economy, with as much freedom of choice to the individual and small businesses as possible.
[25] The TUV advocates a controlled-immigration approach with effective border checks and a 'points-style' application procedure[26] whereby preference is given to prospective immigrants having skillsets which are in demand in Northern Ireland.
[29] They believe that when there is a public inquiry into the response to COVID-19 pandemic in Northern Ireland, a key element should be the question of whether care homes were sufficiently protected from the virus.
Furthermore, ministerial roles in the Northern Ireland Executive are apportioned (via the D'Hondt mathematical formula) to political parties according to their respective strengths in the Assembly.
In the event that no voluntary coalition could be negotiated, the TUV would prefer that Northern Ireland be governed from Westminster while retaining the Assembly and its associated committees - so-called 'legislative devolution'.
[43] At a Craigavon Borough Council local by-election in Lurgan on 14 January 2010, the TUV candidate won 19.3% of first preference votes.
Sinn Féin's sitting MEP Bairbre de Brún topped the poll (a first for any Irish nationalist or republican candidate).
The Ulster Conservative and Unionist candidate Jim Nicholson took the second seat, with Diane Dodds of the DUP coming in third place.
Jim Allister called the results a victory for unionism and indicated his intention to stand TUV candidates in future Northern Ireland Assembly and parliamentary elections.
Source: RTÉ News On 6 May at the 2010 general election for the Westminster parliament, TUV received 26,300 votes in the 10 constituencies it contested.
They won three seats in Causeway Coast and Glens, two in Antrim and Newtownabbey and one each in Belfast, North Down and Ards and Lisburn and Castlereagh.
Jim Allister once again retained his North Antrim seat in the 2017 Northern Ireland Assembly election, taking 16% of first preference votes.
TUV candidates won 65,788 first preference votes, more than three times the party's score in the 2017 Assembly election[56] and 7.6% of the total first preference vote but only one of the 90 members elected to the new Northern Ireland Assembly was a TUV candidate; Jim Allister in the North Antrim constituency.
[64] In March 2024, a Carrickfergus councillor, David Clarke, joined the TUV after leaving the DUP over "bullying" he had allegedly faced in the party.
Although the press release was issued under the name of the then TUV vice-chairman Keith Harbinson, he insisted that the phrase was not his own but had instead been added by another, unnamed, employee of the party.
Knight had previously served seven years imprisonment for taking part in the Greysteel massacre and Castlerock killings, but had been released early (in 2000) under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.
[68] In November 2012, Ballymena Borough TUV councillor and former player for the Ireland national rugby union team, Davy Tweed, was convicted of child sexual abuse between 1988 and 1995.
[71] Tweed's conviction was overturned in 2016 after a challenge by his lawyers on grounds that there were "flaws in how bad character evidence was put before the jury".
[74] In August 2021, the TUV defended its Assembly candidate for East Belfast, John Ross, who was criticised by the Bloody Sunday Trust (a registered charity[75]) for comments he made about Bloody Sunday (1972), when fourteen unarmed Catholic civilians were shot dead by the Parachute Regiment.
In April 2019, while addressing a protest for British Army veterans, Ross had called Bloody Sunday "a very successful operation" by the paratroopers.
[76] The chair of the Trust said: "Bloody Sunday has been the subject of a meticulous public inquiry which found that all those killed and wounded were innocent" and asked TUV to re-consider whether Ross was a suitable candidate.