Belfast Clifton was a constituency of the

Parliament of Northern Ireland The Parliament of Northern Ireland was the home rule legislature of Northern Ireland, created under the Government of Ireland Act 1920, which sat from 7 June 1921 to 30 March 1972, when it was suspended because of its inability to restore ord ...

Boundaries

Belfast Clifton was a

borough constituency In the United Kingdom (UK), each of the electoral areas or divisions called constituencies elects one member to the House of Commons. Within the United Kingdom there are five bodies with members elected by electoral districts called " constituen ...

comprising part of northern

Belfast Belfast (, , , ; from ) is the capital city and principal port of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan and connected to the open sea through Belfast Lough and the North Channel (Great Britain and Ireland), North Channel ...

. It was created in 1929 when the House of Commons (Method of Voting and Redistribution of Seats) Act (Northern Ireland) 1929 introduced

first-past-the-post First-past-the-post (FPTP)—also called choose-one, first-preference plurality (FPP), or simply plurality—is a single-winner voting rule. Voters mark one candidate as their favorite, or First-preference votes, first-preference, and the cand ...

elections throughout Northern Ireland. Belfast Clifton was created by the division of Belfast North into four new constituencies. It survived unchanged, returning one member of Parliament, until the

was temporarily suspended in 1972, and then formally abolished in 1973.The Northern Ireland House of Commons, 1921-1972
Northern Ireland Elections

Politics

In common with other seats in North Belfast, the seat had little

nationalist Nationalism is an idea or movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the State (polity), state. As a movement, it presupposes the existence and tends to promote the interests of a particular nation,Anthony D. Smith, Smith, A ...

presence. The seat was usually held by the

Ulster Unionist Party The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) is a Unionism in Ireland, unionist political party in Northern Ireland. The party was founded as the Ulster Unionist Council in 1905, emerging from the Irish Unionist Alliance in Ulster. Under Edward Carson, it l ...

, but a variety of

independent Unionist Independent Unionist is a label sometimes used by candidates in British elections to indicate their support for British unionism. It is most popularly associated with candidates in elections for the Parliament of Northern Ireland. Such candi ...

s contested it and occasionally won, and some labour movement candidates achieved strong results.

Members of Parliament

Election results

:At the

1929 This year marked the end of a period known in American history as the Roaring Twenties after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 ushered in a worldwide Great Depression. In the Americas, an agreement was brokered to end the Cristero War, a Catholic ...

and

1933 Northern Ireland general election The 1933 Northern Ireland general election was held on 30 November 1933. Like all previous elections to the Parliament of Northern Ireland, it produced a large majority for the Ulster Unionist Party. 33 of the 52 MPs (63%) were elected unop ...

s, Samuel Hall-Thompson was elected unopposed.

References

{{Authority control Clifton Northern Ireland Parliament constituencies established in 1929 Northern Ireland Parliament constituencies disestablished in 1973