Irish Independence Party

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The Irish Independence Party (IIP) was an nationalist political party in Northern Ireland, founded in October 1977 by Frank McManus (former Unity MP for Fermanagh & South Tyrone between 1970 and 1974) and Fergus McAteer (son of Eddie McAteer, who had been leader of the Nationalist Party between 1953 and 1959). The party was effectively a merger of Unity and the Nationalist Party as the bulk of activists and councillors from the two movements joined IIP. However several previously independent councillors also joined the party and the party was boosted in the late seventies by the defection of a prominent Protestant Larne SDLP councillor, John Turnley, later the party chairman, who was killed in 1980 in Carnlough, County Antrim by an attack claimed by the Ulster Defence Association.

The party first came to prominence by standing three candidates in the 1979 UK general election. Its best result came in the Mid Ulster constituency where Patrick Fahy captured 12,055 votes, however the main effect was to split the Nationalist vote and prevent the Social Democratic and Labour Party from gaining the seat.

The IIP continued to grow as it became involved in the campaign to support prisoners in the Maze prison who were "on the blanket" and later hunger strike. The IIP won 21 seats on councils in the local elections of 1981 as a result of its involvement although this support was fairly localised with 17 of the 21 seats being won in just four councils Fermanagh, Londonderry, Omagh and Newry & Mourne. However for a short period of time it came to be accepted by some as a voice of Irish republicanism (although a number of other groups had similar but smaller localised support, with both the People's Democracy and the Irish Republican Socialist Party securing 2 seats each in Belfast at the same election).

The IIP boycotted the Assembly elections in October 1982 leaving the field clear for Sinn Féin who began standing candidates in elections in the early 1980s. As a result, the IIP lost republican support, for example in the first by-election in which Sinn Féin stood in Omagh in 1983 the IIP were only able to poll 5% in a seat that they had previously held while the Sinn Féin candidate took 60%. Meantime moderate nationalists had remained with the SDLP. The party remained active until at least 1985, when it had four councillors elected in local council elections, but appears to have been disbanded before the next local elections in 1989.

McAteer, who was effectively leader of the IIP, currently runs an accountancy firm in Derry, Fergus McAteer & Co, which he first set up in 1973, and is now one of the prominent firms in the city. McManus is now a solicitor with offices in Lisnaskea and Enniskillen and is also involved in the Fermanagh Trust charity and the local GAA.