Martin Smyth
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Martin Smyth
William Martin Smyth (born 15 June 1931) is a Northern Irish unionist politician, who served as the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) Member of Parliament (MP) for Belfast South from 1982 to 2005. He was a vice-president of the Conservative Monday Club. He is also an ordained minister of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland and was minister of Raffrey, County Down from 1957 to 1963 and of Alexandra Church, Belfast 1963–1982. Early life Smyth was brought up in the Donegall Road area of Belfast and attended Methodist College Belfast and Trinity College Dublin. Beginning of political career Smyth became Grand Master of the Orange Order in 1971, in what was seen at the time as a working-class "grass roots" revolt against the till middle-class leadership of the Order. (He remained Grand Master until 1996). In the 1970s, he was a Deputy Leader of the Vanguard movement which had emerged as a faction within the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP). However, when this faction split from the U ...
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Robert Bradford (NI Politician)
Robert Jonathan Bradford (8 June 1941 – 14 November 1981) was a Methodist Minister and a Vanguard Unionist and Ulster Unionist Member of Parliament for the Belfast South constituency in Northern Ireland until his assassination by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) on 14 November 1981. Footballer Bradford was born on 8 June 1941 to a Belfast family resident in Limavady, County Londonderry, due to the wartime evacuation. Bradford's father left the family not long after his birth and his mother died so he was raised by foster parents. A talented footballer, Bradford signed for Glenavon F.C. as a teenager and his displays soon attracted the attentions of the English side Sheffield Wednesday F.C., who invited him to a trial. However, Bradford was not signed by the club and returned to Northern Ireland to resume his career with the then Belfast-based club Distillery. Religion Bradford gave up football in 1964, after deciding to train to become a Methodist minister ...
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Vanguard Unionist Progressive Party
The Vanguard Unionist Progressive Party (VUPP), informally known as Ulster Vanguard, was a unionist political party which existed in Northern Ireland between 1972 and 1978. Led by William Craig, the party emerged from a split in the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) and was closely affiliated with several loyalist paramilitary groups. The party was set up in opposition to power sharing with Irish nationalist parties. It opposed the Sunningdale Agreement and was involved in extra-parliamentary activity against the agreement. However, in 1975, during discussions on the constitutional status of Northern Ireland in the constitutional convention, William Craig suggested the possibility of voluntary power sharing with the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party. In consequence the party split, with dissenters forming the United Ulster Unionist Party. Thereafter Vanguard declined and following poor results in the 1977 local government elections, Craig merged the remainder of Vang ...
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September 1995 Ulster Unionist Party Leadership Election
The September 1995 Ulster Unionist Party leadership election began on 28 August 1995 when James Molyneaux resigned as leader of the Ulster Unionist Party following a year of political setbacks for his party. Lee Reynolds, a Young Unionist had contested the leadership at the Ulster Unionist Council AGM in March 1995, receiving a small but significant number of votes. It was widely speculated that David Trimble was one of those behind Reynolds's candidature, although Trimble, his aides and Reynolds's supporters all denied this at the time and subsequently. The UUP has held a leadership election every March since at least the Ulster Unionist Council constitution was altered in 1973, however it is rarely contested. Molyneaux's successor was elected by delegates to the Ulster Unionist Council met on 8 September 1995. After three rounds of voting the election was won by David Trimble. Candidates * Ken Maginnis, MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone * William Ross, MP for East ...
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Western Goals (UK)
Western Goals may refer to: *The Western Goals Foundation, a private intelligence dissemination network active on the right-wing in the United States *The Western Goals Institute Western Goals Institute (WGI) was a far-right pressure group and think-tank in Britain, formed in 1989 from Western Goals UK, which was founded in 1985 as an offshoot of the U.S. Western Goals Foundation.''Labour Research'', November 1988, p. 2. ...
, a conservative pressure group in Britain {{disambiguation ...
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Harvey Ward
Harvey Grenville Ward (1927 – April 1995) was a Director-General of the Rhodesian Broadcasting Corporation noted for his anticommunism and for supporting Ian Smith's government in Rhodesia and South Africa. Ward was a leading member of the Conservative Monday Club. Early life Ward was born in Southern Rhodesia to an English father and a South African mother. His parents settled in Africa and were engaged in enterprises such as the financing of railway construction and the building of numerous hotels. They managed the Victoria Falls Hotel until 1937. He chose a career in journalism by starting with the Cape Argus and then becoming a specialist in African journalism covering the great social upheavals of the late 1950s and the 1960s for Reuters. He then settled in Salisbury and became Head of News Services at the Rhodesia Herald, eventually becoming Director-General of the Rhodesian Broadcasting Corporation, which effectively put him in charge of government propaganda. Ward ...
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Alfred Sherman
Sir Alfred Sherman (10 November 1919 – 26 August 2006) was an English writer, journalist, and political analyst. Described by a long-time associate as "a brilliant polymath, a consummate homo politicus, and one of the last true witnesses to the 20th century", he was a Communist volunteer in the Spanish Civil War but later changed his views completely and became an adviser to Margaret Thatcher. Personal life Sherman was born in Hackney, London, to Jewish immigrants from Russia, Jacob Vladimir and Eva Sherman. His early years were spent in grinding poverty; as a child he suffered from rickets. He attended Hackney Downs County Secondary School, which was then a grammar school and regarded as a flagship of opportunity. He went on to Chelsea Polytechnic, where he studied science. He married Zahava Zazi née Levin in 1958, and they had one son, Gideon. After her death from cancer in 1993 he married Lady Angela Sherman in 2001. Young communist Alfred Sherman joined the Communist ...
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Andrew Hunter (British Politician)
Andrew Robert Frederick Ebenezer Hunter (born 8 January 1943) is a British politician and a member of the Orange Order. He was Member of Parliament (MP) for Basingstoke from 1983 until 2005. From 1990 to 2001 he was Vice-Chairman of the Conservative Monday Club and was chairman as of 2008, succeeding Lord Sudeley. Early life Hunter is the son of RAF Squadron Leader Roger F Hunter by his marriage to Winifred M Nelson/Hunter. He attended St George's School, Harpenden and studied at the University of Durham ( St John's College), gaining a BA in Theology in 1966 and an MA in History in 1968. He gained a Diploma in Education from Jesus College, Cambridge in 1967 then studied at Westcott House, Cambridge. Hunter worked as an Assistant Master at St Martin's School, Northwood from 1970–1971 and then joined Harrow School, where he taught until 1983. Parliamentary career Hunter contested Southampton Itchen as a Conservative in 1979, but lost to incumbent MP Bob Mitchell. Hunter ...
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Walter Walker (British Army Officer)
General Sir Walter Colyear Walker, (11 November 1912 – 12 August 2001) was a senior British Army officer who served as Commander-in-Chief of Allied Forces Northern Europe from 1969 until his retirement in 1972. He commanded the 4/8th Gurkhas Rifles against the Japanese Army in Burma during the Second World War. He commanded the 1/6 Gurkha Rifles from 1950 to 1953 and he commanded the 99th Gurkha Infantry Brigade Group from 1957 to 1959 during the Malayan Emergency. Walker was Director of Operations in Borneo from 1962 to 1965 during the Indonesia-Malaysia confrontation. In retirement, he attracted some controversy by publicising his views on the political situation in Britain during the mid 1970s. Early life Walker was born on a tea plantation in British India to a military family, one of four sons. At the end of the First World War Walker and his family moved back to Britain and he was sent to Blundell's School in Devon. Even as a child Walker had a militaristic streak; in ...
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Western Goals Institute
Western Goals Institute (WGI) was a far-right pressure group and think-tank in Britain, formed in 1989 from Western Goals UK, which was founded in 1985 as an offshoot of the U.S. Western Goals Foundation.''Labour Research'', November 1988, p. 2. It was anti-communist and opposed non-white immigration. Early aims The Western Goals Institute was founded (as Western Goals UK) in May 1985 as the British branch of the American organisation the Western Goals Foundation. In March 1987, Western Goals UK had filed a complaint with the Charity Commission for England and Wales against three major British charities, Oxfam, War on Want, and Christian Aid stating that they were involved in political campaigning work (which was then contrary to UK charity law) in support of left-wing organizations due to their campaigns against apartheid in South Africa. The Charities Commission partially upheld the Western Goals complaint, obliging War on Want (which at the time was led by George Galloway, lat ...
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Anglo-Irish Agreement
The Anglo-Irish Agreement was a 1985 treaty between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland which aimed to help bring an end to the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The treaty gave the Irish government an advisory role in Northern Ireland's government while confirming that there would be no change in the constitutional position of Northern Ireland unless a majority of its citizens agreed to join the Republic. It also set out conditions for the establishment of a devolved consensus government in the region. The Agreement was signed on 15 November 1985, at Hillsborough Castle, by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Irish Taoiseach (prime minister) Garret FitzGerald. Background During her first term as Prime Minister, Thatcher had unsuccessful talks with both Jack Lynch and Charles Haughey on solving the conflict in Northern Ireland. In December 1980 Thatcher and Haughey met in Dublin, with the subsequent communiqué calling for joint studies of "possible new in ...
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Northern Ireland Assembly
sco-ulster, Norlin Airlan Assemblie , legislature = Seventh Assembly , coa_pic = File:NI_Assembly.svg , coa_res = 250px , house_type = Unicameral , house1 = , leader1_type = Speaker , leader1 = Alex Maskey , election1 = 11 January 2020 , members = 90 , salary = £55,000 per year + expenses , structure1 = PartyNI2022.svg , structure1_res = 250px , political_groups1 = * Sinn Féin (27) N * DUP (25) U * Alliance (17) O * UUP (9) U * SDLP (8) N * TUV ( 1) U * PBP ( 1) O * Speaker (0) * Speaker (0) , political_groups2= , committees1 = , last_election1 = 5 May 2022 , next_election1 = , voting_system1 = Single transferable vote , session_room = NI Assembly chamber.png , session_res = 250px , session_room2 = StormontGeneral.jpg , session_res2 = 250px , meeting_pl ...
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1982 Belfast South By-election
The Belfast South by-election was held on 4 March 1982 following the death of Robert Bradford, Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) Member of Parliament for Belfast South. Bradford had held the seat since the February 1974 general election, initially for the Vanguard Progressive Unionist Party, but since 1978 as a UUP member. He was murdered by the Provisional IRA on 14 November 1981 while holding a political surgery in a community centre in Finaghy. Unusually, the Seanad Éireann passed a motion of sympathy for his death. While Belfast South was one of the UUP's strongest seats, they had suffered several electoral setbacks, and had lost two other Belfast seats to the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) at the 1979 general election. The DUP had not contested Belfast South in 1979, so when they announced their intention to contest the by-election, many commentators expected them to win the seat. The UUP decided to stand Martin Smyth; (a minister of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland a ...
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