Jim Allister

James Hugh Allister (born 2 April 1953) is a British Unionist politician and barrister in Northern Ireland. He founded the Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) political party in 2007, leading the party since its formation.
Allister has served as a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly (MLA) for North Antrim since 2011, and is the TUV’s only representative in the Assembly.

He was formerly a member of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), for which he successfully stood for election in 2004 to the European Parliament for Northern Ireland, succeeding Ian Paisley. He continued as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) following his resignation from the DUP and his subsequent establishment of the TUV in 2007.

Background

Allister was born in Listooder, Crossgar, in County Down where he lived until he was nine when his family moved to Craigantlet, Newtownards. Allister was a pupil at Barnamaghery Primary School and later Dundonald Primary School when he moved house. After attending Regent House Grammar School in Newtownards, Allister graduated with a Bachelor of Laws with Honours in Constitutional Law from Queen's University, Belfast. In 1974, he unsuccessfully stood for the post of President of Queen's University Belfast Students' Union.

He was called to the Bar of Northern Ireland as a barrister in 1976, where he specialised in criminal law, and, in 2001, was called to the Senior Bar as a Queen's Counsel.

Political career

Allister quit the Official Unionist Party (OUP) to join the DUP at its founding in 1971."No brotherly love as rivals battle it out in East Antrim", ''Belfast Telegraph'', 3 June 1983. In June 1972, as chairman of the Queen's University Democratic Unionist Party Association, Allister wrote a letter published in the ''Belfast Telegraph'' arguing that Ian Paisley was closely aligned with Enoch Powell's "integrationist" stance that Northern Ireland should be closer to the rest of the United Kingdom, and that other Unionist leaders were in favour of devolution. In March 1973 Jim Allister was elected to the post of publicity officer for the Queen's DUP Association. He was involved in the 1974 Ulster Workers' Council strike against the Sunningdale Agreement, which had been signed the previous December. A senior loyalist politician recalled walking into the Ulster Workers' Council HQ on Hawthornden Road in Belfast to find Allister and Peter Robinson "giggling" while phoning Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) headquarters claiming to be Catholics in distress in a loyalist area afflicted by the strike and asking the SDLP to send a car to rescue them. He served as a European Parliament assistant to Ian Paisley from 1980 to 1982. In 1982 he was elected as a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly at Stormont for North Antrim and served as the DUP Assembly Chief Whip. In 1983 Allister stated that if the DUP were faced with a choice between no devolved government and a power-sharing government with the SDLP or other Nationalist representatives, his party would opt for not having a devolved government. He was also the Vice-Chairman of Scrutiny Committee of Department of Finance and Personnel from October 1982 to June 1986. Outside the Stormont Assembly, he was a member of Newtownabbey Borough Council from 1985 to 1987. In 1983, he stood as a DUP candidate in the Westminster election for East Antrim. However, he narrowly lost to Roy Beggs following a bitter campaign in which he denounced Beggs as a "political gypsy" for leaving the DUP and joining the OUP; Beggs had resigned from the DUP after leading a Larne council delegation to Dún Laoghaire in the Republic of Ireland.

Following the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement in November 1985 by the Thatcher and FitzGerald governments, he was a high-profile"The Paisley heirs apparent", ''Irish Independent'', June 10 1986. opponent of the treaty. He was a member of the Joint Unionist Working Party, a body set up by his party and the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) to oversee the unionist campaign against the Agreement. During the one-day loyalist strike against the Agreement in March 1986 it was reportedly difficult for journalists to move around the "loyalist stronghold" of Larne without the permission of Allister. He was also very vocal in his criticism of Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) Chief Constable John Hermon; the ''Irish Independent'' wrote in June 1986 that most of the statements sent by Allister with regards to the Chief Constable could not be printed "having regards to the law of defamation and libel". In May 1986 Allister led thirteen other DUP politicians in an occupation of the telephone exchange at Parliament Buildings at Stormont and blocked calls from going through to government departments. The siege ended after the RUC used a sledgehammer to breach the barricaded door. Allister and then DUP deputy leader Peter Robinson held a press conference in September that year threatening to declare Northern Ireland independent from the United Kingdom if the Anglo-Irish Agreement wasn't withdrawn. In November 1986 the SDLP called for Allister and other Unionist politicians to be prosecuted for incitement following a "violent" speech at a DUP demonstration in Carrickfergus, afterwards the crowd had attacked Catholic property resulting in the death of an elderly Catholic woman. That same month Allister appeared alongside Ian Paisley at a rally inaugurating the Ballymena battalion of the new loyalist paramilitary group, Ulster Resistance.

His departure from active politics in June 1987 followed a reported disagreement with Paisley over a voting pact with James Molyneaux's UUP. The situation resembled fellow unionist politician and barrister Robert McCartney's in the North Down constituency. McCartney was expelled from the UUP around the same time for not accepting the policy of the leadership.

Allister returned to the DUP in 2004 and successfully ran as the party's candidate in that year's European Parliamentary election, topping the poll with 175,000 first preference votes, 32% of the total. He proved to be an assiduous MEP, participating in many more parliamentary debates and asking many more questions than his fellow Northern Irish MEPS Bairbre de Brún of Sinn Féin and Jim Nicholson of the Ulster Unionist Party. Allister was also active as a member of the European Parliament Fisheries Committee and was ranked by the Tax Payers' Alliance as the most "hard-working, transparent and pro-taxpayer" of the 75 United Kingdom MEPs during the 2004-2009 European Parliament.

On 27 March 2007, Jim Allister resigned from the DUP because of the party's decision to enter into government with Sinn Féin. It was the second occasion on which he had resigned from the party.

In late 2007, there was speculation that Jim Allister might found a new Unionist political party. It was also claimed, on 10 October 2007, that he had been approached by the UK Independence Party (UKIP), but he in fact proceeded to found the Traditional Unionist Voice movement on 7 December 2007.

In the 2009 European elections, this time standing as a candidate of Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV), Jim Allister polled 13.5% of the first preference votes cast but was not re-elected.

Jim Allister stood as a TUV candidate in the 2010 Westminster Parliamentary election in the North Antrim constituency. Having polled well in the previous year's European election, Allister stood a chance of winning the seat. This would have been a tremendous loss to the DUP, as it has historically been the party's safest seat and the seat of DUP founder and former party leader Ian Paisley. He came second in the poll with 7,114 votes to the DUP's Ian Paisley Jr who polled 19,672 votes.

In the 2011 Northern Ireland Assembly election, Jim Allister was elected in the North Antrim constituency for the TUV and retained his seat in the 2016, 2017 and 2022 Assembly elections.

In August 2012, Allister called the Parades Commission "little Hitlers" when they placed restrictions on a loyalist parade.

Allister holds conservative views on social policy and is a supporter of the evangelical creationist lobby group, the Caleb Foundation.

Allister opposed a motion pardoning gay men convicted for formerly illegal homosexual acts.

An August 2021, opinion poll by the polling company LucidTalk found a large rise in support for Allister's party the TUV to 14% of first preference vote intentions in the upcoming May 2022 Northern Ireland Assembly elections. At the same time, the poll found that 51% of those who responded rated Allister's performance as "bad or awful", compared with "bad or awful" ratings for Paul Givan, Jeffrey Donaldson and Michelle O'Neill of 48%, 47% and 45% respectively.

See also

* Traditional Unionist Voice

References

External links

European Parliament profile''Leading for Ulster: Speaking for You'' (a collection of speeches by Jim Allister)Maiden Speech in European Parliament, 21 July 2004

{{DEFAULTSORT:Allister, Jim
1953 births
Living people
Traditional Unionist Voice politicians
Alumni of Queen's University Belfast
British King's Counsel
Democratic Unionist Party MEPs
MEPs for Northern Ireland 2004–2009
Members of Newtownabbey Borough Council
Northern Ireland MLAs 2011–2016
Northern Ireland MLAs 2016–2017
Northern Ireland MLAs 2017–2022
Northern Ireland MPAs 1982–1986
Northern Ireland King's Counsel
People educated at Regent House Grammar School
People from County Down
Presbyterians from Northern Ireland
20th-century King's Counsel
21st-century King's Counsel
Traditional Unionist Voice MEPs
Traditional Unionist Voice MLAs
British political party founders
Northern Ireland MLAs 2022–2027