HOME





Hugh Smyth
Hugh Smyth OBE (16 March 1939 – 12 May 2014) was a Northern Irish Ulster Loyalist and politician who was leader of the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) from 1979 to 2002, as well as during an interim period in 2011. He was Lord Mayor of Belfast from 1994 to 1995, as well as a Belfast City Councillor for the Court and Belfast Area E DEAs from 1972 to January 2014, making him one of the longest-serving members on the Council. Smyth was awarded the Order of the British Empire in the 1996 New Year's Honours list. Emergence in politics Born in the Woodvale Road district of the Shankill Road area of Belfast, Smyth was one of nine children and was educated locally and worked as a metal bonder in the Short Brothers factory before entering full-time politics. Smyth first came to attention in the early 1970s when he served as a public spokesman for the Ulster Volunteer Force although he was not an active member of the organisation. His inspiration for politics was the struggle h ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Progressive Unionist Party
The Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) is a minor unionist political party in Northern Ireland. It was formed from the Independent Unionist Group operating in the Shankill area of Belfast, becoming the PUP in 1979. Linked to the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and Red Hand Commando (RHC), for a time it described itself as "the only left of centre unionist party" in Northern Ireland, with its main support base in the loyalist working class communities of Belfast. Since the Ulster Democratic Party's dissolution in 2001, the PUP has been the sole party in Northern Ireland representing paramilitary loyalism. The PUP has one elected representative on the Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Council, Russell Watton, the party's current leader. History The party was founded by Hugh Smyth in the mid-1970s as the "Independent Unionist Group" given the dissolution of the 1974 Volunteer Political Party. In 1977, two prominent members of the Northern Ireland Labour Party, David Overend and ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention
The Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention (NICC) was an elected body set up in 1975 by the United Kingdom Labour Party (UK), Labour government of Harold Wilson as an attempt to deal with constitutional issues surrounding the status of Northern Ireland. Formation of the Constitutional Convention The idea for a constitutional convention was first mooted by the Northern Ireland Office in its white paper ''The Northern Ireland Constitution'', published on 4 July 1974. The paper laid out plans for elections to a body which would seek agreement on a political settlement for Northern Ireland. The proposals became law with the enactment of the Northern Ireland Act 1974 later that month. With Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, Lord Chief Justice Robert Lowry, Baron Lowry, Robert Lowry appointed to chair the new body, elections were announced for 1 May 1975. The elections were held for the 78-member body using the single transferable vote system of proportional representatio ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Unionism (Ireland)
Unionism in Ireland is a political tradition that professes loyalty to the Monarchy of the United Kingdom, crown of the United Kingdom and to the union it represents with England, Scotland and Wales. The overwhelming sentiment of Ireland's Protestantism in Ireland, Protestant minority, unionism mobilised in the decades following Catholic Emancipation in 1829 to oppose restoration of a separate Parliament of Ireland, Irish parliament. Since Partition of Ireland, Partition in 1921, as Ulster unionism its goal has been to retain Northern Ireland as a devolved region within the United Kingdom and to resist the prospect of an United Ireland, all-Ireland republic. Within the framework of the Good Friday Agreement, 1998 Belfast Agreement, which concluded three decades of political violence, unionists have shared office with Irish nationalists in a reformed Northern Ireland Assembly. As of February 2024, they no longer do so as the larger faction: they serve in an executive with an Iri ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Ulster Volunteer Force (1966)
The Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) is an Ulster loyalism, Ulster loyalist paramilitary group based in Northern Ireland. Formed in 1965, it first emerged in 1966. Its first leader was Gusty Spence, a former Royal Ulster Rifles soldier from Northern Ireland. The group undertook Timeline of Ulster Volunteer Force actions, an armed campaign of almost thirty years during The Troubles. It declared a ceasefire in 1994 and officially ended its campaign in 2007, although some of its members have continued to engage in violence and criminal activities. The group is a proscribed organisation and is on the List of designated terrorist organizations, terrorist organisation list of the United Kingdom. The UVF's declared goals were to combat Irish republicanism, Irish republican paramilitaries – particularly the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) – and to maintain Northern Ireland's status as part of the United Kingdom. It was responsible for more than 500 deaths. The vast majority (m ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Short Brothers
Short Brothers plc, usually referred to as Shorts or Short, is an aerospace company based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Shorts was founded in 1908 in London, and was the first company in the world to make production aeroplanes. It was particularly notable for its flying boat designs manufactured into the 1950s. In 1943, Shorts was Nationalization, nationalised and later denationalised, and in 1948 moved from its main base at Rochester, Kent to Belfast. In the 1960s, Shorts mainly produced turboprop airliners, major components for aerospace primary manufacturers, and missiles for the British Armed Forces. Shorts was primarily HM Government, government-owned until being bought by Bombardier Inc., Bombardier in 1989 and, in 2007, was the largest manufacturing concern in Northern Ireland. In November 2020, Bombardier sold its Belfast operations to Spirit AeroSystems. The company's products include aircraft components, engine nacelles and aircraft flight control systems for Bomba ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

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 is the second-largest city in Ireland (after Dublin), with an estimated population of in , and a Belfast metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of 671,559. First chartered as an English settlement in 1613, the town's early growth was driven by an influx of Scottish people, Scottish Presbyterian Church in Ireland, Presbyterians. Their descendants' disaffection with Kingdom of Ireland, Ireland's Protestant Ascendancy, Anglican establishment contributed to the Irish Rebellion of 1798, rebellion of 1798, and to the Acts of Union 1800, union with Kingdom of Great Britain, Great Britain in 1800—later regarded as a key to the town's industrial transformation. When granted City status in the United Kingdom#Northern Ireland, city s ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Shankill Road
The Shankill Road () is one of the main roads leading through West Belfast, in Northern Ireland. It runs through the working-class, predominantly loyalist, area known as the Shankill. The road stretches westwards for about from central Belfast and is lined, to an extent, by shops. The residents live in the many streets which branch off the main road. The area along the Shankill Road forms part of the Court district electoral area. In Ulster-Scots it is known as either ''Auld Kirk Gate'' ("Old Church Way"), or as ''Auld Kirk Raa'' ("Old Church Road"). In Irish, it is known as "" ("the road of the old church"). History The first Shankill residents lived at the bottom of what is now known as Glencairn: a small settlement of ancient people inhabited a ring fort, built where the Ballygomartin and Forth rivers meet. A settlement around the point at which the Shankill Road becomes the Woodvale Road, at the junction with Cambrai Street, was known as Shankill from the Irish ''Sean ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Ulster Loyalism
Ulster loyalism is a strand of Unionism in Ireland, Ulster unionism associated with working class Ulster Protestants in Northern Ireland. Like other unionists, loyalists support the continued existence of Northern Ireland (and formerly all of Ireland) within the United Kingdom, and oppose a united Ireland independent of the UK. Unlike other strands of unionism, loyalism has been described as an ethnic nationalism of Ulster Protestants and "a variation of British nationalism". Loyalists are often said to have a conditional loyalty to the British state so long as it defends their interests.Smithey, Lee. ''Unionists, Loyalists, and Conflict Transformation in Northern Ireland''. Oxford University Press, 2011. pp. 56–58 They see themselves as loyal primarily to the Protestant Monarchy of the United Kingdom, British monarchy rather than to British governments and institutions, while Garret FitzGerald argued they are loyal to 'Ulster' over 'the Union'. A small minority of loyalists ha ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Order Of The British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding valuable service in a wide range of useful activities. It comprises five classes of awards across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two of which make the recipient either a Orders, decorations, and medals of the United Kingdom#Modern honours, knight if male or a dame (title), dame if female. There is also the related British Empire Medal, whose recipients are affiliated with the order, but are not members of it. The order was established on 4 June 1917 by King George V, who created the order to recognise 'such persons, male or female, as may have rendered or shall hereafter render important services to Our Empire'. Equal recognition was to be given for services rendered in the UK and overseas. Today, the majority of recipients are UK citizens, though a number of Commonwealth realms outside the UK continue to make appointments to the order. Honorary awards may be made to cit ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


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 candidates supported the positions of Unionism in Northern Ireland but, for various reasons, could not reconcile to themselves to the Ulster Unionist Party or other groups. It was also used by Unionists in what became the Irish Free State, as they were unionists, but not in Ulster. The label was also used in Scotland, demonstrating an association with ideology of the Unionist Party, the predecessor to the modern Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party. In the 1938 Northern Ireland general election, Tommy Henderson and five defeated candidates stood for the Independent Unionist Association, which was distinct from other Independent Unionists. Notable users of the affiliation Northern Ireland * Fraser Agnew, Boyd Douglas and Denis Wats ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Volunteer Political Party
The Volunteer Political Party (VPP) was a loyalist political party launched in Northern Ireland on 22 June 1974 by members of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). The Chairman was Ken Gibson from East Belfast, an ex-internee and UVF chief of staff at the time.Coogan, p. 209 The success of the Ulster Workers Council Strike had shown some UVF leaders the political power they held and they sought to develop this potential further. The UVF had been banned by the Government of Northern Ireland in 1966, but was legalised at the same time as Sinn Féin by Labour Secretary of State Merlyn Rees in April 1974 to encourage a political path for Loyalist and republican paramilitary groups. It launched its manifesto "The Volunteer Political Party - a progressive and forward thinking unionist party" at a press conference on 27 September. Influenced by the thinking of the Northern Ireland Labour Party, it opposed internment without trial and the idea of independence for Northern Ireland and ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Ulster Loyalist
Ulster loyalism is a strand of Unionism in Ireland, Ulster unionism associated with working class Ulster Protestants in Northern Ireland. Like other unionists, loyalists support the continued existence of Northern Ireland (and formerly all of Ireland) within the United Kingdom, and oppose a united Ireland independent of the UK. Unlike other strands of unionism, loyalism has been described as an ethnic nationalism of Ulster Protestants and "a variation of British nationalism". Loyalists are often said to have a conditional loyalty to the British state so long as it defends their interests.Smithey, Lee. ''Unionists, Loyalists, and Conflict Transformation in Northern Ireland''. Oxford University Press, 2011. pp. 56–58 They see themselves as loyal primarily to the Protestant Monarchy of the United Kingdom, British monarchy rather than to British governments and institutions, while Garret FitzGerald argued they are loyal to 'Ulster' over 'the Union'. A small minority of loyalists ha ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]