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1985 Northern Ireland Local Elections
Elections for local government were held in Northern Ireland on 15 May 1985, contesting 565 seats in all. Background 1981 elections The previous elections had been fought in the middle of the hunger strike and the H-Block Prison Protest. Those elections had shown changes in party representation, with three parties, namely the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), winning 75% of the seats. On the Unionist side, the DUP arrived at a position of near parity with the UUP, outpolling the latter by 851 votes, although the UUP managed to win more seats overall. Other changes on the Unionist side saw the disbandment of two smaller Unionist parties: the Unionist Party of Northern Ireland in September 1981 and the United Ulster Unionist Party in May 1984. On the nationalist side, while the SDLP maintained its dominant position, a greater number of elected candidates supporting the H-Block protest were elected. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Molyneaux, Baron Molyneaux Of Killead
James Henry Molyneaux, Baron Molyneaux of Killead, KBE, PC (27 August 1920 – 9 March 2015) was a Northern Irish unionist politician who served as leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) from 1979 to 1995, and as the Member of Parliament (MP) for South Antrim from 1970 to 1983, and later Lagan Valley from 1983 to 1997. An Orangeman, he was also Sovereign Grand Master of the Royal Black Institution from 1971 to 1995, and a leading member of the Conservative Monday Club. Early life Born in Killead, County Antrim, to William Molyneaux and Sarah Gilmore, Molyneaux was educated at nearby Aldergrove School. Although he was raised an Anglican, as a child he briefly attended a local Catholic primary school. When a Catholic church near his home was burnt down by loyalist arsonists in the late 1990s, Molyneaux helped to raise funds for its rebuilding. Military service Molyneaux served in the Royal Air Force between 1941 and 1946, including most of World War II . He participated i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United Ulster Unionist Party
The United Ulster Unionist Party (UUUP) was a unionist political party which existed in Northern Ireland between 1975 and 1984. It emerged from a division in the Vanguard Unionist Progressive Party in the late 1970s. Vanguard had traditionally opposed the concept of compulsory power sharing with nationalists enshrined in the Sunningdale Agreement, but after the failure of Sunningdale, the Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention was set up to provide a forum with the aim of finding a new settlement for Northern Ireland. During the proceedings the leader of Vanguard, William Craig, proposed a voluntary coalition with the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party. Many in Vanguard found this anathema, including the party's deputy leader Ernest Baird, Mid Ulster MP John Dunlop and East Belfast Convention member (and future Ulster Unionist Party leader) Reg Empey. They left Vanguard and formed the United Ulster Unionist Movement. Initially Baird denied that this was a p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Seawright
George Seawright (1951 – 3 December 1987) was a Scotland, Scottish-born Unionists (Ireland), unionist politician in Northern Ireland and Ulster loyalism, loyalist paramilitary in the Ulster Volunteer Force. He was assassinated by the Irish People's Liberation Organisation in 1987. Early life Born in Glasgow, Scotland from an Ulster Protestant background, Seawright lived in Drumchapel and worked in the shipyards of Clydeside. Also living for a time in Springburn, he was one of the few Scots to join the Ulster Protestant Volunteers in the late 1960s.Steve Bruce, ''God Save Ulster: The Religion and Politics of Paisleyism'', Oxford University Press, 1989, p. 143 He then worked in the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast until entering politics as a member of the Democratic Unionist Party. As well as being a shipyard worker he also served as a lay preacher and was an elder in north Belfast's John Knox Memorial Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster, Free Presbyterian Church. Seawrigh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Douglas Hurd
Douglas Richard Hurd, Baron Hurd of Westwell, (born 8 March 1930) is a British Conservative Party politician who served in the governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major from 1979 to 1995. A career diplomat and political secretary to Prime Minister Edward Heath, Hurd first entered Parliament in February 1974 as MP for the Mid Oxfordshire constituency (Witney from 1983). His first government post was as Minister for Europe from 1979 to 1983 (being that office's inaugural holder) and he served in several Cabinet roles from 1984 onwards, including Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (1984–85), Home Secretary (1985–89) and Foreign Secretary (1989–95). He stood unsuccessfully for the Conservative Party leadership in 1990, and retired from frontline politics during a Cabinet reshuffle in 1995. In 1997, Hurd was elevated to the House of Lords and is one of the Conservative Party's most senior elder statesmen. He is a patron of the Tory Reform Group. He retired fro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Belfast City Council
Belfast City Council ( ga, Comhairle Cathrach Bhéal Feirste) is the local authority with responsibility for part of the city of Belfast, the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland. The Council serves an estimated population of (), the largest of any district council in Northern Ireland, while being the smallest by area. Belfast City Council is the primary council of the Belfast Metropolitan Area, a grouping of six former district councils with commuter towns and overspill from Belfast, containing a total population of 579,276. The council is made up of 60 councillors, elected from ten district electoral areas. It holds its meetings in the historic Belfast City Hall. The current Lord Mayor is Tina Black of Sinn Féin. As part of the 2014/2015 reform of local government in Northern Ireland the city council area expanded, and now covers an area that includes 53,000 additional residents in 21,000 households. The number of councillors increased from 51 to 60. The first ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alex Maskey
Alex Maskey (born 8 January 1952) is an Irish politician who has been Speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly since 2020 and was the first member of Sinn Féin to serve as Lord Mayor of Belfast from 2002 to 2003. He was Sinn Féin's longest sitting councillor, representing the Laganbank electoral area of Belfast. He was also an MLA for Belfast West for two periods, and also for Belfast South. Early life Maskey was educated at St Malachy's College and at the Belfast Institute for Further and Higher Education and then worked in Belfast docks as a labourer and barman. He was a successful amateur boxer, having only lost 4 out of 75 fights. After the Troubles began in the late 1960s he became involved with the Provisional Irish Republican Army, and was interned twice in the 1970s. Political career Maskey stood unsuccessfully in West Belfast in the 1982 Assembly Election. In June 1983, Maskey won a by-election and became the first member of Sinn Féin to be elected to Belfast ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sinn Féin
Sinn Féin ( , ; en, " eOurselves") is an Irish republican and democratic socialist political party active throughout both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The original Sinn Féin organisation was founded in 1905 by Arthur Griffith. Its members founded the revolutionary Irish Republic and its parliament, the First Dáil, during the Irish War of Independence. The party split in the aftermath of the Irish Civil War, giving rise to the two traditionally dominant parties of southern Irish politics: Fianna Fáil, and Cumann na nGaedheal (which became Fine Gael). For several decades the remaining Sinn Féin organisation was small without parliamentary representation. Another split in 1970 at the start of the Troubles led to the Sinn Féin of today, with the other faction eventually becoming the Workers' Party. During the Troubles, Sinn Féin was associated with the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). For most of that conflict, there were broadcasting bans on Si ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. She was the first female British prime minister and the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century. As prime minister, she implemented economic policies that became known as Thatcherism. A Soviet journalist dubbed her the "Iron Lady", a nickname that became associated with her uncompromising politics and leadership style. Thatcher studied chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford, and worked briefly as a research chemist, before becoming a barrister. She was List of MPs elected in the 1959 United Kingdom general election, elected Member of Parliament for Finchley (UK Parliament constituency), Finchley in 1959 United Kingdom general election, 1959. Edward Heath appointed her Secretary of State for Education and Science in his H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New Ireland Forum
The New Ireland Forum was a forum in 1983–1984 at which Irish nationalist political parties discussed potential political developments that might alleviate the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The Forum was established by Garret FitzGerald, then Taoiseach, under the influence of John Hume, for "consultations on the manner in which lasting peace and stability can be achieved in a new Ireland through the democratic process". The Forum was initially dismissed, by Unionists, Sinn Féin, and others, as a nationalist talking-shop. The Forum's report, published on 2 May 1984, listed three possible alternative structures: a unitary state, a federal/confederal state, and joint British/Irish authority. The British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, dismissed the three alternatives one by one at a press conference, each time saying, "that is out", in a response that became known as the "out, out, out" speech. However, Garret Fitzgerald, who described the Forum's report as "an agenda not a blue ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Northern Ireland Assembly (1982)
The Northern Ireland Assembly established in 1982 represented an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to restore the devolution to Northern Ireland which had been suspended 10 years previously. The Assembly was abolished in 1986. Origins The Assembly emerged as a result of initiatives by the then Secretaries of State for Northern Ireland, Humphrey Atkins and James Prior. The first step in this process was a white paper called The Government of Northern Ireland: A Working Paper for a Conference, published on 20 November 1979. This established a conference, attended the following year by the Democratic Unionist Party, the Alliance Party and the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP). (The UUP refused to become involved in protest at a decision to allow discussions on an Irish dimension, discussions which the DUP also boycotted.) Talks between the DUP, Alliance and SDLP took place between 7 January and 24 March 1980, but failed to reach agreement. In July 1980, the British Govern ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jim Prior
James Michael Leathes Prior, Baron Prior, (11 October 1927 – 12 December 2016) was a British Conservative Party politician. A Member of Parliament from 1959 to 1987, he represented the Suffolk constituency of Lowestoft until 1983 and then the renamed constituency of Waveney from 1983 to 1987, when he stood down from the House of Commons and was made a life peer. He served in two Conservative cabinets, and outside parliament was Chairman of the Arab British Chamber of Commerce from 1996 to 2004. Under Edward Heath, Prior was Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food from 1970 to 1972, then Leader of the House of Commons until Heath lost office in the wake of the February 1974 election. His party returned to power under Margaret Thatcher in 1979, and Prior was Secretary of State for Employment from 1979 to 1981, disagreeing with some of her views on trade unions and her monetarist economic policies generally. This made him a leader of the so-called "wet" faction in the Co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Secretary Of State For Northern Ireland
A secretary, administrative professional, administrative assistant, executive assistant, administrative officer, administrative support specialist, clerk, military assistant, management assistant, office secretary, or personal assistant is a white-collar worker person whose work consists of supporting management, including executives, using a variety of project management, communication, or organizational skills within the area of administration. There is a diverse array of work experiences attainable within the administrative support field, ranging between internship, entry-level, associate, junior, mid-senior, and senior level pay bands with positions in nearly every industry. However, this role should not be confused with the role of an executive secretary, cabinet secretary such as cabinet members who hold the title of "secretary," or company secretary, all which differ from an administrative assistant. The functions of a personal assistant may be entirely carried out to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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