Robert Stoker is a Community Worker in South Belfast and former senior

UK Independence Party The UK Independence Party (UKIP; ) is a Eurosceptic, right-wing populist political party in the United Kingdom. The party reached its greatest level of success in the mid-2010s, when it gained two members of Parliament and was the largest par ...

and

Ulster Unionist Party The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) is a unionist political party in Northern Ireland. The party was founded in 1905, emerging from the Irish Unionist Alliance in Ulster. Under Edward Carson, it led unionist opposition to the Irish Home Rule movem ...

member in

Belfast Belfast ( , ; from ga, Béal Feirste , meaning 'mouth of the sand-bank ford') is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan on the east coast. It is the 12th-largest city in the United Kingdo ...

. Stoker is a former long-serving Belfast City councillor, former

Lord Mayor of Belfast The Lord Mayor of Belfast is the leader and chairperson of Belfast City Council, elected annually from and by the City's 60 councillors. The Lord Mayor also serves as the representative of the city of Belfast, welcoming guests from across the Un ...

and a former member of the

Northern Ireland Forum The Northern Ireland Forum for Political Dialogue was a body set up in 1996 as part of a process of negotiations that eventually led to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. The forum was elected, with five members being elected for each Westmin ...

for South Belfast.

Biography

As a member of the

, Stoker was elected to the

for Belfast South in May 1996. He had already been elected as a

councillor A councillor is an elected representative for a local government council in some countries. Canada Due to the control that the provinces have over their municipal governments, terms that councillors serve vary from province to province. Unl ...

to represent the Balmoral electoral area in a

by-election A by-election, also known as a special election in the United States and the Philippines, a bye-election in Ireland, a bypoll in India, or a Zimni election (Urdu: ضمنی انتخاب, supplementary election) in Pakistan, is an election used to f ...

in May 1995. He was re-elected in May 1997, June 2001 and June 2005 and 2011. He was elected Deputy Lord Mayor of the city in June 1998 and

in June 1999. He contested the Belfast South constituency in the

2007 Northern Ireland Assembly election The 2007 Northern Ireland Assembly election was held on Wednesday, 7 March 2007. It was the third election to take place since the devolved assembly was established in 1998. The election saw endorsement of the St Andrews Agreement and the two l ...

, but was unsuccessful, finishing 9th out of 18 candidates with 1,122 votes, 3.7% of the total first preference votes cast.

Alderman An alderman is a member of a Municipal government, municipal assembly or council in many Jurisdiction, jurisdictions founded upon English law. The term may be titular, denoting a high-ranking member of a borough or county council, a council membe ...

Stoker, by then one of Belfast's longest serving councillors, left the Ulster Unionist Party in October 2014 to join UKIP. He cited wanting to be "part of a national party" and claimed that the old unionist parties were neglecting the very people on the ground who elected them. He contested the 2015 general election for UKIP in South Belfast finishing 7th with 1900 votes (4.9% of the total share). In 2015, Stoker was appointed as Vice Chairman of UKIP in Northern Ireland by the local membership of the party. In 2017, Stoker retired from active politics to focus on his work as a Community Worker in South Belfast.

References

Living people Ulster Unionist Party councillors Members of Belfast City Council Lord Mayors of Belfast Members of the Northern Ireland Forum UK Independence Party politicians Year of birth missing (living people) {{NorthernIreland-mayor-stub