Henry Reilly is a DUP Unionist Councillor on Newry, Mourne and Down District Council. Reilly grew up on a farm in

County Down County Down () is one of the six counties of Northern Ireland, one of the nine counties of Ulster and one of the traditional thirty-two counties of Ireland. It covers an area of and has a population of 531,665. It borders County Antrim to th ...

and worked for the

Department of Agriculture and Rural Development The Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) is a government department in the Northern Ireland Executive, the devolved administration for Northern Ireland. The minister with overall responsibility for the department i ...

.Newry councillor Henry Reilly is UKIP's Euro election candidate
, ''

BBC News BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broad ...

'', 13 August 2013 He joined the

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 ...

(UUP), and was first elected to

Newry and Mourne District Council Newry and Mourne District Council ( ga, Comhairle an Iúir agus Mhúrn) was a local council in Northern Ireland. It merged with Down District Council in May 2015 under local government reorganisation in Northern Ireland to become Newry, Mourne ...

at the 1989 local elections. He held his seat in the Mournes in

1993 File:1993 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The Oslo I Accord is signed in an attempt to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict; The Russian White House is shelled during the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis; Czechoslovakia is peace ...

1997 File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; ''Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of ...

2001 The September 11 attacks against the United States by Al-Qaeda, which killed 2,977 people and instigated the global war on terror, were a defining event of 2001. The United States led a multi-national coalition in an invasion of Afghanistan ...

and

2005 File:2005 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico; the Funeral of Pope John Paul II is held in Vatican City; "Me at the zoo", the first video ever to be uploaded to YouTube; Eris (dwarf planet), Er ...

,Newry & Mourne District Council Elections, 1993 - 2011
, Northern Ireland elections serving as Mayor of Newry in 2004/05. Initially a supporter of UUP leader

David Trimble William David Trimble, Baron Trimble, (15 October 1944 – 25 July 2022) was a British politician who was the first First Minister of Northern Ireland from 1998 to 2002, and leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) from 1995 to 2005. He was ...

, by 2004, Reilly was publicly calling for him to resign. In 2007, Reilly left the UUP and then went on to join the

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 Member of Parliament (United Kingdom), member ...

(UKIP), becoming its first councillor in Northern Ireland. He was subsequently appointed as Chairman of the Northern Ireland Regional branch of the party. This grew from 80 members to more than 200 after

David McNarry David McNarry (born 25 May 1948) is a UK Independence Party (UKIP) politician in Northern Ireland, who was the leader of UKIP Northern Ireland from 2012 to 2016. He stood for the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) in North Down in the 1982 Assembly el ...

defected to the party in 2012; McNarry was elected as the new leader of the party in Northern Ireland, but Reilly kept the title of Chairman. Under his new party label, Reilly stood in South Down at 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 ...

, taking 2.7% of the vote. He stood again in 2011, increasing his first preference vote share to 5.6%, but he still missed out on election. However, he easily held his council seat at the

2011 Northern Ireland local elections Elections for local government were held in Northern Ireland on Thursday 5 May 2011, contesting 582 seats in all. European Union and Commonwealth citizens aged 18 or over on election day were entitled to vote. The deadline for voters to register ...

, then, following reorganisation of local government, took a seat on the new

Newry, Mourne and Down District Council Newry, Mourne and Down District Council ( Irish: ''Comhairle Ceantair an Iúir, Mhúrn agus an Dúin'') is a local authority in Northern Ireland that was established on 1 April 2015. It replaces Down District Council and Newry and Mourne Distric ...

2014 File:2014 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Stocking up supplies and personal protective equipment (PPE) for the Western African Ebola virus epidemic; Citizens examining the ruins after the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping; Bundles of wat ...

. Reilly stood as UKIP's candidate at the

2014 European Parliament election The 2014 European Parliament election was held in the European Union, from 22 to 25 May 2014. It was the 8th parliamentary election since the first direct elections in 1979, and the first in which the European political parties fielded candi ...

, taking seventh position, with 24,584 first preference votes. He also stood at the 2015 UK general election in South Down, coming in fifth place, with 7.1% of the vote. Reilly was suspended from UKIP in September 2015 for bringing the party into disrepute. After a suspension of two months, UKIP's National Executive Committee formally expelled Reilly from the party in November 2015. After briefly sitting as an Independent, Reilly then joined the

Traditional Unionist Voice The Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) is a unionist political party in Northern Ireland. In common with all other Northern Irish unionist parties, the TUV's political programme has as its sine qua non the preservation of Northern Ireland's place ...

, maintaining his seat on the council for that party. In November 2016, just one year after joining the TUV, he resigned from it. The reason he cited for leaving was having commenced employment with a charity which required him to be politically unaligned. Just three months later, in February 2017, Reilly began publicly supporting the DUP and formally endorsed Jim Wells in the 2017 Northern Ireland Assembly Election. Reilly has notably been charged with two counts of assaulting a female police officer on 30 September 2019, and is also charged with resisting the female constable, resisting a male constable and causing criminal damage to a police radio and earpiece on the same date. Reilly was due to go on trial at Newry Magistrates’ Court in 2020, however this was adjourned due to Covid-19 crisis. - https://www.armaghi.com/news/newry-news/trial-of-councillor-accused-of-assault-on-female-police-office-adjourned-due-to-covid-19-crisis/106504

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Reilly, Henry Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Members of Newry and Mourne District Council Mayors of places in Northern Ireland People from County Down Traditional Unionist Voice politicians UK Independence Party politicians