Seamus Anthony Close OBE (12 August 1947 – 7 May 2019) was a Northern Irish politician who was deputy leader of the Alliance Party from 1998 to 2001, and a

Member of the Legislative Assembly A Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) is a representative elected to sit in a legislative assembly. The term most commonly refers to members of the legislature of a federated state or an autonomous region, but is also used for several nation ...

(MLA) for Lagan Valley from

1998 1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''. Events January * January 6 – The ''Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for Lunar water, frozen water, in soil i ...

2007 2007 was designated as the International Heliophysical Year and the International Polar Year. Events January * January 1 **Bulgaria and Romania 2007 enlargement of the European Union, join the European Union, while Slovenia joins the Eur ...

Political career

In August 1981, he was the Alliance candidate for the second Fermanagh and South Tyrone by-election. The following year under the redistribution and expansion of Northern Ireland's constituencies his local political base became part of the new Lagan Valley constituency which he has contested in the Alliance interest in all elections since

1983 1983 saw both the official beginning of the Internet and the first mobile cellular telephone call. Events January * January 1 – The migration of the ARPANET to TCP/IP is officially completed (this is considered to be the beginning of the ...

apart from the 1986 by-election called in protest against the

Anglo-Irish Agreement The Anglo-Irish Agreement was a 1985 treaty between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland which aimed to help bring an end to the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The treaty gave the Irish government an advisory role in Northern Irelan ...

when the local Alliance branch declined to contest the seat as they believed the by-election was a political stunt. Close also held several positions in the Alliance, including serving as Chair between 1981 and 1982 and as Deputy Leader from 1991 until 2001. He was often a member of the key Alliance delegations in successive talks about the future of the province, culminating in the

Belfast Agreement The Good Friday Agreement (GFA) or Belfast Agreement ( or ; or ) is a pair of agreements signed on 10 April (Good Friday) 1998 that ended most of the violence of the Troubles, an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland since the la ...

of 1998. In the 1996 elections for 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 List o ...

, Close stood at the head of the Alliance's list for Lagan Valley but the party failed to secure enough votes to win one of the local seats. Close was also included on the province-wide list, and as the most senior Alliance member to not be elected locally he won one of Alliance's two seats. In the 1998 election for the new

Northern Ireland Assembly The Northern Ireland Assembly (; ), often referred to by the metonym ''Stormont'', is the devolved unicameral legislature of Northern Ireland. It has power to legislate in a wide range of areas that are not explicitly reserved to the Parliam ...

he topped the poll in Lagan Valley and gained a further personal triumph in the 2001 general election when he had the highest vote share of any Alliance candidate. In June 2001, he resigned as Deputy Leader of the party, citing differences with the leadership of Seán Neeson. Close has remained a member of the Assembly and successfully held his seat in the 2003 Assembly election. In July 2005, Mr Close proposed that the Lisburn Council deny gay couples access to the council's designated wedding facility if they were seeking a civil partnership under the

Civil Partnership Act 2004 The Civil Partnership Act 2004 (c. 33) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, introduced by the Labour government, which grants civil partnerships in the United Kingdom the rights and responsibilities very similar to those in civil ...

. The council adopted his recommendation, to the great annoyance of many liberal campaigners. This ran against Alliance policy, which had been strongly supportive of the introduction of civil partnership laws, and he was publicly criticised by other senior party members. In November 2006, Close announced that he was retiring from politics In the 2007 election he was succeeded as Alliance Party Lagan Valley Assembly representative by the then Mayor of Lisburn, Councillor

Trevor Lunn Trevor Lunn (born 29 June 1946) is a former Northern Irish politician who served as a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Lagan Valley from 2007 to 2022. Formerly a member of the Alliance Party, Lunn resigned from the party in 2020, ...

. Close was succeeded as Mayor of Lisburn by Harry Lewis.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Close, Seamus 1947 births 2019 deaths Alliance Party of Northern Ireland MLAs Politicians from Lisburn Members of Lisburn City Council Mayors of places in Northern Ireland Northern Ireland MPAs 1982–1986 Members of the Northern Ireland Forum Northern Ireland MLAs 1998–2003 Northern Ireland MLAs 2003–2007 Officers of the Order of the British Empire People educated at St Malachy's College