Ulster's personal timeline, a place to collect and share things from Ulster's life.
Created by ulsterunionists on Jul 17, 2009
Last updated: 03/11/10 at 08:31 PM
Sir Reginald Norman Morgan Empey MLA (born 26 October 1947) is Leader of the Ulster Unionist Party and a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly for East Belfast. Twice Lord Mayor of Belfast, he was elected the 13th leader of Ulster Unionist Party on 24 June 2005, succeeding former First Minister of Northern Ireland, David Trimble.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reg_Empey
William David Trimble, Baron Trimble, PC (born 15 October 1944), is a politician from Northern Ireland who served as leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) and was the first First Minister of Northern Ireland. He is currently a life peer for the Conservative Party.
He shared the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize with John Hume of the Social Democratic and Labour Party. He served as Member of Parliament for Upper Bann from 1990 until 2005, when he was defeated in the British general election and resigned the leadership of the UUP soon afterwards. In June 2006 he became a member of the House of Lords as The Right Honourable William David Trimble by the name, style and title of Baron Trimble, of Lisnagarvey in the County of Antrim.[1] In April 2007 he announced that he was to leave the UUP and join the Conservative Party
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Trimble,_Baron_Trimble
James Henry Molyneaux, Baron Molyneaux of Killead, KBE, PC (born August 27, 1920) is a Northern Irish Unionist politician and was leader of the Ulster Unionist Party from 1979 to 1995. He was a leading member and sometime Vice-President of the Conservative Monday Club. An Orangeman[1], he was also Sovereign Grand Master of the Royal Black Institution from 1971 to 1995.
Born in Killead, County Antrim, Molyneaux was educated at nearby Aldergrove School before serving in the Royal Air Force between 1941 and 1946. He participated in the liberation of the Belsen concentration camp, and has occasionally given interviews about what he saw there.
As a child he briefly attended a local Catholic primary school, and is alleged to have expressed the view that the Catholic Church made a mistake in abandoning the Tridentine Rite. 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.
During the 1960s and 1970s, he served on Antrim County Council as well as a number of committees concerning local healthcare, and in 1970 was elected Ulster Unionist Member of Parliament for South Antrim. In October 1974, Molyneaux became leader of the Ulster Unionists in the House of Commons, and between 1982 and 1986 he sat as an Ulster Unionist member for South Antrim in the failed Northern Ireland Assembly. He was admitted to the Privy Council in 1982. Following boundary changes that divided South Antrim, he became member for the new seat of Lagan Valley in 1983. In 1985, he resigned his seat along with his Unionist colleagues in the House of Commons in protest at the Anglo-Irish Agreement, and was re-elected in the subsequent by-election.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Molyneaux
Henry William West (27 March 1917 – 5 February 2004) was a politician in Northern Ireland who served as leader of the Ulster Unionist Party from 1974 until 1979.
West was born in County Fermanagh and educated at Portora Royal School in Enniskillen. He worked as a farmer, taking an interest in local government, but it was not until 1954 that he entered Stormont as member for the Enniskillen seat, succeeding Thomas Charles Nelson. In 1960 he was appointed Minister of Agriculture in the government of Lord Brookeborough, which he was to retain under Terence O'Neill. However in 1967 he was dismissed for Ministerial impropriety involving the purchase of land he knew was to be purchased by Fermanagh County Council for the development of Enniskillen/St Angelo Airport[1][2].
He became one of a number of Stormont MPs critical of leader Terence O'Neill's conciliatory approach towards Nationalists and in 1969 he had the whip withdrawn, along with William Craig. In 1971 the whip was restored under the new Ulster Unionist leader and Prime Minister of Northern Ireland Brian Faulkner. West became Minister of Agriculture once more and retained that position until the Stormont government was dissolved in 1972.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_West
Arthur Brian Deane Faulkner, Baron Faulkner of Downpatrick, PC (February 18, 1921 – March 3, 1977) was the sixth and last Prime Minister of Northern Ireland from March 1971 until his resignation in March 1972. He was also the first Chief Executive of the Northern Ireland Executive and the Northern Ireland Assembly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Faulkner
James Dawson Chichester-Clark, Baron Moyola, PC, DL (February 12, 1923 – May 17, 2002) was the penultimate Prime Minister of Northern Ireland and eighth leader of the Ulster Unionist Party between 1969 and March 1971. He was Member of the Northern Ireland Parliament for South Londonderry for 12 years beginning at the by-election to replace his grand mother in 1960. He stopped being a MP when the Stormont Parliament was prorogued by the UK Government due to the start of the Northern Ireland troubles in 1972.
Chichester-Clark's election as UUP Leader resulted from the sudden resignation of Terence O'Neill after the ambiguous result of the preceding general election. His term in office was dominated by both internal Unionist struggles, seeing the political emergence of Ian Paisley from the right and Alliance Party of Northern Ireland from the left, and an emergent Nationalist resurgence. In March 1971, with his health suffering under the strain of the growing political strife, he resigned - having failed to secure extra military resources from the British Government.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Chichester-Clark
Terence O'Neill was born on the 10 September 1914 at 29 Ennismore Gardens, Hyde Park, London.[1] He was the youngest son of Lady Annabel Hungerford Crewe-Milnes (daughter of the Marquess of Crewe and Captain Arthur O'Neill of Shane's Castle, Randalstown, the first MP to be killed as a result of World War I. Despite bearing the name of O'Neill, this line of the family in fact assumed the surname by Royal license in lieu of their original name Chichester. In turn, the Chichesters can trace their lineage to the name O'Neill through Mary Chichester, daughter of Henry O'Neill, of Shane's Castle. O'Neill, who grew up in London, was educated at West Downs School in Winchester and Eton College; he only spent Summer holidays in Ulster. Following school he spent a year in France and Germany and then took work in the City of London, as well as Australia. In May 1940 he received a commission to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.[2] During World War II he served in the Irish Guards.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulster_Unionist_Party
Basil Stanlake Brooke, 1st Viscount Brookeborough, Bt., KG, CBE, MC, PC, HML (June 9, 1888 – August 18, 1973) was a British Ulster Unionist politician who became the third Prime Minister of Northern Ireland in 1943 and held office until 1963.
He had previously held several ministerial positions in the Government of Northern Ireland, and has been described as "perhaps the last Unionist leader to command respect, loyalty and affection across the social and political spectrum of the movement".[1] He has also been described as one of the most hardline anti-Catholic leaders of the Ulster Unionist Party.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basil_Brooke,_1st_Viscount_Brookeborough
Andrews was born in Comber, County Down, Ireland in 1871,[1] the eldest child in the family of four sons and one daughter of Thomas Andrews DL, flax spinner, and his wife Eliza Pirrie, sister of Viscount Pirrie.
He was educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution and became a director of his family linen-bleaching company and of the Belfast Ropeworks[1], as well as a wealthy landowner. His brother, Thomas Andrews, was managing director of the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast and died in the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, another brother Sir James Andrews, 1st Baronet was Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland.
In 1902 he married Jessie (d. 1950), eldest daughter of Bolton stockbroker Joseph Ormrod at the Presbyterian Chapel at Rivington, near Bolton. They had one son and two daughters. His younger brother James married Jessie's sister.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Miller_Andrews
James Craig, 1st Viscount Craigavon PC (8 January 1871 – 24 November 1940) was a prominent Irish unionist politician, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party and the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Craig,_1st_Viscount_Craigavon
Edward Henry Carson, Baron Carson, PC, Kt., KC (often known as Sir Edward Carson or Lord Carson) (9 February 1854 – 22 October 1935) was a leader of the Ulster Unionist Party. Lord Carson held numerous positions in the Cabinet of the United Kingdom and pursued a career as a senior barrister and a judge; he become one of seven Law Lords. Upon his death, in 1935, he was one of the few non-monarchs to receive a United Kingdom state funeral.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Carson
Walter Hume Long, 1st Viscount Long PC, FRS, JP (13 July 1854 - 26 September 1924), was a British Unionist politician. In a political career spanning over 40 years, he held office as President of the Board of Agriculture, President of the Local Government Board, Chief Secretary for Ireland, Secretary of State for the Colonies and First Lord of the Admiralty. However, he is best remembered for his links with Irish Unionism and served as Leader of the Irish Unionist Party in the House of Commons from 1905 to 1910.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Hume_Long,_1st_Viscount_Long
Edward James Saunderson PC, JP, DL (1 October 1837 – 21 October 1906) was an Irish politician.
He was born at Castle Saunderson, County Cavan. He was the son of Colonel Alexander Saunderson, Member of Parliament (MP) for Cavan (d. 1857), his mother being a daughter of the 6th Baron Farnham. The Irish Saundersons were a 17th century branch of an old family, originally of Durham; a Lincolnshire branch, the Saundersons of Saxby, held the titles of Viscount Castleton (Irish: c. 1628) and Baron Saunderson (British: c. 1714) up to 1723.
Edward Saunderson was educated abroad, and, having succeeded to the Cavan estates, married in 1865 a daughter of the 3rd Baron Ventry, and in the same year was elected MP. for Cavan as a Palmerstonian Liberal. He lost his seat in 1874, and by 1885, when he again entered parliament for North Armagh, he had become a prominent Orangeman and a Conservative; the question of Irish home rule had now come to the front, and Saunderson's political career as a representative of Irish Unionist had begun.
He had entered the Cavan militia (4th battalion Royal Irish Fusiliers) in 1862, was later made major (1875), became colonel in 1886 and was in command of the battalion from 1891 to 1893. Almost from the first he became leader of the Irish Unionist party in the British House of Commons, his uncompromising speeches being full of force and humour. In 1898 his services were recognized by his being made a privy councillor. He died of pneumonia in 1906.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulster_Unionist_Party

