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Tag Archives: 1998 Northern Ireland Assembly Election


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Birth of John Kelly, Northern Irish Politician & IRA Volunteer

John Kelly, Northern Irish republican politician, is born in the New Lodge area of Belfast, Northern Ireland, on April 5, 1936. He joins the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in the 1950s and is a founder member and a leader of the Provisional Irish Republican Army in the early 1970s.

Kelly is one of five sons and four daughters born to William Kelly, retail and wholesale fruitier, and his wife Margaret (née Maginness). Living off Carlisle Circus in a flashpoint area of north Belfast and close to Crumlin Road Gaol, the Kellys are a strongly republican family, regularly supplying republican inmates with fruit and assisting them on their release.

Later in life Kelly moves to Maghera, County Londonderry, where he lives until his death in 2007. He and his wife have a daughter. He is a dedicated member of local Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) club Watty Graham’s GAC, Glen and a keen supporter of Gaelic games and the Irish language.

Kelly joins the IRA in the early 1950s when he is eighteen and takes part in the Border Campaign of 1956–62 but is arrested in December 1956 and imprisoned until 1963. He is a member of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) in 1967–69 which leads on to sectarian riots in Belfast. A leader of the newly formed Provisional IRA in 1969, he is involved in the formation of “citizens’ defence groups” to protect nationalist areas of Belfast from loyalist rioters who are largely unhampered by the police.

Kelly is jailed on three occasions for IRA related activity spending a total of fifteen years in prison in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. His first term is for his activity in the 1956 IRA border campaign. He also serves a six-month term in 1973 in the Republic of Ireland for being a member of the IRA.

Commenting later on the Troubles, Kelly says, “Yes, it was a terrible period. But you can’t turn the clock back. The Irish government did not create the Provisional IRA. What happened was as inevitable as the changing seasons.”

The citizens’ defence groups seek help from the government in Dublin in 1969, then led by Jack Lynch. Several ministers respond and arrange a fund of £100,000 but the planned arms shipment fails. Kelly later says, “These discussions were all about guns. The whole thing was government-sponsored, government-backed and government-related.” The planning includes travel to Britain, Europe, and on to the United States where he meets the founders of NORAID. He is one of the co-defendants in the subsequent Dublin “Arms Trial” with ministers Charles Haughey and Neil Blaney, accused of conspiring to import arms illegally into the Republic of Ireland. The trial eventually collapses from a lack of evidence, as the relevant government files are kept secret, but the Irish government sacks several ministers as a result.

Kelly goes into electoral politics, serving on Magherafelt District Council from 1997. At the 1998 Northern Ireland Assembly election he is elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly as a Sinn Féin member for Mid Ulster. He is deselected before the 2003 election, and criticises the decision by the Sinn Féin leadership to support policing reforms. In January 2006 he co-writes a letter with Brendan Hughes which casts doubt on the claims that dissident republicans have threatened Sinn Féin leaders and claims that the real threats are being made by the Sinn Féin leadership against those who seek a debate on policing. He leaves Sinn Féin which he considers too controlled from the centre, opposing the leadership “deceit and the philosophy of creative ambiguity,” and he retires from politics.

Kelly dies in Maghera following a long battle with cancer on September 5, 2007. Many tributes are paid to him including a minute’s silence before the Derry Senior Football Championship quarter final between St. Patrick’s GAC, Loup, and Dungiven GAC on September 8, 2007, at the home of his local club, Watty Graham GAC, Glen. A Na Piarsaigh Belfast GAC jersey is draped over his coffin before he is interred at Maghera Catholic Graveyard.


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Birth of Pat Doherty, Sinn Féin Politician & Member of Parliament

Patrick Doherty, retired Sinn Féin politician and the abstentionist Member of Parliament (MP) for West Tyrone from 2001 to 2017, is born in Glasgow, Scotland, on July 18, 1945. He is a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly for the West Tyrone Assembly constituency from June 1998 to June 2012. He serves as Vice President of Sinn Féin from 1988 to 2009, when Mary Lou McDonald becomes the party’s new Vice President.

Doherty is educated at St. Joseph’s College, Lochwinnoch, and is a site engineer who likes building stone walls. He is the brother of former Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) member Hugh Doherty, known for his involvement in the Balcombe Street siege. According to The Times Guide to the House of Commons, he is married with three daughters and two sons.

Doherty’s parents are from County Donegal in the Republic of Ireland. He moves to Donegal in 1968, shortly before the Troubles break out across the Irish border in Northern Ireland. He is an abstentionist Sinn Féin Member of Parliament of the British parliament for West Tyrone from 2001 to 2017, as well as a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly from the 1998 Northern Ireland Assembly election until 2012. He also stands for election in the Republic of Ireland, in the constituency of Donegal North-East in 1989, 1996 (a by-election) and 1997, and also in the Connacht–Ulster constituency in the European Parliament elections in 1989 and 1994.

In May 2002, using parliamentary privilege, Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) MP David Burnside names Doherty as a member of the IRA Army Council.

Over a two-and-a-half-year period, Doherty spends £16,000 on printer cartridges, an amount that he admits is “probably excessive.”

In 2012, to some surprise, Doherty writes to the Arts Council of Northern Ireland in support of funding for the loyalist Castlederg Young Loyalist Flute Band. He praises the band for reaching out to “all sections of the community.” The band had sought support for its funding application from a community group who then, unbeknownst to the band, reached out to Doherty. A spokesman for the band, whose website includes sections on IRA atrocities, the controversial B Specials and lyrics to songs, including one glorifying Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) terrorist Brian Robinson, distances themselves from the application, claiming the band is unaware of Doherty’s support and does not want it. He adds that “The band harbours nothing but contempt for Irish republicanism and its attacks on their community.” Four of the band’s members are killed by the IRA.


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David Trimble & Gerry Adams Meet In Person for the First Time

Northern Ireland‘s First Minister David Trimble and Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams finally come face-to-face on September 10, 1998, in an historic move aimed to bring to an end decades of mistrust between the two sides. The private meeting at Stormont is said to be an important step in the Northern Ireland peace process.

Sinn Féin says the meeting is a hugely significant move. “This is the first time in Irish history that a republican leader and a leader of unionism have sat down together in a room on their own,” says a spokesman. “This is about normalising relations between Sinn Féin and the First Minister.”

But the two men are not expected to shake hands after Trimble says Adams is still holding arms. They are likely to discuss decommissioning terrorist weapons.

The men meet briefly on Monday, September 7, in a round-table discussion of party leaders on procedural matters of the future government of the province, the Northern Ireland Assembly.

News of Trimble’s invitation to Adams breaks the previous week after the Sinn Féin President issues a firm denunciation of violence. But Trimble is adamant that the Irish Republican Army (IRA) must hand over arms before Sinn Féin can take seats in the new government. Sinn Féin has made moves in this direction by appointing strategist Martin McGuinness as an intermediary between the international arms decommissioning body and the IRA.

The 1998 Good Friday Agreement includes a power sharing administration under British rule and an all-Ireland ministerial council to promote island-wide co-operation. London is due to hand over a large measure of home rule powers by February 1999. In the meantime a “shadow” ruling executive must up be set up and mechanisms put in place to ensure smooth implementation of all aspects of the Agreement.

Meanwhile, two rebel Ulster Unionists who ran against official candidates in the 1998 Northern Ireland Assembly election are waiting to learn if they have been expelled from the party. Party officials say it will take several days to decide the future of the two members of the new parliament, Denis Watson and Boyd Douglas, who contested the June poll on an anti-Agreement ticket.

(From: “Trimble and Adams make history,” BBC News, news.bbc.co.uk, September 10, 1998)


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Birth of Dawn Purvis, Former Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly

Dawn Purvis, former Independent Unionist member of the Northern Ireland Assembly, is born in the Donegall Pass area of Belfast on October 22, 1966. She is previously the leader of the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) until she resigns in 2010. She loses her seat in the Assembly in the 2011 Northern Ireland Assembly election.

Purvis joins the Progressive Unionist Party in 1994. She stands for the party in the 1996 Northern Ireland Forum election in Belfast South and then in the 1998 Northern Ireland Assembly election in Belfast South, here taking only 271 votes. By 1999, she is the Progressive Unionist Party’s Spokesperson on Women’s Affairs. She takes a degree in Women’s Studies, Social Policy and Social Anthropology and begins working full-time for the party.

Purvis stands in Belfast South in the 2001 United Kingdom general election, finishing in sixth place with a total of 1,112 votes (2.9%). In 2006, she is appointed to the Northern Ireland Policing Board. Her appointment is later criticised by the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), because of the Progressive Unionist Party’s links with the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF).

In January 2007, Purvis succeeds the late David Ervine as leader of the Progressive Unionist Party and Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Belfast East. Commenting on her new role she says, “I am deeply honoured to have been made the leader of the PUP. However, this is also tinged with sadness given the huge loss of David. It is a huge challenge to step into this role, especially after the good work he did. But this gives us an opportunity to rebuild and continue to serve working class loyalists and unionist communities.”

In her maiden speech in the Assembly, Purvis says “As long as there is poverty, and as long as there is inequality in education, health and gender, it will be my duty to articulate the needs of the working and workless classes in East Belfast.”

Purvis is re-elected in the constituency at the Northern Ireland Assembly election held on March 7, 2007, on the tenth and final round of counting.

In June 2010, Purvis resigns as leader, and as a member, of the Progressive Unionist Party because of its relationship with the UVF and the murder of Bobby Moffet which is attributed to that group by the Independent Monitoring Commission.

In the 2011 Northern Ireland Assembly election Purvis defends her seat as an independent candidate with Progressive Unionist Party leader Brian Ervine running against her. In the end neither candidate is elected and instead the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland gains a second Belfast East seat.

Purvis is now the director of the Marie Stopes clinic in Belfast. In November 2014 Bernadette Smyth, founder of the Precious Life organisation, is found guilty of the harassment of Purvis, but the verdict is later quashed.