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Tag Archives: 2001 United Kingdom General Election


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Birth of David Ford, Northern Irish Politician

David Ford, former Northern Irish politician, is born on February 24, 1951, to Irish and Welsh parents in Orpington, Kent, England. He serves as leader of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland from October 2001 until October 2016 and is Northern Ireland Minister of Justice from April 2010 until May 2016. He is a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly (MLA) for South Antrim from 1998 to 2018.

Ford is educated at Warren Road Primary School, Orpington, and Dulwich College, London. He spends summer holidays on his uncle’s farm in Gortin, County Tyrone, and moves to Northern Ireland permanently in 1969 when he goes to study Economics at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB). There he joins the university’s student Alliance Party grouping. After graduating, he takes a year out to work as a volunteer at the ecumenical Corrymeela Community in Ballycastle, County Antrim, before starting work as a social worker in 1973.

Ford stands unsuccessfully for Antrim Borough Council in 1989 and enters politics full-time when he becomes general secretary of the Alliance Party. In that role, he is best known as a strong supporter of the then-leader John Alderdice and an advocate of better political organisation and community politics. He is elected to Antrim Borough Council in 1993, 1997 and – after leaving the Council in 2001 to concentrate on Assembly business – again in 2005.

In 1996, Ford stands unsuccessfully for election to the Northern Ireland Forum in South Antrim. In 1997, he obtains 12% of the vote in the general election in South Antrim, and in 1998 is elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly in the constituency of the same name. He sought South Antrim again in the 2000 South Antrim by-election and in the 2001 and 2005 United Kingdom general elections.

In 2001, Seán Neeson resigns from the Party leadership following poor election results. Ford wins the leadership election on October 6 by 86 votes to 45, ahead of Eileen Bell.

Ford gives Alliance a stability which it has lacked since the departure of John Alderdice, but the Party has declined seriously in the late 1990s and all he can do is stabilise the situation. Within a month of taking over the leadership, however, he has a chance to establish Alliance’s relevancy in the post-Good Friday Agreement environment. On November 6, 2001, the Northern Ireland Executive is to be re-established. Due to defections within his own Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), First Minister David Trimble has insufficient support within the Unionist bloc in the Assembly to be re-elected to his post. Ford and two of his five colleagues re-designate as Unionist for just 22 minutes in order to secure Trimble’s position and thereby enable the devolved institutions to operate for another year. However, Alliance fails to make any political gains from their move, and the UUP and Sinn Féin fail to reach agreement on the decommissioning issue, ensuring that the institutions collapse again in October 2002.

In the 2003 Northern Ireland Assembly election, Ford’s seat in the Assembly is perceived to be under severe threat from Sinn Féin’s Martin Meehan, with many commentators expecting him to lose it. However, his expertise in nuts-and-bolts electioneering stands him in good stead. Although Alliance’s vote almost halved, his own vote in South Antrim increases from 8.6% to 9.1%. Meehan’s vote increases dramatically, from 7.3% to 11.5%, and he starts the election count ahead. Ford has much greater transfer appeal and finishes 180 votes ahead of Meehan at the end of a dramatic three-way fight for the last two seats, with Thomas Burns of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) just 14 votes ahead of Ford. Despite the dramatic fall in vote, Alliance holds on to its six seats in the Assembly, which remains suspended.

In 2004, Ford makes good his leadership election pledge to work with other parties, as Alliance joins with the Workers’ Party, Northern Ireland Conservatives and elements of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition to support Independent candidate John Gilliland in the European elections, achieving the best result for the centre ground for 25 years.

Ford’s greatest triumph comes in the 2007 Northern Ireland Assembly election, when the party achieves its highest vote share since Alderdice’s departure and picks up a seat in what is an otherwise poor election for the moderates. Despite media predictions once again of his demise, Ford himself is elected third in South Antrim, with over 13% of the poll.

On April 12, 2010, Ford is chosen by the Assembly to become Northern Ireland’s first Justice Minister in 38 years. He is supported in the Assembly by the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), Sinn Féin, the Alliance Party, the Green Party and the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP). Separate candidates for the position are put forward by both the UUP and the SDLP, being Danny Kennedy and Alban Maginness respectively.

In the 2011 Northern Ireland Assembly election, the Alliance Party manages to increase their vote by 50% gaining an extra seat in Belfast East and surpassing the UUP in Belfast.

Ford announces his resignation as Leader in October 2016 on the fifteenth anniversary of his election as leader noting, “The team is working well, and I think it’s an appropriate time to hand over to a new leader who will lead the party forward in the next stage of its development and growth.”

Ford and his wife Anne have four grown children and live in rural County Antrim. Until the spring of 2013, he is an elder in the Second Donegore congregation of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. He is removed from his role as a ruling elder over differences with fellow congregants on the subject of same-sex marriage. In a 2016 interview he says he is still hurt by the decision by his fellow elders who chose not to work with him because of his support for equal marriage. “It saddened me that there was, if I may put it, a lack of understanding from some people about the role I had as a legislator, compared to the role I have within the church.”


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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.


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Mo Mowlam Presented International Woman of the Year Award

mo-mowlan

Marjorie “Mo” Mowlam, English Labour Party politician, is presented with the International Woman of the Year Award at a ceremony in Dublin on October 23, 2001. United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson wins the Overall Award at the Irish Tatler Women of the Year Awards.

Mowlam is born on September 18, 1949 in Watford, Hertfordshire, England but grows up in Coventry. She starts her education at Chiswick Girls’ grammar school in West London, then moves to Coundon Court school in Coventry which, at the time, is one of the first comprehensive schools in the country. She then studies at Trevelyan College, Durham University, reading sociology and anthropology. She joins the Labour Party in her first year.

Mowlam becomes the Secretary of the Durham Union Society in 1969 and later goes on to become the Vice-President of the Durham Student’s Union. She works for then-MP Tony Benn in London and American writer Alvin Toffler in New York, moving to the United States with her then-boyfriend and studying for a PhD in political science at the University of Iowa.

Mowlam is a lecturer in the Political Science Department at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee in 1977 and at Florida State University in Tallahassee from 1977 to 1979. During her time in Tallahassee, someone breaks into her apartment. She suspects that it is Ted Bundy, the serial killer and rapist who is thought to have murdered at least 35 young women and attacked several others. She returns to England in 1979 to take up an appointment at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.

Having failed to win selection for the 1983 general election, Mowlam is selected as Labour candidate for the safe seat of Redcar after James Tinn stands down. She takes the seat in the 1987 general election, becoming the Labour spokesperson on Northern Ireland later that year. Together with Shadow Chancellor John Smith, she is one of the architects of Labour’s “Prawn Cocktail Offensive” dedicated to reassuring the UK’s financial sector about Labour’s financial rectitude.

Mowlam joins the Shadow Cabinet when John Smith becomes leader of the Labour Party in 1992, holding the title of Shadow Secretary of State for National Heritage. During this time, she antagonises both monarchists and republicans by calling for Buckingham Palace to be demolished and replaced by a “modern” palace built at public expense. Later, her willingness to speak her mind, often without regard to the consequences, is seen as her greatest strength by her supporters.

Following Smith’s death in 1994, Mowlam, alongside Peter Kilfoyle, becomes a principal organiser of Tony Blair‘s campaign for the Labour leadership. After his victory, Blair makes her Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. She initially resists being appointed to the position, preferring an economic portfolio, but, after accepting it, she throws her weight into the job.

Mowlam oversees the negotiations which lead to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. She is successful in helping to restore an Irish Republican Army (IRA) ceasefire and including Sinn Féin in multi-party talks about the future of Northern Ireland. In an attempt to persuade the Ulster loyalists to participate in the peace process, she pays an unprecedented and potentially dangerous visit to loyalist prisoners in HM Prison Maze, meeting convicted murderers face-to-face and unaccompanied.

Mowlam witnesses the Good Friday Agreement signing in 1998, which leads to the temporary establishment of a devolved power-sharing Northern Ireland Assembly. However, an increasingly difficult relationship with Unionist parties means her role in the talks is ultimately taken over by Tony Blair and his staff.

Mowlam’s deteriorating relationship with Unionists is the key reason she is replaced by Peter Mandelson as Northern Ireland Secretary in October 1999. Her move to the relatively lowly position of Minister for the Cabinet Office possibly involves other factors, notably her health and her popularity. On September 4, 2000, she announces her intention to retire from Parliament and relinquishes her seat at the 2001 general election.

Five months before the 1997 general election, Mowlam is diagnosed with a brain tumor, a fact that she tries to keep private. She appears to suffer from balance problems as a result of her radiotherapy. According to her husband, she falls on July 30, 2005, receiving head injuries and never regaining consciousness. Her living will, in which she asks not to be resuscitated, is honoured. On August 12, 2005, Mowlan is moved to Pilgrims Hospice in Canterbury, Kent, where she dies seven days later, on August 19, 2005, aged 55.

Mowlam is an atheist and is cremated in Sittingbourne on September 1, 2005 at a non-religious service conducted by Reverend Richard Coles, formerly of the 1980s band The Communards. Half of her ashes were scattered at Hillsborough Castle, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland’s official residence, and the other half in her former parliamentary constituency of Redcar.