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Birth of Naomi Long, Northern Irish Politician

Naomi Rachel Long MLA (née Johnston), a Northern Irish politician who serves as Minister of Justice in the Northern Ireland Executive from January 2020 to October 2022, is born in east Belfast, Northern Ireland, on December 13, 1971. She has served as leader of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland (APNI) since 2016 and a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Belfast East since 2020.

Long attends Mersey Street Primary and Bloomfield Collegiate School. She graduates from Queen’s University Belfast with a degree in civil engineering in 1994, works in a structural engineering consultancy for two years, holds a research and training post at Queen’s University for three years, and then goes back into environmental and hydraulic engineering consultancy for four years.

Long first takes political office in 2001 when she is elected to Belfast City Council for the Victoria ward. In 2003, she is elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly for Belfast East, succeeding her fellow party member John Alderdice. In 2006, she is named deputy leader of her party. In the 2007 Northern Ireland Assembly election, she more than doubles the party’s vote in the constituency, being placed second ahead of the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP). The overall UUP vote, however, is 22%. At 18.8%, her vote share is higher than that for Alderdice in 1998.

On June 1, 2009, Long is elected as Lord Mayor of Belfast, defeating Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) candidate William Humphrey by 26 votes to 24 in a vote at a council meeting. She becomes the second woman to hold the post, after Grace Bannister (1981–82).

On May 6, 2010, Long defeats Peter Robinson, First Minister of Northern Ireland and leader of the DUP, to become Member of Parliament (MP) for Belfast East in the House of Commons. She becomes the first MP elected to Westminster for the Alliance Party (previously, Stratton Mills, a former Ulster Unionist Party MP, had changed parties to Alliance). She also becomes the first Liberal-affiliated MP elected to Westminster in Northern Ireland since James Brown Dougherty in Londonderry City in 1914. Despite the close relationship between the Alliance Party and the Liberal Democrats, she does not sit with the coalition government nor take the coalition whip and is not a member of the Liberal Democrats.

On December 10, 2012, Long receives a number of death threats, and a petrol bomb is thrown inside an unmarked police car guarding her constituency office. This violence erupts as a reaction by Ulster loyalists to the decision by Alliance Party members of Belfast City Council to vote in favour of restricting the flying of the Union flag at Belfast City Hall to designated days throughout the year, which at the time constitutes 18 specific days.

In 2015, Long loses her seat in the Commons to Gavin Robinson of the DUP, as a result of a five-party unionist pact in the constituency which sees the UUP, UK Independence Party (UKIP), Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) and Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) all stand aside in favour of Robinson.

In January 2016, Long announces that she will return as an Assembly candidate in the 2016 Northern Ireland Assembly election having been nominated in place of incumbent Judith Cochrane. She is subsequently elected on the first count with 14.7% of first-preference votes. Following her return to the Assembly, she assumes positions on the Committee for Communities, the All-Party Group on Fairtrade, the All-Party Group for Housing, and chairs the All-Party Group on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

In August 2016, Long calls for Sinn Féin‘s Máirtín Ó Muilleoir to stand aside as Minister of Finance during an investigation of the Stormont Finance Committee’s handling of its Nama inquiry, while Ó Muilleoir is a committee member. This follows allegations that his party had “coached” loyalist blogger Jamie Bryson prior to his appearance before the committee.

In November 2016, Long criticises Sinn Féin and the DUP for delaying the publication of a working group report on abortion, which recommends legislative changes in cases of fatal foetal abnormality, calling on the Executive “to act without further delay to help women who decide to seek a termination in these very difficult circumstances.”

On October 26, 2016, Long is elected Alliance leader unopposed following the resignation of David Ford. In the first manifesto released under her leadership, she affirms her commitment to building a “united, open, liberal and progressive” society. Her party’s legislative priorities are revealed to include the harmonisation and strengthening of equality and anti-discrimination measures, the introduction of civil marriage equality, development of integrated education and a Northern Ireland framework to tackle climate change.

In the 2017 Northern Ireland Assembly election, Long tops the poll in Belfast East and is returned to the Assembly with 18.9% of first-preference votes. The election is widely viewed as a success for Alliance, with the party increasing its vote share by 2 percentage points and retaining all of its seats in a smaller Assembly. The party subsequently holds the balance of power at Stormont.

Alliance targets two seats in Belfast South and Belfast East in the 2017 United Kingdom general election. During the campaign, Long reaffirms her support for a People’s Vote, marriage equality, Votes at 16 and greater transparency surrounding political donations. She also pledges to oppose any rollback of the Human Rights Act 1998.

Following the collapse of talks to restore devolution in February 2018, Long reiterates her view that the pay of MLAs should be cut in the absence of a functioning Executive. In March 2018, Alliance launches its “Next Steps Forward” paper, outlining a number of proposals aimed at breaking the deadlock and Stormont. At the 2019 Alliance Party Conference, she accuses Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Karen Bradley of an “appalling dereliction of duty” over the ongoing stalemate, saying that she had made “no concerted effort to end this interminable drift despite it allegedly being her top priority.”

In the 2019 Northern Ireland local elections, Alliance sees a 65% rise in its representation on councils. Long hails the “incredible result” as a watershed moment for politics in Northern Ireland.

Long is elected to the European Parliament as a representative for Northern Ireland in May 2019 with 18.5% of first-preference votes, the best ever result for Alliance. She is subsequently replaced in the Assembly by Máire Hendron, a founding member of the party and former deputy lord mayor of Belfast. She then replaces Hendron in the Assembly with effect from January 9, 2020.

In 2019, Long becomes the first Northern Ireland politician to have served at every level of government.

On January 11, 2020, following the restoration of the Northern Ireland Assembly after three years of stalemate, Long is elected Minister of Justice in the Northern Ireland Executive. On January 28, she announces that she will progress new domestic abuse legislation through the Assembly which will make coercive control a criminal offence in Northern Ireland. In June 2020, she commissions a review into the support available for prison officers following concerns about absence rates. That same month, she announces her intention to introduce unexplained wealth orders in Northern Ireland to target paramilitary and criminal finances.

In November 2020, Long says she is seriously reconsidering her position within the Executive following the DUP’s deployment of a cross-community vote to prevent an extension of COVID-19 regulations. She tells BBC News, “I have asked people to desist from this abuse of power because it will make my position in the executive unsustainable.”

In March 2022, Long tells the Alliance Party Conference that “some politicians are addicted to crisis and conflict and simply not up to the job of actually governing.” Long leads Alliance into the 2022 Northern Ireland Assembly election on a platform of integrated education, health reform, a Green New Deal, tackling paramilitarism and reform of the Stormont institutions.

Long is a member of Bloomfield Presbyterian Church. Following the Church’s decision to exclude those in same-sex relationships from being full members, she expresses “great concern” and states that she “didn’t know” if she would remain a member herself. She is married to Michael Long, an Alliance councillor on Belfast City Council and former Lord Mayor of Belfast, and son of the engineer Professor Adrian Long. Long and her husband are the first husband and wife to have both served as Lord Mayors of Belfast.


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Death of James Hamilton, 3rd Duke of Abercorn

James Albert Edward Hamilton, 3rd Duke of Abercorn, dies on September 12, 1953 in London, England.

Hamilton is born in Hamilton Place, Piccadilly, London, on November 30, 1869. Styled Marquess of Hamilton between 1885 and 1913, he is a British peer and Unionist politician. He serves as the first Governor of Northern Ireland, a post he holds between 1922 and 1945. He is a great-grandfather of Diana, Princess of Wales.

Hamilton is the eldest son of James Hamilton, 2nd Duke of Abercorn, and godson of the Prince of Wales. His mother, Lady Mary Anna, is the fourth daughter of Richard Curzon-Howe, 1st Earl Howe. He is educated at Eton College and subsequently serves first in the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers until 1892 when he joins the 1st Life Guards. He is later transferred as major to the North Irish Horse.

In early 1901 he accompanies his father on a special diplomatic mission to announce the accession of King Edward to the governments of Denmark, Sweden and Norway, Russia, Germany, and Saxony.

In the 1900 United Kingdom general election in Ireland, Hamilton stands successfully as Unionist candidate for Londonderry City, and three years later he becomes Treasurer of the Household, a post he holds until the fall of Arthur Balfour‘s Conservative administration in 1905. After serving for a time as an Opposition whip, Hamilton succeeds his father as third Duke of Abercorn in 1913. In 1922, he is appointed governor of the newly created Northern Ireland. He also serves as Lord Lieutenant of Tyrone from 1917 until his death, having previously been a Deputy Lieutenant for County Donegal. Hamilton proves a popular royal representative in Northern Ireland and is reappointed to the post in 1928 after completing his first term of office. In 1931, he declines the offer of the governor generalship of Canada, and three years later he is again reappointed governor for a third term. He remains in this capacity until his resignation in July 1945.

Hamilton is made the last non-royal Knight of the Most Illustrious Order of Saint Patrick in 1922. In 1928 he becomes a Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter and is also the recipient of an honorary degree from the Queen’s University Belfast. He receives the Royal Victorian Chain in 1945, the same year he is sworn of the Privy Council.

Hamilton marries Lady Rosalind Cecilia Caroline Bingham, only daughter of Charles George Bingham, 4th Earl of Lucan and his wife Lady Cecilia Catherine Gordon-Lennox at St. Paul’s Church, Knightsbridge, on November 1, 1894. They have three daughters and two sons.

Hamilton dies at his London home on September 12, 1953, and is buried at Baronscourt in County Tyrone.

(Pictured: “James Albert Edward Hamilton, 3rd Duke of Abercorn” by Alexander Bassano, Collodion Negative, 1894, Photographs Collection, National Portrait Gallery, London)


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Birth of Geoffrey Henry Cecil Bing, Barrister & Politician

geoffrey-henry-cecil-bing

Geoffrey Henry Cecil Bing, British barrister and politician who serves as the Labour Party Member of Parliament for Hornchurch from 1945 to 1955, is born on July 24, 1909, at Craigavad near Belfast in what is now Northern Ireland.

Bing is educated at Rockport School and Tonbridge School before going on to Lincoln College, Oxford, where he reads history. He graduates with a second-class degree in 1931, before attending Princeton University, where he is a Jane Eliza Procter Visiting Fellow between 1932 and 1933. He is called to the bar from the Inner Temple in 1934.

Always a radical and a member of the socialist left, Bing is active in the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers and the National Council for Civil Liberties. During the Spanish Civil War, he joins the International Brigades as a journalist, barely avoiding capture at Bilbao. He is also an early anti-Nazi.

During World War II, Bing serves in the Royal Corps of Signals, attaining the rank of major. A 1943 experiment with parachutes at the GSO2 Airborne Forces Development Centre leaves him disfigured and he bears the scars for many years.

At the 1945 general election, Bing stands for Labour in Hornchurch, winning the seat. He is re-elected in 1950 and 1951, serving until 1955. He serves briefly as a junior whip in 1945-1946 but this is widely thought to have been the unintended result of confusion on the part of Clement Attlee, who confuses him for another Labour MP of a similar name.

On the backbenches, Bing is, according to his Times obituary, “the unrestrained leader of a small group of radicals, never fully trusted by their colleagues and known as ‘Bing Boys.'” He takes a particular interest in the cases of Timothy Evans and John Christie, and he supports the campaign to overturn the conviction of Evans, which is ultimately successful. He supports Communist China and takes a keen interest in Northern Ireland, the brewers’ monopoly and parliamentary procedure.

Bing also builds a practice in West Africa. He becomes close to Kwame Nkrumah, the first post-colonial president of Ghana and is appointed Ghana’s attorney-general, a post he holds until 1961. When Nkrumah is ousted in 1966, Bing is arrested and ill-treated, before being sent home some months later. His memoir of Nkrumah’s Ghana, Reap the Whirlwind, is published in 1968.

Geoffrey Henry Cecil Bing dies in London on April 24, 1977, at the age of 67.


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John Philip Nolan Wins Co. Galway By-Election

john-philip-nolan

Captain John Philip Nolan, an Irish nationalist landowner and a supporter of home rule and tenant rights, defeats Conservative William Le Poer Trench on February 8, 1872, in a County Galway by-election. He serves in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and as member of the Irish Parliamentary Party representing Galway County (1872–1885) and Galway North (1885–1895, 1900–1906).

Nolan is the eldest son of John Nolan, Justice of the Peace, of Ballinderry, Tuam, and Mary Anne, Walter Nolan, of Loughboy. He receives his education at Clongowes Wood College, Stonyhurst, Trinity College, Dublin, the Staff College, Camberley and Woolwich. He enters the British Royal Artillery in 1857 and serves throughout the 1868 Expedition to Abyssinia. As adjutant to Colonel Milward, he is present at the capture of Amba Mariam (then known as Magdala) and is mentioned in dispatches. He is awarded the Abyssinian War Medal and retires from the Army with the rank of lieutenant-colonel in 1881.

Nolan becomes involved in the nascent home rule campaign of the Home Rule League. On February 8, 1872, he is elected MP for Galway County in a by-election, defeating by a large majority the Conservative William Le Poer Trench. Of the 4,686 available electors, who are chiefly Catholic, 2,823 vote for Nolan and 658 for Trench.

Trench appeals the result, claiming on petition that there is widespread intimidation during the election campaign. The local Catholic bishops and clergy had strongly supported Nolan, chiefly because the family of his opponent, a Captain Trench, was active in proselytism. The trial of the Galway County Election Petition begins, before Judge William Keogh, on April 1 and ends on May 21, 1872.

Judge Keogh finds that Nolan had been elected by the undue influence and intimidation and in his report states that he found 36 persons guilty of undue influence and intimidation, including John MacHale, the Archbishop of Tuam, the Bishop of Clonfert, Patrick Duggan, and the Bishop of Galway, John McEvilly, and twenty-nine named priests, such intimidation being in some cases exercised in the very churches. As a result, Nolan is unseated on June 13, with the seat going to Trench. The judgement causes an uproar. The judge is threatened with removal from the bench and his reputation never recovers.

Nolan retakes the seat at the 1874 election. He remains MP after the 1885 constituency reforms as MP for Galway North until 1895.

When the Irish Parliamentary Party splits over Charles Stewart Parnell‘s long-term family relationship with Katharine O’Shea, the separated wife of a fellow MP, Nolan sides with his deposed leader and seconds the motion to retain Parnell as chairman at the ill-fated party meeting in Committee Room 15 of the House of Commons. He goes on to become whip of the pro-Parnellite rump of the split party, the Irish National League. He loses the Galway North seat to an Anti-Parnellite, Denis Kilbride, in 1895 and stands unsuccessfully as a Parnellite for South Louth in 1896. He is re-elected unopposed at Galway North after the reunification of the Parliamentary Party in 1900 but loses the seat again for the final time in 1906 when he stands as an Independent Nationalist.


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Birth of James Hamilton, First Governor of Northern Ireland

james-hamilton

James Albert Edward Hamilton, 3rd Duke of Abercorn, is born in Hamilton Place, Piccadilly, London, on November 30, 1869. Styled Marquess of Hamilton between 1885 and 1913, he is a British peer and Unionist politician. He serves as the first Governor of Northern Ireland, a post he holds between 1922 and 1945. He is a great-grandfather of Diana, Princess of Wales.

Hamilton is the eldest son of James Hamilton, 2nd Duke of Abercorn, and godson of the Prince of Wales. His mother, Lady Mary Anna, is the fourth daughter of Richard Curzon-Howe, 1st Earl Howe. He is educated at Eton College and subsequently serves first in the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers until 1892 when he joins the 1st Life Guards. He is later transferred as major to the North Irish Horse.

In early 1901 he accompanies his father on a special diplomatic mission to announce the accession of King Edward to the governments of Denmark, Sweden and Norway, Russia, Germany, and Saxony.

In the 1900 general election, Hamilton stands successfully as Unionist candidate for Londonderry City, and three years later he becomes Treasurer of the Household, a post he holds until the fall of Arthur Balfour‘s Conservative administration in 1905. After serving for a time as an Opposition whip, Hamilton succeeds his father as third Duke of Abercorn in 1913. In 1922, he is appointed governor of the newly created Northern Ireland. He also serves as Lord Lieutenant of Tyrone from 1917 until his death, having previously been a Deputy Lieutenant for County Donegal. Abercorn proves a popular royal representative in Northern Ireland and is reappointed to the post in 1928 after completing his first term of office. In 1931, he declines the offer of the governor generalship of Canada, and three years later he is again reappointed governor for a third term. He remains in this capacity until his resignation in July 1945.

Abercorn is made the last non-royal Knight of the Most Illustrious Order of Saint Patrick in 1922. In 1928 he becomes a Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter and is also the recipient of an honorary degree from the Queen’s University Belfast. He receives the Royal Victorian Chain in 1945, the same year he is sworn of the Privy Council.

Abercorn marries Lady Rosalind Cecilia Caroline Bingham, only daughter of Charles Bingham, 4th Earl of Lucan and his wife Lady Cecilia Catherine Gordon-Lennox at St. Paul’s Church, Knightsbridge, on November 1, 1894. They have three daughters and two sons.

Abercorn dies at his London home on September 12, 1953, and is buried at Baronscourt in County Tyrone.