Jim Allister

Both his parents, Robert and Mary Allister, were Protestants from County Monaghan, Robert (1911–1998) being from the townland of Leagh, just south of Monaghan Town.

Robert and Mary had moved north-east to County Down from County Monaghan in 1949 or 1950.

Allister was a pupil at Barnamaghery Primary School and later Dundonald Primary School when he moved house.

After attending Regent House Grammar School in Newtownards, Allister graduated with a Bachelor of Laws with Honours in Constitutional Law from Queen's University, Belfast.

James Hugh Allister (born 2 April 1953) is a British Unionist politician and barrister in Northern Ireland.

Allister quit the Official Unionist Party (OUP) to join the DUP at its founding in 1971.

In June 1972, as chairman of the Queen's University Democratic Unionist Party Association, Allister wrote a letter published in the Belfast Telegraph arguing that Ian Paisley was closely aligned with Enoch Powell's "integrationist" stance that Northern Ireland should be closer to the rest of the United Kingdom, and that other Unionist leaders were in favour of devolution.

In March 1973 Allister was elected to the post of publicity officer for the Queen's DUP Association.

In 1974, he unsuccessfully stood for the post of President of Queen's University Belfast Students' Union.

He was involved in the 1974 Ulster Workers' Council strike against the Sunningdale Agreement, which had been signed the previous December.

A senior loyalist politician recalled walking into the Ulster Workers' Council HQ on Hawthornden Road in Belfast to find Allister and Peter Robinson "giggling" while phoning Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) headquarters claiming to be Catholics in distress in a loyalist area afflicted by the strike and asking the SDLP to send a car to rescue them.

He was called to the Bar of Northern Ireland as a barrister in 1976, where he specialised in criminal law, and, in 2001, was called to the Senior Bar as a Queen's Counsel.

He served as a European Parliament assistant to Ian Paisley from 1980 to 1982.

In 1982 he was elected as a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly at Stormont for North Antrim and served as the DUP Assembly Chief Whip.

He was also the Vice-Chairman of Scrutiny Committee of Department of Finance and Personnel from October 1982 to June 1986.

In 1983 Allister stated that if the DUP were faced with a choice between no devolved government and a power-sharing government with the SDLP or other Nationalist representatives, his party would opt for not having a devolved government.

In 1983, he stood as a DUP candidate in the Westminster election for East Antrim.

However, he narrowly lost to Roy Beggs following a bitter campaign in which he denounced Beggs as a "political gypsy" for leaving the DUP and joining the OUP; Beggs had resigned from the DUP after leading a Larne council delegation to Dún Laoghaire in the Republic of Ireland.

In July 1984, Allister gave a speech at the unveiling of a loyalist mural in a housing estate in the Ballykeel area of Ballymena, County Antrim.

Speaking to a crowd of assembled loyalists in Orkney Drive, Allister said; "There are those in this estate who do not like the red, white and blue. To those people and to everyone else who would betray us, the Ulster Loyalists say: 'No surrender'."

Later, a crowd gathered outside the home of a Catholic family who lived in Orkney Drive, a married couple with six children, and pelted the house with stones, smashing windows and damaging the family car.

The father, Ivan Smith, was also reportedly punched and kicked.

The Smith family, who had lived in the area for thirteen years, fled shortly afterwards and were later rehoused.

Outside the Stormont Assembly, he was a member of Newtownabbey Borough Council from 1985 to 1987.

In August 1985, Allister attended the first major meeting of the United Ulster Loyalist Front (UULF) in Portadown.

The UULF had originally formed as a committee earlier that year to oppose police plans to reroute traditional Orange Order parades away from nationalist areas of Portadown.

The UULF was supported by the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) with South Belfast Brigade chief and UDA deputy leader John McMichael being appointed to the coordinating committee.

Unionists blamed the Irish government for loyalist parades being rerouted from predominantly Catholic areas and the UULF's stated purpose was to oppose further perceived interference from Dublin, although the group's secretary told the press ahead of the meeting that "[he] would not expect paramilitary action to be decided tonight".

Following the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement in November 1985 by the Thatcher and FitzGerald governments, he was a high-profile opponent of the treaty.

He was a member of the Joint Unionist Working Party, a body set up by his party and the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) to oversee the unionist campaign against the Agreement.

During the one-day loyalist strike against the Agreement in March 1986 it was reportedly difficult for journalists to move around the "loyalist stronghold" of Larne without the permission of Allister.

He was also very vocal in his criticism of Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) Chief Constable Sir John Hermon; the Irish Independent wrote in June 1986 that most of the statements sent by Allister with regards to the Chief Constable could not be printed "having regards to the law of defamation and libel".

In May 1986 Allister led thirteen other DUP politicians in an occupation of the telephone exchange at Parliament Buildings at Stormont and blocked calls from going through to government departments.

The siege ended after the RUC used a sledgehammer to breach the barricaded door.

Allister and then DUP deputy leader Peter Robinson held a press conference in September that year threatening to declare Northern Ireland independent from the United Kingdom if the Anglo-Irish Agreement wasn't withdrawn.

He was formerly a member of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), for which he successfully stood for election in 2004 to the European Parliament for Northern Ireland, succeeding Ian Paisley.

He founded the Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) political party in 2007, leading the party since its formation.

He continued as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) following his resignation from the DUP and his establishment of the TUV in 2007.

Allister was born in Listooder, Crossgar, in County Down where he lived until he was nine, when his family moved to Craigantlet, just outside Newtownards.

Allister has served as a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly (MLA) for North Antrim since 2011, and is the TUV’s only representative in the Assembly.