William Long

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William Joseph Long , OBE (born April 23, 1922 in Stockton-on-Tees , † February 10, 2008 ) was a unionist politician of Northern Ireland .

Born and raised in Great Ayton, Yorkshire , he studied at the Royal Veterinary College in Edinburgh and the Royal Military College in Sandhurst . In 1940 he was stationed in Northern Ireland as an officer in the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers . There he married Doreen Mercer, a practicing doctor, and from 1942 settled permanently in Ireland.

After the war, Long left the British Army and took over the management of two charities in succession. He joined the Ulster Unionist Party and was elected to Donaghadee City Council, which he chaired from 1955 to 1964.

In the election in Northern Ireland in 1962 he was elected to the Parliament of Northern Ireland for the unionist Ards faction . He gained brief attention through an intervention in a strike at the Harland & Wolff shipyard . Throughout his life his political work focused on fishing. Under Prime Minister Terence O'Neill , he was appointed Minister of Agriculture in 1963. From 1966 he held the Ministry of Education.

In this function he tried to integrate the Catholic schools into the state school system, which mainly accepted Protestant students. He negotiated an agreement with Cardinal Conway , according to which some school policy decision-making powers were transferred to the state. In return, he strengthened their funding. The partially controversial reform must be assessed against the background of the particularly sharp social segregation of Catholics and Protestants during the Northern Ireland conflict .

In 1968 he was appointed Minister of the Interior. After another wave of escalation of the " Troubles " that shaped his political activities throughout his life, he issued an amendment to the Public Order Act (Northern Ireland) 1951 and made knowingly participating in "illegal marches or events" a criminal offense. After three months in office, he moved to the Ministry of Development. As part of a four-member cabinet, he called British troops on a domestic deployment in April 1969 in an attempt to control the aftermath of the Troubles. Against public expectations, he was appointed to the cabinet under the new Prime Minister James Chichester-Clark , again at the Ministry of Education.

In 1969 he negotiated unsuccessfully with Ian Paisley to resolve the ongoing domestic political conflicts which resulted in the dissolution of parliament in 1972. Since then, Long has been little politically active. Most recently, he was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) at the New Year's Eve in 1985 .

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  1. ^ A b Anne McHardy, " Obituary: William Long, " The Guardian , April 11, 2008
  2. ^ " Captain William Long, " The Times , April 15, 2008
  3. ^ Biographies of Members of the Northern Ireland House of Commons
  4. ^ A b " Captain William Long ", Daily Telegraph , April 14, 2008
personal data
SURNAME Long, William
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Long, William Joseph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Northern Irish politician
DATE OF BIRTH April 23, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Stockton-on-teas
DATE OF DEATH February 10, 2008