Jim Allister
James Hugh Allister is a Northern Irish unionist politician and barrister who has served as Member of Parliament in the House of Commons for North Antrim since the 2024 general election. He founded the Traditional Unionist Voice in 2007 and has led the party since its formation. Prior to his election to Westminster, Allister was a member of the Legislative Assembly for North Antrim, having been first elected in the 2011 Assembly election.
Allister had been a member of the Democratic Unionist Party since its foundation in 1971, and for which he successfully stood for election in the 2004 European Parliament election for Northern Ireland, succeeding Ian Paisley. He continued as a member of the European Parliament following his resignation from the DUP and establishment of the TUV, serving until 2009.
Early life and education
Jim Allister was born on 2 April 1953 in Listooder, near Crossgar in County Down, where he lived until he was nine, when his family moved to Craigantlet, just outside Newtownards. His parents, Robert Allister and Mary Jane Allister, were Protestants from County Monaghan; Robert was from the townland of Leagh, just south of Monaghan. They had moved northeast 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 from Queen's University Belfast with a Bachelor of Laws degree with honours in constitutional law. In 1974, he unsuccessfully stood for the post of president of Queen's University Belfast Students' Union.
Student activist
Allister quit the Official Unionist Party 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. 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 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 served as a European Parliament assistant to Ian Paisley from 1980 to 1982.Elected politician
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. 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. He was also the vice-chairman of Scrutiny Committee of Department of Finance and Personnel from October 1982 to June 1986. Outside the Stormont Assembly, he was a member of Newtownabbey Borough Council from 1985 to 1987. 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.
In August 1985, Allister attended the first major meeting of the United Ulster Loyalist Front 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 paramilitary organisation the Ulster Defence Association 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 " would not expect paramilitary action to be decided tonight".
Politics after Anglo-Irish Agreement
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 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 chief constable 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. In November 1986 the SDLP called for Allister and other unionist politicians to be prosecuted for incitement following a "violent" speech at a DUP demonstration in Carrickfergus, afterwards the crowd had attacked Catholic property resulting in the death of an elderly Catholic woman.That same month Allister organised a rally inaugurating the Ballymena battalion of a new loyalist paramilitary group, Ulster Resistance. Allister, DUP deputy leader Peter Robinson, and Ulster Clubs chairman Alan Wright led hundreds of loyalists, many wearing paramilitary uniforms and some wearing masks, parading in a show of strength that culminated at Ballymena Town Hall, where DUP leader Ian Paisley was waiting. Inside Paisley donned a red Ulster Resistance beret on stage, daring the RUC to arrest him while Allister pledged his "personal support" to Ulster Resistance.
Allister claimed that the RUC had erected a "ring of steel" around the town in an attempt to prevent them from marching to the site of the meeting; he was cheered when he informed the gathered crowd that the colour party had instead entered the town through adjoining fields. The RUC denied any undue holdups and stated no arrests were made. When questioned by the press Allister declined to say how many were in attendance but claimed that Ulster Resistance rallies seemed to grow in size every night, declaring:
His departure from active politics in June 1987 followed a reported disagreement with Paisley over a voting pact with James Molyneaux's UUP. The situation resembled fellow unionist politician and barrister Robert McCartney's in the North Down constituency. McCartney was expelled from the UUP around the same time for not accepting the policy of the leadership.
Legal career
Allister was called to the Bar of Northern Ireland as a barrister in 1976, specialising in criminal law. In 2001, he was called to the Inner Bar as Queen's Counsel.In 2003, he represented Loyalist Volunteer Force member Clifford McKeown in court in a case regarding the 1996 murder of Catholic taxi driver Michael McGoldrick. McKeown was found guilty of the murder by the court. Allister said that McKeown would be appealing against the conviction.
Member of the European Parliament
Allister returned to the DUP in 2004 and successfully ran as the party's candidate in Northern Ireland at the 2004 European Parliament election in the United Kingdom, topping the poll with 175,000 first-preference votes, 32 per cent of the total.It is reported that he participated in more parliamentary debates and asked more questions than his fellow Northern Irish MEPs Bairbre de Brún of Sinn Féin and Jim Nicholson of the Ulster Unionist Party. Allister was also active as a member of the European Parliament Fisheries Committee and was ranked by the pressure group TaxPayers' Alliance as the most "hard-working, transparent and pro-taxpayer" of the 75 United Kingdom MEPs during the 2004–2009 European Parliament.
On 27 March 2007, Allister resigned from the DUP because of the party's decision to enter into government with Sinn Féin. It was the second occasion on which he had resigned from the party.
In late 2007, there was speculation that Allister might found a new unionist political party. It was also claimed, on 10 October 2007, that he had been approached by the United Kingdom Independence Party, but he in fact proceeded to found the Traditional Unionist Voice on 7 December 2007.
In the 2009 European Parliament election in the United Kingdom, this time standing as a TUV candidate, Allister polled 13.5 per cent of the first-preference votes cast but was not re-elected.