Portal:Northern Ireland/Selected biography/5

David Ervine (21 July 1953 - 8 January 2007) was a Northern Irish politician and the leader of the Progressive Unionist Party.

Raised in a Protestant working-class area of east Belfast, at 19 Ervine joined the Ulster Volunteer Force. Ervine was sentenced to eleven years imprisonment following an arrest in November 1974, for possession of explosives with intent to endanger life.

After much study and self-analysis whilst in jail, Ervine apparnetly emerged with the view that change through politics was preferable to terrorism. Released in 1980, he ran a newsagents' in Belfast for several years before taking up full-time politics. He stood in local council elections as a Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) candidate in 1985.

The PUP maintained links with the UVF, and Ervine is said to have played a pivotal role in bringing about the loyalist ceasefire of October 1994. He was part of a delegation to Downing Street in June 1996 that met then British Prime Minister John Major to discuss the loyalist ceasefire.

Ervine was considered to be one of the most progressive unionists in Northern Ireland politics. He had been a strong supporter of the Belfast Agreement. At a Labour Party meeting in 2001, then Northern Ireland Secretary, John Reid, described him as "one of the most eloquent politicians in Northern Ireland". Some of the less articulate of his opponents made references to him having swallowed a dictionary. Some saw Ervine as one of the few politicians actively engaged with conflict resolution.

In the Northern Ireland Assembly, he was seen as a Unionist sympathetic to the short term demands of Sinn Fein. He abstained against attempts by the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to exclude Sinn Fein from office in July 2000 and October 2001. In April 2001, he provoked a direct political attack from the DUP over him being the only Unionist to vote against a motion condemning the display of lilies commemorating the 1916 Easter Uprising at Parliament Buildings. He also expressed support for the right of Sinn Fein members to make speeches in Irish Gaelic on the floor of the Assembly. Later, political commentators noted how he sat next to Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness at the funeral of Northern Ireland football legend George Best in December 2005 as a sign of how Northern Ireland had moved on.

In its final regular reports of Ervine's life in April and October 2006, the IMC concluded that it was satisfied the PUP leadership had taken appropriate action to de-escalate UVF's violence and criminality and withdrew its punitive recommendations. On 13 May 2006, it was announced that when the Northern Ireland Assembly reconvenes, Ervine would join the Ulster Unionist assembly group, whilst remaining leader of the Progressive Unionists. Under the d'Hondt formula used for allocating places on the Northern Ireland Executive this would entitle the Ulster Unionists to an additional place. On 11 September, 2006 Ms Bell announced that the Ulster Unionist Party Assembly Group did not have a headquarters, at least one party leader and a scheme for financial support thus did not qualify as a political party.

Ervine suffered a heart attack, a stroke and brain haemorrhage after attending a football match between his team, Glentoran, and Armagh City at The Oval in Belfast on Saturday 6 January 2007. He died on Monday 8 January 2007 and was buried in Roselawn Cemetery on January 12, after a funeral service in east Belfast attended by Mark Durkan, Gerry Adams, Peter Hain, Dermot Ahern, Hugh Orde and David Trimble amongst others. More about David Ervine...