Preceded by Assembly Established Succeeded by Jim Nicholson Name John Baron | Role Political leader | |
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Preceded by Constituency Established Education Queen's University Belfast, The Royal School, Armagh | ||
Preceded by Parliament Established | ||
John David Taylor, Baron Kilclooney, PC (NI) (born 24 December 1937), is a former Ulster Unionist Party MP and a life peer. He was deputy leader of the UUP from 1995 to 2001, and a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Career and family
Taylor was educated at The Royal School, Armagh, and The Queen's University of Belfast (BSc). He married Mary Todd in 1970 and has six children. Lord Kilclooney owns Alpha Newspapers which operates local newspaper titles in Northern Ireland and the Republic. He is a member of the Farmers Club in London, and the County Club in Armagh City.
Lord Kilclooney's political career began as MP for South Tyrone in the Northern Ireland House of Commons between 1965 and 1972 and served in the Government of Northern Ireland as Minister of State at the Ministry of Home Affairs.
In February 1972, he survived an assassination attempt by the Official Irish Republican Army. Two men, including Joe McCann (who was himself shot dead some months afterwards whilst evading arrest), raked his car with bullets, hitting Taylor five times in the head. Taylor survived, but needed extensive reconstructive surgery on his jaw. Despite this, Taylor soon re-entered politics. He represented Fermanagh & South Tyrone in the short-lived Northern Ireland Assembly elected in 1973 and dissolved in 1974, following the collapse of the power-sharing Executive.
He became a Member of the European Parliament for Northern Ireland in 1979, remaining an MEP until 1989. On 20 January 1987, Taylor left the European Democrats, with whom the Conservatives sat, to join the controversial European Right group.
He was elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly in 1982 for North Down. He then became MP for Strangford in 1983, until 2001. He was a member of Castlereagh Borough Council from 1993–1997. In February 1989 he joined the "hard right" Conservative Monday Club and appears on the list of their speakers at the Annual Conference of its Young Members' Group at the United Oxford & Cambridge Club in Pall Mall, on 18 November 1989, when he spoke on 'The Union and Northern Ireland'.
Following the 2001 general election, on 17 July he was created a life peer as Baron Kilclooney, of Armagh in the County of Armagh, sitting as a crossbencher. He sat on the Northern Ireland Policing Board between 1998 and 2006. He continued to sit as a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly until his retirement prior to the elections in March 2007. He remains the only active politician to have participated in all levels of government in Northern Ireland, from local council, the Parliament of Northern Ireland, Westminster, Europe, all previous failed Assemblies and Conventions and the current incarnation of the Assembly.
In January 2012, Taylor wrote to The Scotsman newspaper asserting that Scotland should be subject to partition, depending on the outcome of the Scottish independence referendum.