William McCrea (politician)

Early life and education

McCrea was the youngest of five children born to Robert Thomas (a famer in Stewartstown, Northern Ireland) and Sarah Jayne in August 1948. He was educated in Magherafelt and spent a short time working in Social Security in the Civil Service of Northern Ireland before beginning training as a Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster minister. He undertook this training at Ravenhill Theological Hall, on the Ravenhill Road in Belfast.

McCrea received an Honorary Doctorate of Divinity from Mariette Bible College, Ohio, United States.

Career

McCrea was a Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) member of Magherafelt District Council from its creation in 1973 until he stood down to concentrate on Westminster duties in 2010, and topped the poll in every local government election he contested from 1973–2005.

He ran unsuccessfully for the House of Commons in the 1982 Belfast South by-election. He was Member of Parliament for Mid Ulster from 1983 but lost this seat to Sinn Féin chief negotiator and deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness at the 1997 election. He took South Antrim at a by-election in 2000 caused by the death of Ulster Unionist Party MP, Clifford Forsythe, but failed to retain this seat at the 2001 election. In the 2005 election he regained the seat. He was subsequently defeated by the Ulster Unionist Party in 2015.

In 1996 he was elected to the Northern Ireland Forum for Mid-Ulster. From 1998 to 2007 he was a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly for Mid Ulster. He was therefore a political representative for two separate constituencies (Mid Ulster and South Antrim) from 2000 to 2001 and from 2005 to 2007.

At the 2007 election, he was elected as an Assembly Member for South Antrim. He resigned from the Assembly in 2010, following his return to Westminster at the general election of that year.

He is also the minister of Magherafelt Free Presbyterian Church and has made numerous gospel albums.

Controversy and paramilitary associations

McCrea was a member of the Shankill Defence Association and in 1971 he was convicted of riotous behaviour in Dungiven. In 1975 he led a prayer service at the paramilitary funerals of Wesley Somerville and Harris Boyle. The two soldiers were part of the Glenanne gang which carried out the Miami Showband killings and were accidentally blown up when the bomb they were planting in the band's minibus went off prematurely, killing them instantly. McCrea was the target of a parcel bomb to his home on 9 August 1988, when a package sent by the Irish People's Liberation Organisation was disarmed. McCrea had become suspicious when he noticed the package had a Dublin postmark.

McCrea was criticised when he appeared on a platform at a Portadown rally in support of the senior Ulster loyalist paramilitary Billy Wright, who had been threatened by the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) leadership, in September 1996. Wright was the founder and leader of the Loyalist Volunteer Force (which had broken away from the UVF), and had been threatened after he broke the UVF ceasefire by ordering the death of Catholic civilian Michael McGoldrick.

Call for British airstrikes against Irish towns

A Northern Ireland Office memo released under the thirty-year rule in December 2014 revealed that McCrea had called for the Royal Air Force to carry out "strikes against Dundalk, Drogheda, Crossmaglen and Carrickmore" at the DUP's annual conference in April 1986.

Alternative medicine

McCrea is a supporter of homeopathy, having signed several early day motions in support of its continued funding on the National Health Service, sponsored by Conservative MP David Tredinnick.