1. David Ervine was a Northern Irish Ulster Loyalist and politician who served as leader of the Progressive Unionist Party from 2002 to 2007 and was a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly for Belfast East from 1998 to 2007.
28 Facts About David Ervine
1. 2.
David Ervine was the youngest of five children born to Walter and Elizabeth Ervine.
3.
David Ervine was raised in a Protestant working-class area of east Belfast between the Albertbridge and Newtownards roads.
4.
David Ervine's household was not loyalist at all: his father Walter described himself as a socialist, had no time for Ian Paisley and didn't attend church.
5.
When David Ervine joined the Orange Order aged 18, he said he was the first member of his family to ever be a member.
6.
David Ervine left Orangefield High School at 14 and, aged 19, joined the UVF, believing this step to be the only way to ensure the defence of the Protestant community after the events of Bloody Friday.
7.
David Ervine was arrested in November 1974, while an active member of the UVF.
8.
David Ervine was driving a stolen car containing five pounds of commercial explosives, a detonator and fuse wire.
9.
David Ervine was sentenced to 11 years and imprisoned in The Maze.
10.
David Ervine became friends with Billy Hutchinson while in prison.
11.
David Ervine owned a newsagents' in Belfast for several years before taking up full-time politics.
12.
David Ervine stood in local council elections as a Progressive Unionist Party candidate in 1985.
13.
David Ervine was a member of Belfast City Council from 1997.
14.
David Ervine played a pivotal role in bringing civil disorder to the loyalist ceasefire of October 1994.
15.
David Ervine was part of a delegation to Downing Street in June 1996 that met then British Prime Minister John Major to discuss the loyalist ceasefire.
16.
In 1996 David Ervine was elected to the Northern Ireland Forum from the regional list, having been an unsuccessful candidate in the East Belfast constituency.
17.
David Ervine was considered to be one of the most progressive unionists in Northern Ireland politics.
18.
David Ervine had been a strong supporter of the Good Friday Agreement and was one of the few unionist politicians actively to support the Agreement.
19.
In Landscapes of Defense, David Ervine was seen as one of the few politicians actively engaged with conflict resolution.
20.
David Ervine expressed support for the right of Sinn Fein members to make speeches in Irish on the floor of the Assembly.
21.
David Ervine appealed the IMC's recommendation to newly appointed Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain on the basis that he could not be held directly responsible for the UVF's actions and thus it was wrong to penalise him personally.
22.
On 13 May 2006, it was announced that when the Northern Ireland Assembly reconvened, David Ervine would join the Ulster Unionist assembly group, while remaining leader of the Progressive Unionist Party.
23.
The Presiding Officer of the Assembly, Eileen Bell MLA indicated at the first meeting of the 'shadow' Assembly that she would take legal advice before ruling on whether Mr David Ervine could be treated as a member of the UUP group.
24.
David Ervine was a Protestant and identified himself as both Irish and British.
25.
David Ervine cited his own arrest, and the number of UVF members in prison at the time, as evidence that widespread collusion did not exist:.
26.
David Ervine was reported as having suffered two massive heart attacks and a stroke after attending a football match between Glentoran and Armagh City at The Oval in Belfast on Saturday 6 January 2007.
27.
David Ervine was taken to the Ulster Hospital in Dundonald and was later admitted to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast.
28.
In 2023, Robert Niblock wrote a play about David Ervine, named The Man Who Swallowed a Dictionary.