Gary McMichael was born on June 1969 and is a Northern Ireland community activist, and retired politician.
22 Facts About Gary McMichael
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Gary McMichael was the leader of the short-lived Ulster Democratic Party during the Northern Ireland peace process, and was instrumental in organizing the Loyalist ceasefire in the Troubles in 1994.
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Gary McMichael left school in his native Lisburn in 1985, and began working with the civil service, although he subsequently worked as a youth worker and an insurance salesman.
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Gary McMichael became involved in local protests against the Anglo-Irish Agreement soon after it was signed.
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Gary McMichael joined the Lisburn Club, the local branch of the pan-unionist Ulster Clubs movement that his father had helped to establish, and for a while served as chairman of this branch.
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John McMichael was killed on 22 December 1987 and Gary McMichael was informed by police when a message to report to the front door was read out by Jake Burns, the lead singer of Stiff Little Fingers, at the Ulster Hall in Belfast, where he was attending a concert.
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In 1988 Gary McMichael became involved with the Ulster Loyalist Democratic Party.
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Gary McMichael served as election co-ordinator for the group and helped to ensure the election of Ken Kerr to Derry City Council in 1989.
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Gary McMichael was the UDP candidate in the 1990 Upper Bann by-election, when he finished eighth with 600 votes in a contest won by David Trimble.
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Gary McMichael became a close ally of Ray Smallwoods, serving his political apprenticeship under the UDP chairman.
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Smallwoods was killed in 1994 and Gary McMichael succeeded him as UDP leader.
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Gary McMichael was part of a loyalist delegation to 10 Downing Street in June 1996 aimed at avoiding the possibility of the cancellation of the CLMC ceasefire.
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Gary McMichael became a high-profile figure due to his involvement in the Northern Ireland peace process and he led the UDP into the Forum in 1996 from which the Belfast Agreement emerged.
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Gary McMichael became an enthusiastic advocate of the Agreement, although his views were not always shared by the UDA membership as a whole and the party failed to win any seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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Gary McMichael himself stood in Lagan Valley and only failed to capture one of the six seats by a narrow margin.
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Mowlam herself, as well as Gary McMichael, entered HMP Maze to meet with the paramilitary leaders and after extensive negotiations emerged with an undertaking that they would not sanction retaliation.
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Gary McMichael entered virtual political retirement, concentrating instead on writing a column for Ireland on Sunday and publishing his autobiography, An Ulster Voice, in 1999.
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Gary McMichael did emerge briefly for negotiations with David Ervine aimed at ending the feuds, although these came to nothing.
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Gary McMichael was appointed to the Civic Forum for Northern Ireland, but McMichael's career in politics was effectively ended by the collapse of the UDP in 2001.
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Gary McMichael did not take any role in the Ulster Political Research Group, which assumed the UDP's role as political arm of the UDA, albeit without being a political party.
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Gary McMichael continued to sit on Lisburn City Council as an independent and did not seek re-election in 2005.
22.
On retiring from politics Gary McMichael became the full-time Director of ASCERT and has nurtured the organisation into the forefront of drug and alcohol training, education, support and youth treatment work in Northern Ireland today.