1. George Seawright was assassinated by the Irish People's Liberation Organisation in 1987.
22 Facts About George Seawright
1. 2.
George Seawright then worked in the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast until entering politics as a member of the Democratic Unionist Party.
3.
George Seawright was a member of an Orange Lodge in the Ballysillan area of North Belfast and the Apprentice Boys of Derry.
4.
George Seawright lived in the unionist Glencairn estate in the northwest of the city with his wife and three children.
5.
George Seawright was elected to Belfast City Council in 1981, and soon developed a following amongst unionists.
6.
George Seawright stated that he was viewed as lacking respectability due to his rough personality, his residence in social housing, and that he was in arrears to the Northern Ireland Housing Executive.
7.
George Seawright was strongly criticised for an interview he gave to Nationalism Today, a journal produced in support of the Political Soldier wing of the British National Front.
8.
George Seawright's younger brother David Seawright was an active member of the NF.
9.
George Seawright was prosecuted and received a six-month suspended sentence as a result.
10.
George Seawright was shunned by the DUP and UUP city councillors, and the only councillors who would talk to him were Sinn Fein.
11.
George Seawright did however split from the Free Presbyterian Church and instead worshipped at the Shankill Road's Church of God.
12.
In 1983, as a DUP candidate, George Seawright finished second with 8,260 votes behind Cecil Walker of the UUP, whilst in 1987 he finished third behind Walker and Alban Maginness with 5,671 votes as a Protestant Unionist candidate.
13.
George Seawright took the name Ulster Protestant League for his largely working-class Evangelical group of supporters, even though the name was not used for electoral purposes.
14.
George Seawright stated that he felt it would be impossible to resist the Agreement solely through non-violence and further argued that it would be inevitable for loyalists to break from Ian Paisley and Jim Molyneaux as the two leaders of unionism would never publicly endorse a violent response.
15.
For George Seawright conflict was inevitable, especially with the growing electoral success of Sinn Fein which he argued would harden both communities' stances and bring about civil war.
16.
George Seawright further enhanced his notoriety when, on 20 November 1985, he took a leading role in the protests against the visit of the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Tom King to Belfast City Hall, where King was denounced for his part in the Anglo-Irish Agreement and attacked physically by George Seawright and other protesters.
17.
George Seawright held the seat in 1989, but lost it in the 1993 local government election.
18.
George Seawright courted further controversy in September 1986, when he publicly called for revenge after the killing of John Bingham, a leading UVF member and friend of Seawright, by the IRA.
19.
Raymond Mooney, a Catholic civilian, was killed soon after George Seawright made the statement.
20.
George Seawright further promised to follow an abstentionist policy if he were elected, in protest at the Anglo-Irish Agreement.
21.
Martin Dillon states in his book, The Dirty War, that George Seawright met with representatives of the Irish People's Liberation Organisation in the Europa Hotel after being informed by the Royal Ulster Constabulary that he was on an IPLO hit list.
22.
Nonetheless, on 19 November 1987, George Seawright was shot whilst he waited in a car near a taxi firm on the Shankill Road by the IPLO, dying two weeks later from his wounds on 3 December.