Gerard Fitt, Baron Fitt was a politician from Northern Ireland.
27 Facts About Gerry Fitt
2.
Gerry Fitt was a founder and the first leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, a social democratic and Irish nationalist party.
3.
Gerry Fitt was born in Belfast in the Lisburn Road Workhouse to the unmarried Rose Martin on 8 April 1926.
4.
Gerry Fitt was christened Gerald in the infirmary at the Workhouse by Fr JB Murray, a curate at St Brigid.
5.
Gerry Fitt was adopted by George and Mary Fitt and assumed their name for the rest of his life however he changed his first name to Gerard.
6.
Gerry Fitt was educated at a local Christian Brothers school.
7.
Gerry Fitt served in the Merchant Navy as a stoker until 1953, having joined in 1941 during World War II and served on convoy duty.
8.
Gerry Fitt witnessed the sinking of HMS Bluebell from which there was one survivor.
9.
At the 1966 general election, Gerry Fitt won the Belfast West seat in the Westminster parliament.
10.
Gerry Fitt used Westminster as a platform to interest British members of parliament in the problems and issues of Northern Ireland.
11.
RTE's film, in which Gerry Fitt featured prominently, of the police baton charge on the peaceful, but illegal, demonstration drew world attention to the claims of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association.
12.
Gerry Fitt supported the 1969 candidacy of Bernadette Devlin in the Mid Ulster by-election who ran as an anti-abstentionist 'Unity' candidate.
13.
Gerry Fitt was elected as a socialist republican and unveiled a plaque at the house on the Falls Road where James Connolly, the socialist leader of the Irish Easter Rising had lived.
14.
Gerry Fitt was anxious to build a broader movement that would challenge Unionist hegemony.
15.
Arguments still rage over the extent to which Gerry Fitt, as opposed to John Hume, helped shape the agreement.
16.
Gerry Fitt certainly was becoming less engaged with the nationalist concerns of the majority of the SDLP.
17.
Gerry Fitt had always seen powersharing as the priority and he felt the calls for an all-Ireland dimension were alienating Unionists while promising little.
18.
Gerry Fitt became increasingly unhappy with what he saw as the SDLP's shift towards green nationalism and its emphasis on the all-Ireland dimension.
19.
Gerry Fitt became more outspoken in his condemnation of the Provisional Irish Republican Army.
20.
Gerry Fitt became a target for republican sympathisers in 1976 when they attacked his home.
21.
Gerry Fitt became disillusioned with the handling of Northern Ireland by the British government.
22.
Gerry Fitt increasingly felt isolated within the party with Fortnight, a Belfast current affairs magazine, describing him at the time as the "only Labour man" left.
23.
In 1979, Gerry Fitt left the party altogether after he had agreed to constitutional talks with British Secretary of State Humphrey Atkins without any provision for an 'Irish dimension' and had then seen his decision overturned by the SDLP party conference.
24.
Gerry Fitt enters the 1980s no longer a member of the SDLP but is still the MP for West Belfast.
25.
In 1981, Gerry Fitt opposed the hunger strikes in the Maze prison in Belfast.
26.
Gerry Fitt sometimes said that he considered himself first and foremost a socialist politician rather than a nationalist.
27.
Lord Gerry Fitt died on 26 August 2005, at the age of 79, after a long history of heart disease, a widower survived by five of his daughters, one having predeceased him.