1. Reverend Robert James Magee OBE was a Northern Irish Presbyterian minister who is credited with playing a leading role in delivering the Combined Loyalist Military Command ceasefire of 1994.
22 Facts About Roy Magee
1. 2.
Roy Magee was born in Belfast's Ballysillan district into a working-class family, with his father working as a fitter in a factory on the Falls Road.
3.
Roy Magee attended Sunday school, although his family was not overtly religious, and it was not until Magee was a teenager that he became consumed by Christianity.
4.
Roy Magee graduated and became a minister in the Presbyterian Church in 1958.
5.
Roy Magee was a member of the hard-line Ulster Vanguard during the early 1970s.
6.
Roy Magee claimed that he joined the group after seeing "awful atrocities being perpetrated by the IRA" and felt that the Vanguard could be a rallying point to unite Unionism.
7.
However Roy Magee left the Vanguard after its leader Bill Craig decided to reconstitute it as a political party separate from the Ulster Unionist Party, thus killing Roy Magee's hopes of it being a unifying force.
8.
At the Ulster Says No rally against the Agreement at Belfast City Hall Roy Magee was one of the figures to join Jim Molyneaux and Ian Paisley on the platform.
9.
Roy Magee had come into contact with the Ulster Defence Association through a number of avenues, notably during the early 1970s when the nascent vigilante groups that made up the UDA worked alongside the Vanguard and later when UDA leader Andy Tyrie began to attend Roy Magee's church.
10.
Roy Magee ministered to a church in Dundonald whilst working with the Farset Youth and Community Development group in the Greater Shankill area of west Belfast.
11.
Roy Magee condemned the loyalist violence but befriended a number of loyalists and sought to work alongside them to achieve peace, reasoning that Jesus "befriended sinners in order to redeem them".
12.
Roy Magee was dealt with the British government and delivered messages between them and the loyalists, serving as the only conduit of information between the two for a time.
13.
Later, at the request of UDA leadership, Roy Magee put them in contact with Archibshop Robin Eames, the Primate of the Church of Ireland, who liaised between the government and the UDA.
14.
The meeting accomplished little but Roy Magee kept contact with the UDA open.
15.
Roy Magee informed the Inner Council that he was finished with them but they pleaded for him to keep the contact open.
16.
Roy Magee eventually decided to keep open his contact with Smallwoods and later credited the Ulster Democratic Party leader as "one of the key people who saw the necessity to end it all".
17.
Roy Magee worked closely with Chris Hudson, a Dublin trade unionist who liaised with the Ulster Volunteer Force on similar levels to Roy Magee did with the UDA.
18.
Nonetheless, Roy Magee had links to some UVF figures, notably Gusty Spence whom Roy Magee introduced to a number of leading Republic of Ireland business figures just before the ceasefire.
19.
Roy Magee served on the Parades Commission and was a senior research Fellow of the University of Ulster, having retired as an active minister in 1995.
20.
Roy Magee received the Order of the British Empire in 2004.
21.
Roy Magee finally left the Parades Commission for good in 2006.
22.
Roy Magee was married to Maureen Reynolds and had two sons and a daughter, with his wife and one son dying before him.