Brian Wilson former MLA |
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Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly for North Down |
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In office 7 March 2007 – 2011 |
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Preceded by | Robert McCartney |
Succeeded by | Steven Agnew |
Personal details | |
Born |
Bangor, Northern Ireland |
15 May 1943
Political party |
Independent Greens (2004–2011) Alliance (1975–1997) |
Spouse(s) | Anne Wilson |
Children | 2 |
Alma mater |
Open University University of Strathclyde |
Profession | Civil servant, Academic |
Brian Wilson MLA (born 1943) is an Independent and former Green Party politician in Northern Ireland. He was the first member of the Green Party to be elected as member of the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Wilson was born in 1943 in Bangor, County Down. He attended Trinity Primary School and Bangor Grammar School. A former civil servant in the Department of Education, he studied part-time at the Open University and in 1973 left the civil service to do a full-time master's degree in Politics at the University of Strathclyde.
On his return to Northern Ireland he lectured at Omagh Technical College in 1979 from where he transferred to the College of Business Studies as a lecturer in government and economics. He was a senior lecturer at BIFHE for 24- years, until he retired in 2003.
In the 1970s he became a member of the Northern Ireland Labour Party and then joined the Alliance Party in 1975. He was elected to North Down Borough Council at the 1981 local elections and was elected Mayor in 1993/1994. During this period, he unsuccessfully contested North Down in the 1982 Assembly Election. In 1996 he was an unsuccessful candidate in the Northern Ireland Forum election in North Down.
In 1997 Wilson left the Alliance Party and was elected as an Independent councillor for Bangor West in 2001 topping the poll for the fourth successive election with 1871 votes (1.6 quotas). In 2003 he again stood as an independent candidate for the Assembly increasing his share of the poll by 10% and finishing tenth out of 19 candidates on the first count.