Cecil Walker
| Alfred Cecil Walker | |
|---|---|
| Personal details | |
| Born | 17 December 1924 Belfast, Northern Ireland |
| Died | 3 January 2007 (aged 82) Newtownabbey, Northern Ireland, UK |
| Occupation | Activist; politician (Member of Parliament for North Belfast (1983–2001) |
Sir Alfred Cecil Walker (17 December 1924 – 3 January 2007) was an Ulster Unionist Member of Parliament for North Belfast from 1983 to 2001.
Walker was born in Belfast. His father was a police constable. He was educated at Everton Elementary School, Model Boys' School, and Belfast Methodist College. He worked for the Belfast timber trader James P. Corry after leaving school in 1941 until he was elected to Parliament in 1983. He married Ann Verrant in 1953. They had two sons.
He became actively involved in Unionist politics in the 1970s, was an unsuccessful pro-White Paper Unionist candidate at the election to the 1973 Northern Ireland Assembly and was elected to Belfast City Council in 1977. He contested the Belfast North constituency in the 1979 general election, narrowly losing to John McQuade of the Democratic Unionist Party. He won the seat 4 years later, in the 1983 general election, after McQuade retired. He was one of the MPs with the lowest attendance rate at Westminster.
Along with all other Unionist MPs, he resigned his seat in December 1985 in protest at the Anglo-Irish Agreement. He was re-elected at a by-election in January 1986. In 1988, he advocated internment of Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) suspects to stem a series of murders, but also argued for the interment of suspects connected with the Ulster Defence Association and the Ulster Volunteer Force. In 1998, he was one of only two UUP MPs to support the Good Friday Agreement without reservation, and he backed UUP leader David Trimble until the end of Trimble's own political career in 2005.
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