Noel Doherty

Noel Doherty (26 December 1940 – 26 December 2008) was a Northern Irish loyalist activist who was close to Ian Paisley during Paisley's early years in politics. He served as leader of the Ulster Protestant Volunteers and was imprisoned for his involvement in procuring explosives for that organisation.

In school, Doherty had been noted for his Christian fundamentalism and had frequent fierce rows with his classmates about the nature of such issues as creation and Virgin birth, with Doherty refusing to brook any deviation from a literal interpretation of the Bible. Attracted to fundamentalism, Docherty joined the Ravenhill Road congregation of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster in 1956 and soon became close to its leader, the Reverend Ian Paisley. He also joined the Ulster Special Constabulary ("B Specials") around the same time as he considered them a bulwark of Protestantism in Northern Ireland.

Although only 16 years of age when Ulster Protestant Action was set up in 1956, Paisley nominated the east Belfast native to a post on the executive body of the newly formed movement. Doherty also headed up another of Paisley's initiative, the Orange Defence Committee, a group secretly established by Paisley in 1963 but publicly led by Doherty, to co-ordinate opposition to Terence O'Neill within the Orange Order. Paisley had split from the Order three years earlier but Doherty remained a member and so was chosen as leader of the new initiative. A printer by trade, Doherty oversaw the establishment of Paisley's own printing concern. In 1965 he bought a second-hand printing press and set up the Puritan Printing Press, which produced Paisley's literature, including his newspaper the Protestant Telegraph.

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