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Robin Bailie


Robin John Bailie (born 6 March 1937) is a Northern Irish solicitor and former politician.

Bailie was born in Toomebridge, County Antrim, and studied at the Rainey Endowed School and Queen's University, Belfast. He was a member of the Belfast Junior Chamber of Commerce, and an officer of the Ulster Young Unionist Council. He was associated with the Clifton branch of the Ulster Unionist Party, and from about 1960, collaborated with other young branch members, including Bob Cooper in an association which has been compared to the Conservative Party's Bow Group. They represented the more liberal wing of the party, and in 1962 they launched a journal, Review, although they were only able to publish a single issue.

Bailie qualified as a solicitor and was also active in business, becoming a council member of the Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce and Industry. In 1962, he claimed that a majority of members of some Orange Lodges in Belfast were socialists and not Unionists. He was a supporter of Terence O'Neill's reforms, believing that they had "taken the sting out of the community tension which was sapping the vigour of the province". While he was initially critical of O'Neill's approach to the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU), he later claimed that O'Neill had "solved the problem of the ICTU".


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