Andrew Hunter (British politician)
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Andrew Robert Frederick Ebenezer Hunter (born January 8, 1943) is a United Kingdom politician and a member of the Orange Order. He was Member of Parliament for Basingstoke from 1983 until 2005.
Hunter was first elected to Basingstoke as a Conservative in the 1983 election. He was also a member of the Conservative Monday Club and its Vice-Chairman 1991 - 2001, when he was ordered by the Conservative Party to quit the Club. Until 2002, he was a patron of the magazine Right Now!.
Andrew Hunter was active in thoroughly researching and exposing the Irish Republican Army (IRA) links with other groups, including the South African African National Congress (ANC), and in July 1988 called for Margaret Thatcher to deport all ANC members then in Britain, (refer: Daily Express, 16 July 1988). At the October 1988 Conservative Party Conference, Western Goals (UK) held a fringe meeting on the subject of "International Terrorism - how the West can fight back". Andrew Hunter, Sir Alfred Sherman, the Rev. Martin Smyth, MP, and Harvey Ward, were the speakers. Andrew Hunter gave considerable detail to the meeting concerning top-level links between the IRA and ANC. For these exposures, he was given a permanent police guard for over a decade and was forced to move his home twice.
On 3 February 1997, he had a letter published in the The Times, which he signed as Chairman of the Parliamentary Conservative Northern Ireland Committee, attacking the "Bloody Sunday" inquiry, calling it "a mistake" and saying that it "dishonours the memory of all who have died in 'The Troubles'".
In 2002, he withdrew from the Conservative Party, in order to fight elections for the Northern Ireland Assembly as a candidate of the Democratic Unionist Party. He had family and Orange Order connections with Northern Ireland and had opposed the Belfast Agreement. The elections were held in November 2003, and he failed to gain his seat. On December 10, 2004, he announced that he had joined the DUP Parliamentary Group in the House of Commons, the first Member of Parliament for a mainland seat to sit for an Irish-based party since TP O'Connor who had represented the Liverpool Scotland (UK Parliament constituency) from 1885 to 1929.
Hunter has raised the case of convicted killer Jeremy Bamber in Parliament, who he believes was wrongly convicted.
Hunter stepped down from the House of Commons at the 2005 general election and suggested he would move to Northern Ireland to become more involved with DUP politics. However, the subsequent death of his wife, Jan, led to a hold on these plans.
[edit] References
- Right Now! magazine, (Various editions).
- Young European newsletter, December 1988 edition,published by Western Goals (UK), London.
Categories: Conservative MPs (UK) | Members of the United Kingdom Parliament from English constituencies | Democratic Unionist Party politicians | British anti-communists | Orange Order | UK MPs 1983-1987 | UK MPs 1987-1992 | UK MPs 1992-1997 | UK MPs 1997-2001 | UK MPs 2001-2005 | UK MPs 2005- | 1943 births | Living people
