Ex-UUP leader passes away
Former Ulster Unionist Party leader Harry West has died at the age of 86.
The ex-Fermanagh and South Tyrone MP, who led the party during a fraught five-year period in the 1970s, had been suffering from failing health for some time.
UUP chief David Trimble praised the work of Mr West: “He was a distinguished member of the Stormont government, minister of agriculture, and the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party at the time of its greatest crisis in 1974 on to 1979.
“He made a tremendous contribution to unionism and to life in Northern Ireland and I think a lot of people will want to reflect on and pay tribute to Harry, and of course to remember his family and our hearts go out to his family at this time.”
Mr West succeeded Brian Faulkner as UUP leader in 1974 after his party rejected the Sunningdale power-sharing proposals.
In June 1979 European Parliament elections, Mr West lost out to Dr Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party. He tendered his resignation as a result and was succeeded by James Molyneaux.
In 1981, in the April 1981 Westminster by-election for Fermanagh/Tyrone, he lost to hunger striker Bobby Sands.
Mr West was Unionist MP for Enniskillen between 1954 and 1972 and MP for Fermanagh-South Tyrone in 1974.
