Basil McIvor

William Basil McIvor OBE, PC (NI) (17 June 1928 – 5 November 2004) was an Ulster Unionist politician, a minister in Northern Ireland's first power-sharing Executive, a barrister and a pioneer of integrated education.

Early life and education

The son of Rev. Frederick McIvor, a Methodist clergyman, McIvor was born in Tullyhommon, the County Fermanagh part of the village of Pettigo, the rest of which is in County Donegal, the village straddling the Northern Ireland border. McIvor attended Methodist College, Belfast, and the Queen's University of Belfast and was called to the Bar of Northern Ireland in 1950. in the 1969 election. and resigned from the Orange Order.

McIvor was a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly, 1973, topping the poll in Belfast South, and a member of the Ulster Unionist contingent who negotiated the Sunningdale Agreement in 1973. When the power-sharing Executive was set up in the aftermath of Sunningdale, McIvor headed the Education Department in the new power-sharing executive, over which Faulkner presided as First Minister.

The executive lasted but five months, brought down in May 1974 by the Ulster Workers Council strike. McIvor believed that much of the responsibility lay with the determination of the Unionists' Social Democratic and Labour Party partners to "achieve all-Ireland institutions that would produce the dynamic that could lead ultimately to an agreed single state of Ireland".

Investigations

McIvor presided over the initial investigation into UVF supergrass William 'Budgie' Allen and that of several people accused of killing two corporals in Belfast. He was also a governor of Campbell College, Belfast from 1975 until his death.

Basil McIvor died on 5 November 2004 aged 76 while playing golf at Royal County Down.

As a Chief Inspector in the Metropolitan Police Service, he was criticised by the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry for his failure to manage the initial investigation of the scene of the murder of Stephen Lawrence.

Basil McIvor was appointed an OBE in the 1991 New Year Honours.