David Bleakley

David Wylie Bleakley CBE (11 January 1925 26 June 2017) was a Northern Irish politician and peace campaigner.

Biography Background Born in the Strandtown district of Belfast, Bleakley worked as an electrician in the Harland and Wolff dockyards while becoming increasingly active in his trade union. He studied economics at Ruskin College in Oxford, where he struck up a friendship with C. S. Lewis about whom he later wrote a centenary memoir. He later attended Queen's University, Belfast. A committed Christian, he was a lifelong Anglican – a member of the Church of Ireland. Throughout his life, he was a lay preacher.

Political career Bleakley joined the Northern Ireland Labour Party (NILP) and contested the Northern Ireland Parliament seat of Belfast Victoria in 1949 and 1953 before finally winning it in 1958. At Stormont, he was made the chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, but he lost his seat in 1965. Bleakley was head of the department of economics and political studies at Methodist College Belfast from 1969 to 1979.

Bleakley ran for the Westminster seat of Belfast East in 1970 (gaining 41% of the vote), February 1974 and October 1974 for the Northern Ireland Labour Party each time, but never enough to win the Westminster seat from the UUP. In 1971, Brian Faulkner appointed him as his Minister for Community Relations at Stormont, but as Bleakley was not an MP, he could only hold this post for six months. He resigned five days before his term expired in order to highlight his disagreement with government policy, specifically the failure to widen the government to include non-Unionist parties, and the decision to introduce internment. Bleakley wrote a respectful biography of Faulkner and his own memoir of the period.

After the Parliament was abolished, Bleakley stood for, and was elected to, the Northern Ireland Assembly

By the late 1970s, the NILP was in disarray, and did not stand a candidate for the 1979 European Assembly election. Bleakley instead stood as an "Independent Community Candidate",

Honours In 1984 he was appointed CBE for his work as chairman of the Northern Ireland Standing Advisory Commission on Human Rights.