Frank Millar Jr | |
---|---|
Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly for Belfast South | |
In office 1984–1986 | |
Preceded by | Edgar Graham |
Succeeded by | Assembly abolished |
Personal details | |
Born | Belfast,Northern Ireland |
Political party | Ulster Unionist |
Frank Millar (born September 1954 [1] ) is a Northern Irish journalist and former unionist politician.
The son of Frank Millar,also a unionist politician,he was known as "Frank Millar Jr" during his early political career. He joined the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP),and remained a member when his father left the organisation to sit as an independent Unionist.
Millar was the Press Officer of the UUP during the early 1980s. [2] He stood unsuccessfully for 1982 Northern Ireland Assembly in South Antrim. [3] However,he was elected to that body in 1984 in an uncontested by-election in Belfast South caused by the IRA murder of Edgar Graham. [4]
In 1983,Millar became the General Secretary of the UUP. [2] At the 1987 UK general election,he stood in Belfast West,receiving 18.7% of the votes cast. [5] The same year,he worked with UUP MP Harold McCusker and the DUP's Peter Robinson to produce a report on power sharing,following a positive report on the topic by the Ulster Political Research Group. The Task Force Report gave serious consideration to the idea,and called for a strategic unionist rethink in the wake of the Anglo-Irish Agreement. It was rejected by their respective leaders,Ian Paisley and James Molyneaux. Millar then resigned from his party post. [6]
Millar subsequently became a journalist and has long been the London Editor of the Irish Times . In 1998,he was named the Irish Print Journalist of the Year. In 2004,he wrote a biography of UUP leader David Trimble,entitled David Trimble:The Price of Peace. [7]