Sir Kenneth Percy Bloomfield, KCB (born 15 April 1931), is a former Head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS) who was later a member of the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims' Remains and, for a time, Northern Ireland Victims Commissioner. In addition to this, he has held a variety of public sector posts in Northern Ireland and elsewhere.
Ken Bloomfield was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, to English parents in 1931. He grew up close to Neill's Hill railway station, East Belfast. Between the years of 1943 and 1949, he attended the Royal Belfast Academical Institution ('Inst') and later went on to read Modern History at St Peter's College, Oxford. He is married with two children. [1] On 12 September 1988, he and his wife were the targets of an IRA attack on their home in Crawfordsburn, County Down; neither Bloomfield nor his wife were injured in the blast. [1] [2]
Having joined the Civil Service in 1952, Bloomfield was appointed Permanent Secretary to the power sharing executive in 1974. After the collapse of the executive, he went on to become Permanent Secretary for the Department of the Environment (D.o.E.) and the Department of Economic Development, and finally Head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service on 1 December 1984. In that capacity, he was the most senior advisor to successive Secretaries of State for Northern Ireland and other Ministers on a wide range of issues. He retired from the post in April 1991. [3]
Since retiring from the NICS, Bloomfield has embarked on a life of involvement in a diverse range of organisations. He has taken up roles such as Chairman for the Northern Ireland Legal Services Commission and his alma mater, the Royal Belfast Academical Institution. He has also been involved in the political reform of the States of Jersey and spearheaded the Association for Quality Education, which fought to retain academic selection in the Northern Ireland education system. [1] In December 1997 he was asked by the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Mo Mowlam, to become the Northern Ireland Victims Commissioner for a fixed term. His role was to produce a report on the way forward for Victims issues in Northern Ireland. His report entitled We Will Remember Them was published in April 1998. From 1991 to 1999 he served as the BBC's National Governor for Northern Ireland.
Bloomfield received a Knighthood in the 1987 Queen's Birthday Honours and has received honorary doctorates from The Queen's University of Belfast, The Open University and the University of Ulster. He is also a Member of the Royal Irish Academy (RIA).
The Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) was the police force in Northern Ireland from 1922 to 2001. It was founded on 1 June 1922 as a successor to the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) following the partition of Ireland. At its peak the force had around 8,500 officers, with a further 4,500 who were members of the RUC Reserve.
Gerard Fitt, Baron Fitt was a politician in Northern Ireland. He was a founder and the first leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), a social democratic and Irish nationalist party.
Ulster University, legally the University of Ulster, is a multi-campus public university located in Northern Ireland. It is often referred to informally and unofficially as Ulster, or by the abbreviation UU. It is the largest university in Northern Ireland and the second-largest university on the island of Ireland, after the federal National University of Ireland.
Colonel Timothy Thomas Cyril Collins is a retired Northern Irish military officer in the British Army. He is best known for his role in the Iraq War in 2003, and his inspirational eve-of-battle speech, a copy of which apparently hung in the White House's Oval Office. He is currently Chairman of intelligence-based security services company Pinpoint Corporate Services.
Maurice Hayes was an Irish public servant and, late in life, an independent member of the 21st and 22nd Seanads. Hayes was nominated by the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, in 1997 and re-nominated in 2002. He also served, at the Taoiseach's request, as Chairman of the National Forum on Europe in the Republic of Ireland.
The Royal Belfast Academical Institution is an independent grammar school in Belfast, Northern Ireland. With the support of Belfast's leading reformers and democrats, it opened its doors in 1814. Until 1849, when it was superseded by what today is Queen's University, the institution pioneered Belfast's first programme of collegiate education. Locally referred to as Inst, the modern school educates boys from ages 11 to 18. It is one of the eight Northern Irish schools represented on the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference. The school occupies an 18-acre site in the centre of the city on which its first buildings were erected.
Monica Mary McWilliams is a Northern Irish academic, peace activist, human rights defender and former politician in Northern Ireland.
Sir Charles Norman Lockhart Stronge, 8th Baronet, MC, PC, JP was a senior Ulster Unionist Party politician in Northern Ireland.
John Harold Hewitt, who was born in Belfast, Ireland, was perhaps the most significant Belfast poet to emerge before the 1960s generation of Northern Irish poets that included Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon and Michael Longley. He was appointed the first writer-in-residence at Queen's University Belfast in 1976. His collections include The Day of the Corncrake (1969) and Out of My Time: Poems 1969 to 1974 (1974). He was also made a Freeman of the City of Belfast in 1983, and was awarded honorary doctorates by the University of Ulster and Queen's University Belfast.
Sir Samuel Knox Cunningham, 1st Baronet, QC, was a Northern Irish barrister, businessman and politician. As an Ulster Unionist politician at a time when the Unionists were part of the Conservative Party, he was also a significant figure in United Kingdom politics as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Harold Macmillan. His nephew was Sir Josias Cunningham.
The Independent Commission for the Location of Victims' Remains (ICLVR) was established by treaty between the United Kingdom Government and the Government of Ireland, made on 27 April 1999 in connection with the affairs of Northern Ireland, in order to locate 16 missing Irish and British people presumed murdered during The Troubles.
Events during the year 1931 in Northern Ireland.
Watching and playing sports is an important part of culture in Belfast, Northern Ireland where almost six out of ten (59%) of the adult population regularly participate in one or more sports. Belfast has several notable sports teams playing a diverse variety of sports including football, rugby, traditional Irish Gaelic games, and North American sports such as American football and ice hockey (at the SSE Arena where the multiple time Elite Ice Hockey League champion Belfast Giants are based. The Belfast Marathon is run annually on May Day, and attracted 14,300 participants in 2007. Cycling, triathlon and athletics are also popular as both participation and spectator sports, with the first two stages of the 2014 Giro d'Italia starting from Belfast City Centre, and the annual high profile Belfast International Cross Country event being held in the grounds of Stormont Castle every year until 2009. The Stormont Estate is also one of the four home grounds for the Ireland cricket team, alongside Bready, Malahide and Clontarf, and also hosts the Northern Cricket Union provincial teams.
John Maynard Sinclair was a unionist politician in Northern Ireland. Born in Belfast, in 1896, son of John Sinclair DL and Alice Montgomery, he was educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution, and in Switzerland. He served in the British Army during World War I. He was a director of the Eagle Star Insurance Company and Chairman of Vulcanite Ltd.
Sir Richard Dawson Bates, 1st Baronet, known as Dawson Bates, was an Ulster Unionist Party member of the Northern Ireland House of Commons.
Sir Wilfrid Bliss Spender was a British Army officer, colonial administrator and civil servant who helped re-organise the Ulster Volunteers (UVF) into the Ulster Special Constabulary and was responsible for laying the foundations for the civil service of Northern Ireland. He served as Secretary to the government of Northern Ireland from 1921 to 1925 and Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Finance from 1925 to 1944. He was knighted in 1929. His wife, Lady Spender , was a member of the UVF Nursing Corps and worked in the Ulster Division Comforts Fund during World War I. Later in life Spender became a noted diarist.
Belvoir Park Hospital was a cancer treatment specialist hospital situated in Newtownbreda, South Belfast, Northern Ireland. Belvoir Park held Northern Ireland's only radiotherapy unit, until the opening of a new cancer treatment centre in Belfast City Hospital.
The 1993 Queen's Birthday honours were appointments by some of the 16 Commonwealth realms to various orders and honours to recognise and reward good works by citizens of those countries. The Birthday Honours are awarded as part of the Queen's birthday celebrations and were announced on 11 June 1993 for the United Kingdom, the Bahamas, Solomon Islands, Saint Lucia, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, and New Zealand and the Cook Islands. The list for Australia was announced separately on 14 June.
There has been a Head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service since Sir Ernest Clark was appointed the first holder of that office in 1921. As of 2017 and according to the Executive Office, the Head of the 23,500-people strong NICS "has primary leadership responsibility for creating, developing and sustaining the NICS as an organisation which serves the devolved administration, the institutions of government and the people of Northern Ireland through the provision of high quality, cost effective services." The incumbent is also Permanent Secretary of the Executive Office and Secretary to the Northern Ireland Executive, making the office-holder the "most senior adviser to the First Minister and the deputy First Minister".
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