Brian Wilson (Northern Ireland Politician)

Brian Wilson MLA (born 1943) is an Independent politician in Northern Ireland. He was the first member of the Green Party to be elected as member of the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Born in Bangor, County Down, he attended Trinity Primary School and Bangor Grammar School. A former civil servant in the Department of Education, he took studied part-time at the Open University and in 1973 left the civil service to do a full-time masters degree in Politics at the University of Strathclyde.

On his return to Northern Ireland he lectured at Omagh Technical College in 1979 from where he transferred to the College of Business Studies as a lecturer in government and economics. He was a senior lecturer at BIFHE for 24- years.

In the 1970s he became a member of the Northern Ireland Labour Party and then joined the Alliance Party in 1975. He was elected to North Down Borough Council at the 1981 local elections and was elected Mayor in 1993/1994. During this period, he unsuccessfully contested North Down in the 1982 Assembly Election.

In 1997 Wilson left the Alliance Party and was elected as an Independent councillor for Bangor West in 2001 topping the poll for the fourth successive election with 1871 votes (1.6 quotas). In 2003 he again stood as an independent candidate for the Assembly increasing his share of the poll by 10% and finishing tenth out of 19 candidates on the first count.

In 2004 he joined the Green Party. The following year he became the first Green Party representative to be elected to public office in Northern Ireland when he again topped the poll in Bangor West.

Then in 2007 he won the first Green Party's seat in the Northern Ireland Assembly, winning a seat in the North Down constituency on the 10th count, after increasing the Green vote from 730 to 2,839 first preferences.

He was a member of the Environment Committee and Privileges Committee in the Northern Ireland Assembly. He is a member of the Board of Governors of Rathmore Primary School and St. Columbanus College, former member of South Eastern Education and Library Board, former member of North Down District Policing Partnership. Wilson is also a member of Greenpeace, RSPB and Friends of the Earth.

In 2011 he retired from the Northern Ireland Assembly, Steven Agnew stood in his place and retained the seat for Green Party.

Brian stood instead for Bangor West seat on North Down Council, as an Independent standing against both his wife (Anne Wilson, Alliance Party) and the Green Party candidate. Both Brian and his wife were elected as councillors. Brian received the highest number of first preference votes (1458).

In 1979 he married Anne whom he met when studying in Scotland. They have two children Scott (born 1980) and Allan (born 1982) and two step children Roy and Caroline.