James Kilfedder - Death and Legacy

Death and Legacy

On 20 March 1995, while travelling by train into London from Gatwick airport, Sir James died of a heart attack. This was the same day that the Belfast Telegraph carried a front page story saying that an Ulster MP had been targeted as one of twenty MPs invited by the LGBT rights organisation OutRage! in a letter to come out. On 20 June 2005 the Belfast Telegraph carried a further story of how the columnist Leo McKinstry (writing in the Spectator) had as a boy rejected "anguished" attempts at "intimacy" from Kilfedder.

He died unmarried, survived by two sisters. Sir James was described as

"a phenomenon or perhaps a left-over from a remote era of Northern Irish politics when Ulster was represented by such figures as Lord Robert Grosvenor, Major Robin Chichester-Clark, Stratton Mills, and Rafton Pounder."

Sir Jim was described by DUP MLA Peter Weir as "the best MP North Down ever had." The UPUP did not outlive him, and the by-election for his Commons seat was won by Robert McCartney standing as a "UK Unionist". He had fought the seat in the 1987 general election as a "Real Unionist" with the backing of the Campaign for Equal Citizenship.

At the 1987 election count, in his victory speech, Kilfedder had "attacked his rival's supporters as 'a rag tag collection of people who shame the name of civil rights.' He said they included communists, Protestant paramilitaries and Gay Rights supporters and he promised to expose more in future." McCartney lost North Down in 2001 to Lady Hermon of the Ulster Unionist Party.

Kilfedder's personal and political papers (including constituency affairs) are held in PRONI, reference D4127.

Kilfedder is buried in Whitechurch Cemetery just outside Ballywalter.