David Ervine
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David ErvineMLA (born July 21, 1953) is a Northern Ireland politician and the current leader of the Progressive Unionist Party.
He was imprisoned in 1974, while an active member of the Ulster Volunteer Force, after being arrested driving a car bomb to its presumed target of a pub frequented by Catholic civilians. He later stated that his witnessing of the carnage caused by the IRA's bombing of Belfast in 1972 on Bloody Friday drove him into the ranks of the UVF. He was released in 1985 and then owned a news agents' shop in Belfast for several years before taking up full time politics. In 1998, he was elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly to represent East Belfast and was re-elected in 2003. He is also a member of Belfast City Council.
Ervine has been a strong supporter of the Belfast Agreement and is one of the few Unionist politicians to still actively support the Agreement. At a Labour Party meeting in 2001, then Northern Ireland Secretary, John Reid, described him as "possibly one of the most eloquent politicians in Northern Ireland".
In May 2005, the Independent Monitoring Commission recommended a continuation of the financial sanctions on his Assembly salary imposed following its report of April 2004. The IMC was of the opinion that the UVF and the PUP maintain strong links while the UVF is heavily involved in criminality such as drugs trafficking and cigarette smuggling. It concluded that 12 months after the sanctions were originally imposed, the PUP leadership was still not doing enough to address the UVF's criminal activites.
Ref: 'David Ervine: Uncharted Waters' by Henry Sinnerton (2003), ISBN 0863223125