Peter David Robinson

Peter David Robinson (born December 29, 1948, Belfast, Northern Ireland) was a politician who served in the British House of Commons (1979–85, 1986–2010) and who became the first minister of Northern Ireland on June 5, 2008, serving in that capacity until January 2016.

Robinson grew up in Belfast in an era when Northern Ireland’s mainly Protestant unionists completely dominated the politics of the province through the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP). After studying at Belfast’s Metropolitan College, he became a real-estate agent. Following the death in 1971 of a school friend at the hands of the recently revived Irish Republican Army (IRA), however, Robinson helped to set up the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which demanded tougher policies against terrorism than those advanced by the UUP. He became the DUP’s general secretary in 1975 and entered the British House of Commons in 1979 as MP for Belfast East, narrowly defeating (by just 64 votes) one of the UUP’s most prominent politicians. He resigned his seat in protest in 1985 over the Anglo-Irish Agreement, but he was returned to Parliament by a resounding majority in the election of 1986. Later that year Robinson demonstrated his militancy by leading a “raid” of 500 unionists across the border into Clontibret, Ireland, to confirm what he alleged was weak border security. Irish police arrested him, and he was fined £17,500 (about $30,000). He also briefly stood aside as the DUP’s deputy leader, a post he had held since 1980.

He was one of the DUP’s leading critics of the Belfast Agreement, a deal concluded in 1998 between the British and Irish governments, along with Northern Ireland’s main parties, including Sinn Féin, the political arm of the IRA. When the agreement led to the establishment (1999) of a new Northern Ireland executive, however, he agreed to serve as minister for regional development. Britain restored direct rule over Northern Ireland in October 2002, amid a breakdown of relations between republicans and unionists. Despite the acrimony, that same month Robinson was the first DUP politician to appear in a live television studio debate with a Sinn Féin politician, Martin McGuinness. It was an angry debate—at one point Robinson denounced McGuinness as a “former IRA commander” while McGuinness retorted that Robinson should stop “acting like a bigot”—but a taboo had been broken.

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Robinson went on to become a leading negotiator in the talks that led to the 2006 St. Andrew’s Agreement, which paved the way for a full restoration of the Northern Ireland executive and assembly, with Ian Paisley, the DUP’s leader since its founding, as first minister and McGuinness as deputy first minister. When Paisley announced in March 2008 that he was stepping down in May, there was little doubt that Robinson would succeed him. On May 31, after 28 years as Paisley’s deputy, Robinson was confirmed as DUP leader, and less than a week later he was named first minister.

During his term, Robinson stressed his commitment to the power-sharing agreement between the DUP and Sinn Féin. However, his relationship with McGuinness remained tense, particularly regarding the planned transfer of justice and policing powers from London to Belfast; while McGuinness called for a rapid conclusion to the process, Robinson urged caution. Robinson courted controversy in November 2008 when he echoed comments made by his wife and fellow MP and assembly member, Iris, who had stated that homosexuality was “an abomination.” A larger scandal unfolded about a year later, following revelations that Robinson’s wife had improperly secured a £50,000 loan for a man with whom she had been conducting an affair. In January 2010 Robinson temporarily stepped down as first minister. Arlene Foster, the enterprise minister, was named as his interim replacement. On February 3, 2010, an internal inquiry cleared Robinson of wrongdoing, and he resumed his duties as first minister in time to steer the devolution of justice and policing powers through the Northern Ireland Assembly on March 9. In the May 6, 2010, British general election, he lost his seat in the House of Commons to the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland. In the 2011 election Robinson bounced back, however, to lead the DUP to increase its representation in the assembly from 36 to 38 seats. In the process, he retained his position as first minister in the power-sharing government.

The stability of the government’s power-sharing executive appeared to be imperiled by conflict over proposed welfare reforms, especially after a compromise agreement was scuttled by Sinn Féin in March 2015. It was another matter, however, that led Robinson to raise the level of political brinksmanship later in 2015. When an investigation into the murder of a former IRA leader revealed that at least some of the organizational structure of the Provisional IRA was still in place, Robinson “stepped aside” as first minister in September in protest over the ongoing existence of an organization whose decommissioning and renunciation of violence had been central to the negotiations that led to peace and power-sharing in Northern Ireland. Because Robinson had not technically resigned, an immediate election did not result but appeared imminent. All of his party’s ministers but one (who remained as a caretaker) also stepped aside from their posts within the executive. Robinson then asked U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron to call for a temporary halt in devolved power and a return to direct rule by Parliament over Northern Ireland, but Cameron refused.

With the future of the power-sharing government hanging in the balance, Robinson and other leaders of Northern Ireland’s principal nationalist and unionist parties met for some 10 weeks and eventually hammered out a 67-page agreement called “A Fresh Start,” which brought resolution to a range of hot-button disputes, including pledges to complete the process of ending paramilitarism. The agreement also incorporated promises of increased funding from London to aid in Northern Ireland’s implementation of changes in benefits that had already been rolled out elsewhere in the U.K. In November 2015 Robinson announced that he would be permanently stepping down as first minister in January 2016. He was replaced by Arlene Foster, who had served as interim first minister during Robinson’s earlier, temporary absences from office.

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