Peter David Robinson (born 29 December 1948) is a retired Northern Irish politician who served as First Minister of Northern Ireland from 2008 until 2016 and Leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) from 2008 until 2015. Until his retirement in 2016, Robinson was involved in Northern Irish politics for over 40 years, being a founding member of the DUP along with Ian Paisley.
Robinson served in the role of General Secretary of the DUP from 1975, a position which he held until 1979 and which afforded him the opportunity to exert extraordinary influence within the fledgeling party. In 1977, Robinson was elected as a councillor for the Castlereagh Borough Council, and in 1979, he became one of the youngest Members of Parliament (MP) when he was narrowly elected for Belfast East. He held this seat for 31 years until his defeat by Naomi Long in 2010, making him the longest-serving Belfast MP since the 1800 Act of Union.
In 1980, Robinson was elected as the deputy leader of the DUP. Following the re-establishment of devolved government in Northern Ireland as a result of the Good Friday Agreement, Robinson was elected in 1998 as the Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Belfast East. Robinson subsequently served as Minister for Regional Development and Minister of Finance and Personnel in the Northern Ireland Executive. Robinson was elected unopposed to succeed Ian Paisley as leader of the DUP on 15 April 2008, and was subsequently confirmed as First Minister of Northern Ireland on 5 June 2008.
In January 2010, following a scandal involving his wife Iris, Robinson temporarily handed over his duties as First Minister to Arlene Foster under the terms of the Northern Ireland Act 2006. Following a police investigation, which recommended that Robinson should not be prosecuted following allegations made by the BBC in relation to the scandal, he resumed his duties as First Minister. The Official Assembly Commissioner's Investigation and Report cleared Robinson of any wrongdoing.
In September 2015, Robinson again stood aside to allow Arlene Foster to become acting First Minister after his bid to adjourn the assembly was rejected. His action was a response to a murder for which a member of Sinn Féin, a party in the Northern Ireland Executive, had been questioned. He resumed his duties on 20 October 2015. On 19 November 2015, he announced that he would be stepping down as First Minister and as leader of the DUP. Robinson subsequently stepped down as First Minister on 11 January 2016 and has now fully retired from frontline politics. He is currently the longest-serving Northern Irish First Minister since the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.
Peter David Robinson was born on 29 December 1948 in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the son of Sheila and David McCrea Robinson.
Robinson was educated at Annadale Grammar School and Castlereagh College, now part of the Belfast Metropolitan College. In 1966 Robinson first heard Ian Paisley speak at a rally at Ulster Hall and shortly afterwards left school to devote himself to the Protestant fundamentalist cause. Robinson considered joining the Royal Ulster Constabulary but instead he joined the Lagan Valley unit of the Ulster Protestant Volunteers (UPV), a paramilitary organisation tied to Ian Paisley's Free Presbyterian Church. Robinson also joined the Ulster Constitution Defence Committee. As a young man Robinson embraced a populist anti-Catholic fundamentalism; a former classmate alleged Robinson and a friend harassed a pair of Catholic nuns in the street in Portrush, County Antrim, yelling "Popehead, Popehead". Robinson initially gained employment as an estate agent for R.J. McConnell & Co and later with Alex, Murdoch & Deane in Belfast, and then he became the DUP's first general secretary in 1975.
Robinson had by 1970 come to Paisley's notice after writing a pamphlet called The North Answers Back which attacked the Northern Ireland civil rights movement and defended the Stormont government. Robinson became chairman of the Lagan Valley branch of the DUP's predecessor the Protestant Unionist Party upon its formation. In 1970 he was prominent in Paisley's campaign to win the North Antrim seat in the 1970 UK general election Robinson and for a time served as Paisley's private secretary. In 1971 Robinson was a founding member of the DUP and was General Secretary of the DUP between 1975 and 1979. He had previously shared the post of honorary secretary of the party on an unpaid basis with Desmond Boal. Robinson was active in the 1974 Ulster Workers' Council strike against the Sunningdale Agreement, which had been signed in December 1973. A senior loyalist politician recalled walking into the Ulster Workers' Council HQ on Hawthornden Road to find Peter Robinson and Jim Allister "giggling", phoning SDLP headquarters claiming to be Catholics in distress in a loyalist area afflicted by the strike and asking the SDLP to send a car to rescue them. He was campaign manager for East Belfast MP William Craig in the 1974 general election but the relationship was short-lived. He first stood in the election to the Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention on 1 May 1975 in Belfast, East. Although he started in fifth place, he failed to get elected and was overtaken by his running mate Eileen Paisley.
Robinson was elected as a councillor for Castlereagh Borough Council for the Castlereagh C area in the local government elections on 18 May 1977, a seat he held until his resignation from the council on 2 July 2007.
Member of Parliament and Executive Minister
Robinson was selected as DUP candidate for Belfast East during the 1979 general election, a seat which previously had a big Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) majority. He won the seat with a 19.9% swing to the DUP and a majority of 64, with Alliance Party leader Oliver Napier 928 votes behind, unseating the MP former Vanguard Progressive Unionist Party leader and UUP candidate William Craig on 3 May 1979. The main plank of Robinson's campaign was that he was the only candidate in the constituency who totally opposed power-sharing with the SDLP.
He was re-elected to the House of Commons in 1983, 1986 (along with other unionist MPs, he resigned his seat in protest at the Anglo-Irish Agreement on 17 December 1985 and was re-elected in the by-election the next year), 1987, 1992, 2001 and 2005. In the 2010 UK general election he lost Belfast East to Naomi Long of the Alliance Party.
Robinson served on the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee from 1997 to July 2005.
In the general election on 7 June 2001, Robinson's wife, Iris, joined him in Parliament as MP for Strangford.
Leadership of the Democratic Unionist Party
Robinson's electoral success was marked when he was elected Deputy Leader of the DUP in 1980. He was elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly for Belfast East on 20 October 1982 where he served as Chairman of the Environment Committee until it was dissolved in 1986.
In 1986 he was involved, alongside other DUP leaders, in the launch of Ulster Resistance at the Ulster Hall, an event chaired by the DUP. Robinson was later photographed wearing a beret at an Ulster Resistance rally. The DUP later severed links with Ulster Resistance in 1987.
Robinson resigned briefly as DUP Deputy Leader in 1987 when the Task Force Report, written jointly with UUP members Harold McCusker MP and Frank Millar and calling for a strategic unionist rethink in the wake of the Anglo-Irish Agreement was rejected by their respective leaders, Ian Paisley and James Molyneaux.