Samuel Wilson (born 4 April 1953) is a British politician who has served as Chief Whip of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in the House of Commons since 2019. Wilson has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for East Antrim since 2005.
He was returned to Parliament in the 2024 United Kingdom general election in Northern Ireland with a reduced majority (down to 1306) and a 13% reduction in his share of the vote.
Wilson served as a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Belfast East from 1998 to 2003 and for East Antrim from 2003 until 2015. He served as Lord Mayor of Belfast from 1986 to 1987 and again from 2000 to 2001, the first person from the DUP to hold the office. He has also served as Minister of Finance and Personnel and Minister of the Environment in the Northern Ireland Executive.
Samuel Wilson was born on 4 April 1953 in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the son of Alexander (Sandy) Wilson, pastor of Elim Pentecostal Church in Bangor. Both of his parents had Alzheimer's disease. He was educated at Methodist College in Belfast, and then went on to study economics and politics at both Queen's University of Belfast and Stranmillis University College. Wilson's first job was a teaching post at Grosvenor Grammar School. He later became the head of economics at the school, and also served as Assistant Chief Examiner for A-Level Economics for the CCEA exam board in Northern Ireland.
In May 1996, the Sunday World published a series of candid holiday photographs showing Wilson and his girlfriend naked. Wilson subsequently sued the paper for damages, which were settled out of court. Two years after the incident, at the inaugural sitting of the Northern Ireland Assembly, Martin McGuinness of Sinn Féin addressed the Assembly by saying "It is also very good to come across someone like Mr Sammy Wilson, whom I have never met, and it is great to see him today with his clothes on."
Wilson began his political life as the Democratic Unionist Party's Press Officer. He served as Press Officer from 1982 to 1996. In 1981, he was elected as a DUP councillor to Belfast City Council, a position that he held until March 2010. Through his membership of the city council, Wilson became the first person from the DUP to serve as Lord Mayor of Belfast in 1986 / 1987. Wilson aroused controversy as a DUP councillor in June 1985 when he issued a threat to Ulsterbus vehicles and staff after it refused to transport unionists to a demonstration in Castlewellan, which ended in violence. Wilson said "it now seems that the Northern Ireland office has enlisted not only the RUC but the transport industry in its offensive against the Unionist population. Such a move can place Ulsterbus vehicles and drivers in an extremely vulnerable position." In August 1986, while Lord Mayor of Belfast, Wilson said his party had no difficulty in working alongside the paramilitary Ulster Defence Association (UDA). The following day Social Democratic and Labour Party MP Seamus Mallon accused Wilson of supporting random killings, intimidations and "other outrages". Wilson stood in East Belfast at the 1982 Assembly election but was not elected. In June 1991, during a heated council meeting where Nigel Dodds was installed as mayor, Wilson congratulated those who had "rid Ireland over the last month of those who have politically or militarily supported [the IRA]", referring to the death of three IRA men in an SAS ambush in County Tyrone and the assassination of Sinn Féin councillor Eddie Fullerton by the UDA. He first contested a seat for Parliament in 1992, when he stood for Strangford, but came second with 23% of the vote. In September 1993 the day after the UDA (under its "Ulster Freedom Fighters" cover name) claimed responsibility for firebomb attacks on several Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) premises, Wilson described the GAA as "the IRA at play".
Wilson chaired a rally in Ulster Hall in November 1986 declaring the founding of a new loyalist paramilitary group, Ulster Resistance. The event was addressed by DUP party colleagues Ian Paisley, Peter Robinson and Ivan Foster. After a large arms cache linked to Ulster Resistance was discovered in County Armagh in November 1988, Wilson told the Sunday Tribune that he "[defended] the right of Unionist people to resist" and "Ulster Resistance are doing no more and no less than Lord Edward Carson." Wilson refused to say when he had last been in contact with Ulster Resistance. In January 1992 at a meeting of Belfast City Council, Sinn Féin councillor Máirtín Ó Muilleoir accused Wilson of involvement in the formation of Ulster Resistance; Wilson reportedly shouted back "I'm proud of it."
In September 1988 Sammy Wilson was named in a Canadian court as having hosted Canada-based gunrunners in Belfast City Hall in October 1986 when he was Lord Mayor. It was also claimed that in Wilson's City Hall sitting room the Canadian arms traffickers met two prominent loyalist paramilitary figures. Wilson left the room shortly before the loyalists entered and was absent for this second meeting. One of the Canadians, Howard Wright, was convicted of illegally exporting firearms to the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) between 1979 and 1986. Another Canadian man named during the trial, Bill Taylor, was imprisoned in Canada on an extradition warrant for charges of conspiring to import arms into the United Kingdom.
In January 1994, the UDA released a document calling for ethnic cleansing and repartition of Ireland, with the goal of making Northern Ireland wholly Protestant. The plan was to be implemented should the British Army withdraw from Northern Ireland. Some areas with strong Catholic/nationalist majorities near the Irish border would be handed over to the Republic of Ireland, and those Catholics left stranded in the "Protestant state" would be "expelled, nullified, or interned". Controversially, Wilson called the plan a "very valuable return to reality". He added: "[it] shows that some loyalist paramilitaries are looking ahead and contemplating what needs to be done to maintain our separate Ulster identity".
In April 1994 amidst controversy over a large-scale operation to overhaul the security forces base in the predominantly nationalist village of Crossmaglen, County Armagh, acting as DUP press officer Wilson commented
Unionists should be heartened that, despite the pressure from Dublin, the SDLP and the Catholic Church, there is still some will to make republican communities pay some of the cost of their support for IRA terrorism... The people of Crossmaglen have given support to the IRA and deserve every inconvenience they are now suffering as a result.
In July 1994, Wilson and DUP MP Peter Robinson were pallbearers at the funeral of UDA member Ray Smallwoods, who served half of a 15 year sentence for the attempted murder of Bernadette McAliskey in 1981.
In May 1996, Wilson was elected to the Northern Ireland Forum for the constituency of East Belfast and went on to represent this area in the Northern Ireland Assembly upon its creation in June 1998. The DUP were opposed to the Good Friday Agreement and in March 1998 Wilson and fellow DUP politician Ian Paisley Jr gave speeches at a rally in Portadown organised by the paramilitary Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF), who were also opposed to the ongoing talks process. Their appearance was widely criticised; days earlier the LVF had murdered two men, Philip Allen and Damien Trainor - one a Protestant, one a Catholic - in a bar in Poyntzpass, County Armagh in an indiscriminate sectarian attack. On 24 April 1998, Sammy Wilson and DUP councillor Jack McKee shared a platform with self-styled pastor Clifford Peeples, a member of the LVF and leader of the Orange Volunteers, at an anti-Good Friday Agreement rally in Antrim town. Peeples set a print copy of the Good Friday Agreement alight as attendees cried 'And burn Fenians too'. Police believed the Antrim-based Loyalists who murdered Catholic Ciaran Heffran in Crumlin several hours later attended the rally.