Talk:Robert Simpson (Northern Ireland politician)

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Resigned or not?

I suspect that Roy Bradford may have been mistaken in saying that Simpson resigned his seat in 1972. If you see the results for Mid Antrim here, there is no mention of such a resignation, yet if you look at [the results for Woodvale you will see that it notes the vacancy caused by McQuade's resignation in 1972. Similarly, if you read the biographies, there is no mention of Simpson resigning, yet McQuade's resignation is recorded. Mooretwin (talk) 12:37, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'll see if I can find anything else to confirm or deny this. The biographies are useful, but by no means comprehensive, and I can imagine that someone resigning after the prorogation is the sort of details which would be easy to miss. Warofdreams talk 13:49, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That would be great. My instinct is still that Bradford is wrong, because I recall (many years ago) reading another source (can't remember it, sorry), and the Simpson resignation rings no bells, whereas the McQuade resignation does. There must be some "official" record, somewhere ... Mooretwin (talk) 13:54, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It appears that Bradford is probably wrong; I've found an article in The Guardian stating that he resigned from the UUP in October 1972, but it doesn't mention anything about him resigning his seat. Warofdreams talk 23:19, 5 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]