Seamus Close
British politician (1947-2019)
Seamus Anthony Close OBE (12 August 1947 – 7 May 2019) was a Northern Irish politician who was deputy leader of the Alliance Party from 1998 to 2001, and a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Lagan Valley from 1998 to 2007.
Political career
In August 1981, he was the Alliance candidate for the second Fermanagh and South Tyrone by-election. The following year under the redistribution and expansion of Northern Ireland's constituencies his local political base became part of the new Lagan Valley constituency which he has contested in the Alliance interest in all elections since 1983 apart from the 1986 by-election called in protest against the Anglo-Irish Agreement when the local Alliance branch declined to contest the seat as they believed the by-election was a political stunt.
Close also held several positions in the Alliance, including serving as chair between 1981 and 1982 and as Deputy Leader from 1991 until 2001. He was often a member of the key Alliance delegations in successive talks about the future of the province, culminating in the Belfast Agreement of 1998.
In the 1996 elections for the Northern Ireland Forum, Close stood at the head of the Alliance's list for Lagan Valley but the party failed to secure enough votes to win one of the local seats. Close was also included on the province-wide list, and as the most senior Alliance member to not be elected locally he won one of Alliance's two seats. In the 1998 election for the new Northern Ireland Assembly he topped the poll in Lagan Valley and gained a further personal triumph in the 2001 general election when he had the highest vote share of any Alliance candidate.
In June 2001, he resigned as Deputy Leader of the party, citing differences with the leadership of Seán Neeson. Close has remained a member of the Assembly and successfully held his seat in the 2003 Assembly election.
“Seamus Close” enters the record as british politician (1947-2019). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Seamus, Close and British can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Seamus Close” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Seamus, Close and British provides the most credible route into that argument.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7440740. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1947, 2019, 1998 and 2001.
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This entry incorporates text from “Seamus Close” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.