Conor Murphy

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Conor Murphy (born 10 July 1963, Newry) is the Sinn Féin member of parliament for the Newry and Armagh constituency in Northern Ireland, which he represents as its MP and also as one of it's six Members of the Northern Ireland Assembly. Murphy refuses to take his seat in the House of Commons, as he is unwilling to take an oath of allegiance to Queen Elizabeth II.

Murphy lives in Camlough, and was educated at St. Colman's College, Newry and at the Queen's University of Belfast (QUB), and the University of Ulster.

According to An Phoblacht, Murphy first became involved with the IRA during the 1981 hunger strikes, for which he served a two year prison sentence from 1981 to 1983^[1]

Between 1989 and 1997, he was a Sinn Féin councillor on Newry and Mourne District Council for The Fews area, also in south Armagh, and served as his party's group leader at that level. ^[1]

In 1998, Murphy was elected as one of his party's two Northern Ireland Assembly members for Newry and Armagh and in 2001, he contested the Westminster seat, coming second to Seamus Mallon (SDLP). He was re-elected, with two party colleagues, to the Assembly in 2003. ^[2] When Mallon decided not to contest the seat again, Murphy became^{[citation needed]} the clear favourite to win and was elected MP on 5 May 2005.

While on a tour of UK party conferences in autumn 2005, he became the first^[3] Irish republican to address the Conservative Party conference and caused outrage by saying he had not regretted the Brighton hotel bombing, which killed five people.