Ken Maginnis, Baron Maginnis of Drumglass

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Kenneth Wiggins Maginnis, Baron Maginnis of Drumglass (born January 21, 1938) is a Northern Irish Ulster Unionist politician. Educated at the Royal School Dungannon, Dungannon, and Stranmillis College in Belfast, he worked as a teacher for a number of years before joining the Ulster Defence Regiment in 1971. After leaving the Army with the rank of Major in 1981, he became Ulster Unionist spokesman on internal security and defence, and was that same year elected to Dungannon District Council, on which he sat for twelve years until he lost his seat in 1993 when he was eliminated by less than 1 vote (0.74 votes).

Maginnis was the Ulster Unionist candidate for the second by-election in 1981. The following year, in 1982, he was elected a representative for Fermanagh & South Tyrone to the failed Northern Ireland Assembly. At the 1983 general election he was returned to the House of Commons as the constituency's Member of Parliament. Two years later, along with the rest of his Unionist colleagues, he resigned his seat in protest at the Anglo-Irish Agreement, but was re-elected in the subsequent by-election. He continued his protest by refusing to pay his car tax, for which he was sentenced to seven days' imprisonment in 1987.

At a Saint Patrick's Day display at Westminster in 1998, he tore two Irish tricolours from the wall and threw them into the Thames, saying he "did not think they would pollute the river too much^{[citation needed]}."

He was a strong supporter of the Good Friday Agreement, and stood down as an MP at the 2001 General Election, being created a life peer as Baron Maginnis of Drumglass, of Carnteel in the County of Tyrone that same year. He renewed his membership of Dungannon and South Tyrone District Council in 2001 when he was elected for Dungannon Town. However in 2005 he chose to move to the neighbouring Clogher Valley electoral area in an attempt to boost the UUP vote. This strategy backfired and he again lost his seat.

He currently sits as a Cross-bencher in the House of Lords. Maginnis is one of only three MPs in the Ulster Unionist Party's history not to have been a member of the Orange Order.

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by: Owen Carron	Member of Parliament for Fermanagh and South Tyrone 1983–2001	Succeeded by: Michelle Gildernew