Cecil Harvey was a unionist politician in Northern Ireland.
Harvey was a founding elder of Ian Paisley's Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster, in 1951. The following year, he suggested the congregation's move from Crossgar to Whiteabbey.[1] He was also active in the Orange Order[2] and the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), and was elected as a councillor.[3] He became disillusioned with the UUP as it came to support the idea of power-sharing, and joined the rival Vanguard Unionist Progressive Party.[3] Under this banner, he was elected from South Down to the Northern Ireland Assembly, 1973, where he was the party's chief whip,[4] then the Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention.[5]
In 1974, Harvey argued for the Orange Order to pay compensation to loyalists interned around the Ulster Workers' Council strike.[2] By 1975, Harvey was calling for the Order to found an entirely new united unionist party; this was moved by Robert Overend but was defeated.[6] Undeterred, Harvey became a founder member of the United Ulster Unionist Party, becoming the party chairman,[7] and remaining loyal until its collapse in 1982. He then joined the Democratic Unionist Party,[3] for which he stood unsuccessfully in South Down at the 1983 general election.[8]