William Basil McIvor (1928-November 5, 2004) was an Ulster Unionist politician and pioneer of integrated education.

Born in Pettigo, County Fermanagh, McIvor attended Queen's University, Belfast and was called to the Bar in 1950.

He was elected to the Northern Ireland Parliament as and Ulster Unionist Party MP for Larkfield in the 1969 election. He was one of a group of MPs who supported the beleaguered Prime Minister, Terence O'Neill. Viewed as a liberal he was given the job of Minister of Community Relations by Brian Faulkner in 1971 and resigned from the Orange Order.

McIvor was a member of the Ulster Unionist contingent who negotiated the Sunningdale Agreement in 1973. When the powersharing Executive was set up in the aftermath of Sunningdale McIvor headed the Education Department. McIvor left politics after the fall of the Executive in 1974 and sat as a resident magistrate

He was to the fore in pushing the need for shared schools for Protestant and Catholic pupils in Northern Ireland. In 1981 he became the first chairman of Lagan College, Northern Ireland's first integrated school and when Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness became education minister he invited him to visit the college.

Basil McIvor died on the 5 November 2004 aged 79 while playing golf at Ballynahinch, County Down.

READING

Basil McIvor, Hope Deferred: Experiences of an Irish Unionist Blackstaff Press, Belfast, 1998. (autobiography)