Paul Butler

Paul Butler, known in Irish as Pol de Buitleir, was a Sinn Fein politician, former Provisional IRA prisoner, and later a Relatives for Justice case worker whose public life tracked Northern Ireland's journey from conflict to contested peacetime politics. He died suddenly on 23 September 2026. Contemporary tributes placed him in his late sixties; Wikipedia and election biographies give his birth year as 1956 or 1957.

Raised in Rathcoole, Butler became involved in republican politics as a teenager. In 1974, aged 17, he confessed to and was convicted of the murder of reserve Royal Ulster Constabulary officer John Rodgers, killed in an IRA gun attack near the Glen Inn in Glengormley. He received a life sentence and spent about 15 years in prison, including time on the same wing as Bobby Sands and participation in the blanket protest. Belfast Media later noted a brief escape from Magilligan Camp among the episodes of his imprisonment.

After release he entered electoral politics. He served on Lisburn Borough and then Lisburn City Council from 1997 to 2011 for the Dunmurry Cross area, leading Sinn Fein's group on a council where nationalists long argued they were shut out of civic roles. He campaigned against discrimination in council business, for city status for Lisburn, and, later, against loyalist intimidation of Catholic residents around Stoneyford, despite attacks and threats against his own home.

Butler contested Lagan Valley at the 2001 and 2005 Westminster elections without winning. In 2007 he became the first Sinn Fein member elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly from that strongly unionist constituency, taking the seat previously associated with the SDLP's Patricia Lewsley and Marietta Farrell. He was the only nationalist returned in the six-seater that year. Keeping to Sinn Fein's one-job rule for dual mandate holders, he stood down from Stormont after a single term in 2011 and left the council at the same election.

He then spent about 15 years as a case worker with Relatives for Justice, supporting families bereaved during the conflict, including work linked to the Carol Ann Kelly case and the Police Ombudsman findings on RUC-loyalist collusion. He retired from the organisation in June 2026. West Belfast MP Paul Maskey, paying tribute after his sudden death, called him a dedicated activist whose life was rooted in solidarity and service. Butler is remembered as the pioneer Sinn Fein voice in Lagan Valley and as a long-serving advocate for victims seeking accountability.