Lord Fitt dies aged 79

Former SDLP leader Lord (Gerry) Fitt has died at the age of 79, it was confirmed today.

Lord Fitt, whose health health had been in decline for several months, had a heart condition.

He had lived in England with his wife Anne since the 1980's when he effectively retired from Northern Ireland politics.

Lord Fitt was born in Belfast on 9 April 1926 and educated at the Christian Brothers School. Between 1941 and 1953 he served in the merchant navy before finding his feet in the political movement with his socialist views.

In 1966 he won the West Belfast Westminster seat as a Republican Labour Party candidate, a seat he held until 1983 when Gerry Adams won the seat for Sinn Fein.

In August 1970 he became the first leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) and in 1974 became deputy chief executive of the short-lived Power-Sharing Executive created under the Sunningdale Agreement.

However, his political outlook, in which he was a opponent of republican violence, saw him become a target for republican's who attacked his north Belfast home in 1976.

He quit the leadership of the SDLP in 1979.

Following his 1983 Westminster defeat he was subsequently offered a peerage.

His wife Anne passed away after a short illness in 1996.

(MB/SP)