
Paddy Wilson (1933-25 June 1973) was General Secretary of the Social Democratic and Labor Party in Northern Ireland from 1970 to 1972, preceding John Duffy.
Biography[]
Paddy Wilson was born in 1933 in Sailortown, Belfast, Northern Ireland to a Catholic Irish family. He was the youngest of seven children born to a family with republican sympathies, and in 1969 he became a member of the Senate of Northern Ireland with the Republican Labor Party. However, he became one of the founders of the Social Democratic and Labor Party in 1970 and served as its first General Secretary. On 25 June 1973, Wilson and his Protestant friend Irene Andrews left a pub in a red mini car, but the Ulster Defense Association stopped the car and murdered the two, cutting Wilson's throat and leaving Wilson and Andrews' bodies on the roadside. His murder was in response to the 1973 Coleraine bombings by the Provisional IRA, which he had nothing to do with aside from his Irish heritage.