Bob Cooper: Bob Cooper, who has died aged 68, was well aware that as a liberal unionist he lived in interesting times. He played out the possibilities to the limits of his formidable energies, as a founder-member of the Alliance Party, in working to end discrimination in the workplace and as a campaigner for integrated education.
From the inception of the Fair Employment Agency in 1976, he headed Northern Ireland's two successive fair employment bodies for a period of 23 years. Knighted as Sir Robert in 1998, he will be remembered as Bob, a brisk and rumpled figure with a deft sense of humour who relished argument.
Becoming the champion of official efforts to provide equality of opportunity meant setting himself up as a target for unremitting attack from those who for the first two decades found many flaws in equality and anti-discrimination legislation, from the perspective of ending disadvantage for Catholics.
But the loudest and most personal criticism came from within the Protestant community. Cooper had begun political life as a unionist and was a Donegal Presbyterian in origin. As he said often in conversation, he was seen by some as a traitor to his people.
Sir Oliver Napier, the first leader of the Alliance Party, said this week: "He produced the statistics that showed just how discriminatory unjust employment practices were. So those in the unionist population who supported the old ways attacked Bob in the most vicious and personal manner. Snubs, insults, threatening letters and obscene telephone calls became a part of his personal life."
His own "mixed" marriage to Belfast woman Pat Nichol became part of the sub-text. An American diplomat based for a time in Belfast once told a group of local journalists, eyes flashing angrily, that the next time a unionist asked conversationally "do you know that Bob Cooper is married to a Catholic, I think I'll scream."
Born in Donegal, he was educated in Foyle College, Derry and Queen's University Belfast where he took a law degree. A contemporary recalled his lively personality: "You wouldn't look for Bob in the library."
His greatest enthusiasm in Queen's was argument for change inside the Young Unionists, spurring the group at one point, against inclinations then and since, to push the Prime Minister, Lord Brookeborough, for urgent reforms.
Napier and Cooper met as law students, and when he and others founded the New Ulster Movement (NUM), Cooper joined at the first meeting. When the Alliance Party grew out of the NUM, Cooper and Napier became joint "political chairmen".
Later Cooper gave up his job in industrial relations to become Alliance's first full-time general secretary and then Napier's deputy. For a short but vivid period Cooper was a vigorous politician. Broadcasts from the time show a stronger communicator than Napier, unionist roots lending force to his denunciation of unionist inflexibility. There are some who will always think of him as the inspirational leader Alliance never had.
He was elected to the 1973 Assembly for West Belfast, winning a considerable number of Catholic votes, took part in the Sunningdale negotiations and became Minister for Manpower Services in the power-sharing executive brought down by the Ulster Workers Strike in 1974. The following year he was again elected for West Belfast to the inconclusive Constitutional Convention.
In 1976 he became first chairman of the Fair Employment Agency. In its first 10 years, the most important investigation the FEA undertook was into the Northern Ireland Civil Service. Many saw it as a test of Cooper's resolve, since the civil service remit enjoyed the potential for budgetary and administrative constraint, if not sabotage, of the FEA.
The investigation "provided a devastating critique", according to a recent study. But Fair Employment in Northern Ireland, A Generation On, published this month, concludes that the civil service in the 21st century may still not be "fully convinced of the equality agenda". The study points up the pressures Cooper faced, unionists to one side, nationalists on the other, with a layer of bureaucratic involvement which is still the subject of conjecture.
In the 1980s, equality legislation came under sustained criticism, led by campaigners for the MacBride Principles which sought to make American investment in Northern Ireland conditional on commitment to effective measures. Cooper went to America to argue against MacBride, largely on the grounds that the principles would endanger investment. But the greater reach in later legislation owed much to American pressure.
When Cooper retired as chairman of the Fair Employment Commission, the picture of employment in Northern Ireland was very different from that of the mid-70s in many ways - but perhaps most markedly in terms of redress of old grievance.
His ability to argue the case for equality with undiminished passion in the late '90s, by now on behalf of Protestants in deprived districts like the Shankill, was testament to extraordinary resilience.
Bob Cooper's work in fair employment convinced him that prejudice and unfairness often sprang from ignorance and segregation. His involvement in integrated education was a logical extension of his and Pat's children's education in Lagan College.
He worked hard at the commitments asked of a parent, turning up for school ceremonies, serving for years as school governor before becoming chair of the Integrated Education Fund in September 2000. He spent four years spearheading the campaign to make it possible for more children to go to integrated schools by increasing their numbers and enrolments.
He died at home in Holywood having been ill for some time but remained chairman of the IEF until last summer when he reluctantly resigned. Those who chair voluntary bodies are not always loved by staff. Bob Cooper was, and his death caused genuine grief.
He is survived by his wife Pat, daughter Anne and son William.
Sir Bob Cooper: born: June, 1936; died November 16th, 2004.