Born: September 18th, 1927
Died: July 24th, 2022
Sir William Wright, who has died aged 94, was the co-founder of Wrightbus, a 75-year-old Ballymena bus-making company that pioneered the modern version of London’s iconic red double-decker bus.
Despite financial difficulties — and scandal — in recent years, the company remains a large employer in the Co Antrim town and eight years ago began development of the world’s first hydrogen fuel-cell bus.
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A significant figure within the Northern Ireland business community, Sir William was a life-long unionist, devout Protestant and member of the Orange Order from the age of 17. He attended church twice every Sunday (work at the factory was banned on Sundays) and prayed with his wife every evening.
His death prompted praise from unionist politicians, led by his friend, the Ballymena Democratic Unionist Party MP Ian Paisley.
“With the passing of Sir William Wright, Ballymena has lost a giant,” he said. “A Godly man of faith. A loyal Ulsterman. An entrepreneur without match.”
He was born William Thompson Wright in September 1927, to Robert and Mary Wright and had two sisters, one of whom died at birth. As a child, he suffered from asthma and as a result eschewed sport, preferring to read books instead, sometimes ploughing through a volume a day. However, better treatments for asthma eventually helped him play football, successfully at a local level.
In 1946, father and son founded Robert Wright & Son Coachbuilders, starting initially in a metal shed in their garden. They specialised in customising lorries for the particular needs of clients, as well as building mobile food vans, tipper trucks and refrigerated trailers.
From 1950, however, and with the aid of a contract with Tyrone’s education committee, they branched into school buses with what became known as the Commer Bus.
By the 1970s, the company was supplying aluminium-framed buses for Greater Manchester. In the 1980s the company expand into the luxury touring coach market and, by the early noughties, it developed for London Bus a version of the so-called “bendy bus” common in continental Europe but less popular in the UK.
Not afraid to innovate, in 1992 the company created the step-free, so-called “low bus” which facilitated easy wheelchair access, and in 1999 produced its first electric bus.
A decade later, the company won the contract for what became known as the “Boris bus”, a replacement for the familiar London Routemaster red bus, in service since the mid-1950s. The new, curvaceous 87-seat, hybrid-powered bus came into service in 2012 and 1,000 were ordered before Johnson’s successor as London lord mayor, Sadiq Khan, ditched the contract in 2016.
Wrightbus fell on hard times with accumulated debts of £60 million (€71m) after it emerged that Sir William’s son, Jeff Wright, donated more than £15 million to Ballymena’s Green Pastures Church, a 1,600 seating capacity, American-style evangelical congregation, set up in 2007 and of which Wright jnr was pastor.
The company was obliged to seek administration, out of which it was eventually bought in 2019 by Jo Bamford, scion of Anthony Bamford of JCB, the plant machinery company.
After Sir William’s death, Jo Bamford described him as “a pioneer”.
“The Wrightbus name is synonymous with everything they stood for and those values — problem-solving, hard work and never giving up — course through the business I run today. Sir William was fiercely loyal to this community and the fact his name is still held in such regard is testament to his relentless dedication,” he said.
Sir William was elected as an Ulster Unionist councillor for Ballymena in 1981, 1993 and 1997. He attracted death threats from the IRA but carried on regardless. Later, he served as an independent unionist councillor and was the first major business leader in Northern Ireland to declare himself fully for Brexit.
“I am totally in favour of getting out,” he said in reference to the European Union.
Ian Paisley said that Sir William “cared passionately about the employment and skills training of local people … loved Northern Ireland and he was dedicated in everything that he did”.
Sir William was appointed an officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2001 and made a CBE (commander of the order) in 2011. He was knighted in 2018. Ballymena Council bestowed the Freedom of the Borough on him in 2019 and the William Wright Technology Centre at Queen’s University promotes advanced engineering for the future.
He is survived by his wife Ruby — whom he married in 1957, after meeting her at a town hall dance — and by their son and two daughters.