Parliament
In the 1969 general election, Cooper was elected as an independent Member for Mid-Londonderry, defeating the sitting Nationalist Party MP, Paddy Gormley.
On 12 August - the start of the few intense days of violence which have become known as the Battle of the Bogside - Cooper tried to restrain Catholics protesting an Apprentice Boys of Derry parade by linking arms with John Hume and Eddie McAteer. They were swept aside however and Cooper was knocked unconscious by a brick.
Cooper was suspended from Stormont for a week on 20 March after a protest in the Chamber over a Public Order Bill.
Read more about this topic: Ivan Cooper
Famous quotes containing the word parliament:
“At the ramparts on the cliff near the old Parliament House I counted twenty-four thirty-two-pounders in a row, pointed over the harbor, with their balls piled pyramid-wise between them,—there are said to be in all about one hundred and eighty guns mounted at Quebec,—all which were faithfully kept dusted by officials, in accordance with the motto, “In time of peace prepare for war”; but I saw no preparations for peace: she was plainly an uninvited guest.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The war shook down the Tsardom, an unspeakable abomination, and made an end of the new German Empire and the old Apostolic Austrian one. It ... gave votes and seats in Parliament to women.... But if society can be reformed only by the accidental results of horrible catastrophes ... what hope is there for mankind in them? The war was a horror and everybody is the worse for it.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Undershaft: Alcohol is a very necessary article. It heals the sick—Barbara: It does nothing of the sort. Undershaft: Well, it assists the doctor: that is perhaps a less questionable way of putting it. It makes life bearable to millions of people who could not endure their existence if they were quite sober. It enables Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person would do at eleven in the morning.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)