The Rev Roy Magee, OBE, Presbyterian minister and peacemaker, was born
on January 3, 1930. He died on February 1, 2009, aged 79. If the Rev
Roy Magee had not been a loyalist, he could not have succeeded in his
lifelong mission to help to bring peace to Northern Ireland.

But — as so often happens when an ideologue is forced to confront his
deepest fears — Magee ended up a long way from his starting point. By
the time of his death, this soft-spoken Presbyterian minister,
credited with having persuaded the Ulster Volunteer Force, the Ulster
Defence Association (UDA) and other loyalist paramilitary groups to
end their campaign of violence in 1994, was as much at ease with
society and politics in Dublin as he was with everyday life in
Belfast.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article5662500.ece?token=null&offset=0&page=1

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The Rev Roy Magee, who has died aged 79, was a Presbyterian minister
and peacemaker in Northern Ireland, who described himself as a
"spiritual policeman" enforcing the "law of God". Magee played a
critical role in mediating the unilateral ceasefire by Northern
Ireland's main loyalist paramilitary organisations in 1994 which, with
a parallel cessation declared by the IRA, paved the way for the peace
process and comprehensive political negotiations, which culminated in
the Belfast agreement on Good Friday 1998. It was the most radical
redefinition of British-Irish relations since the partition settlement
in the early 1920s.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/feb/10/rev-roy-magee-obituary

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