James Hugh Allister (born 2 April 1953) is a British Unionist politician and barrister in Northern Ireland. He founded the Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) political party in 2007, leading the party since its formation. Allister has served as a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly (MLA) for North Antrim since 2011, and is the TUV’s only representative in the Assembly. He was formerly a member of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), for which he successfully stood for election in 2004 to the European Parliament for Northern Ireland, succeeding Ian Paisley. He continued as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) following his resignation from the DUP and his subsequent establishment of the TUV in 2007. Background Allister was born in Listooder, Crossgar, in County Down where he lived until he was nine when his family moved to Craigantlet, Newtownards. Allister was a pupil at Barnamaghery Primary School and later Dundonald Primary School when he moved house. After attending Regent House Grammar School in Newtownards, Allister graduated with a Bachelor of Laws with Honours in Constitutional Law from Queen's University, Belfast. In 1974, he unsuccessfully stood for the post of President of Queen's University Belfast Students' Union. He was called to the Bar of Northern Ireland as a barrister in 1976, where he specialised in criminal law, and, in 2001, was called to the Senior Bar as a Queen's Counsel. Political career Allister quit the Official Unionist Party (OUP) to join the DUP at its founding in 1971. In June 1972, as chairman of the Queen's University Democratic Unionist Party Association, Allister wrote a letter published in the Belfast Telegraph arguing that Ian Paisley was closely aligned with Enoch Powell's "integrationist" stance that Northern Ireland should be closer to the rest of the United Kingdom, and that other Unionist leaders were in favour of devolution. In March 1973 Allister was elected to the post of publicity officer for the Queen's DUP Association. He was involved in the 1974 Ulster Workers' Council strike against the Sunningdale Agreement, which had been signed the previous December. A senior loyalist politician recalled walking into the Ulster Workers' Council HQ on Hawthornden Road in Belfast to find Allister and Peter Robinson "giggling" while phoning Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) headquarters claiming to be Catholics in distress in a loyalist area afflicted by the strike and asking the SDLP to send a car to rescue them.