Political career
In the 1970s he became a member of the Northern Ireland Labour Party and then joined the Alliance Party in 1975. He was elected to North Down Borough Council at the 1981 local elections[1] and was elected mayor in 1993/1994. During this period, he unsuccessfully contested North Down in the 1982 Assembly Election. In 1996 he was an unsuccessful candidate in the Northern Ireland Forum election in North Down.[2]
In 1997 Wilson left the Alliance Party and was elected as an independent councillor for Bangor West in 2001 topping the poll for the fourth successive election with 1871 votes (1.6 quotas). In 2003 he again stood as an independent candidate for the Assembly increasing his share of the poll by 10% and finishing tenth out of 19 candidates on the first count.
In 2004 he joined the Green Party. The following year he became the first Green Party representative to be elected to public office in Northern Ireland when he again topped the poll in Bangor West.
Then in 2007 he won the first Green Party's seat in the Northern Ireland Assembly, winning a seat in the North Down constituency on the 10th count, after increasing the Green vote from 730 to 2,839 first preferences. He served on the Environment Committee, DRD Committee and Privileges Committee in the Northern Ireland Assembly.
In 2011 he stood down from the Northern Ireland Assembly, in favour of his research assistant Steven Agnew who retained the seat for the Greens.
He stood instead for Bangor West seat on North Down Council, as an independent, standing against both his wife (Anne Wilson, Alliance Party) and the Green Party candidate.[3] Both Wilson and his wife were reelected as councillors. He again topped the poll with his highest ever percentage of first preference votes (1458).[4][5]