Lord Dodds affirms glowing tributes to Sir David Amess as he reflects on assassination attempt on his own life in 1996

Sir David Amess, the Conservative MP for Southend West, was stabbed to death during a constituency surgery last week, causing shockwaves across the UK and a review of security for MPs.

Lord Nigel Dodds, the former MP for north Belfast, had been given a warm welcome by Sir David when the DUP man first arrived in the Commons in 2001.

“David had been there since 1983 and was well known amongst all members,” Lord Dodds said.

“He was very friendly, he always has a smile on his face. Everything that has been said about him in all these tributes is actually true. He was just well liked and he was very cheerful and encouraging.

”I remember talking to him after I came in and he was interested in the new MP from Northern Ireland. He was very encouraging and a very nice guy.”

Lord Dodds said he had a big focus on animal welfare and in more recent years campaigned relentlessly for South End to be made a city

“Every time he raised it there was a laugh because everyone was expecting it. He was never in high ministerial office and he never really sought that kind of political career. He was really a guy that made a lot of connections across all the parties at Westminster and was very well liked. He had been an MP for almost 40 years.”

Lord Dodds also recounted the occasion when he was almost murdered as an MP.

His six-year-old son Andrew was in the Intensive Care Unit of the Children’s Hospital at the Royal Victoria Hospital at the time, in 1996. He and his wife Diane were collecting several items in the city centre when they got a call to come to the hospital urgently.

Because it was urgent they rushed to the hospital without waiting for their usual police bodyguards. They were in the waiting room while medical staff worked with their son nearby.

“And then we heard these almighty bangs - shots ringing out in the corridor - and one of the nurses screaming and someone shouting for me to get down and block the door.

“For what seemed an age it all stopped and then there was all this screaming and shouting. Eventually, as there was no way out of the room, we just opened the door. By this stage the gunmen had left.

“The first thing we saw was a childs’ incubator with bullet holes in it. The police bodyguard who had arrived by that stage had been shot in the leg. It was bedlam.”

The policeman had spotted two men coming down the corridor wearing wigs and had challenged them, so they had not been able to get any closer to the politician.

“If they hadn’t been there they would have been able to walk straight down to us.”

He added that the security threat faced by MPs in Northern Ireland during the Troubles was massively greater than that faced by MPs in England.

“Rev Ian Paisley had bodyguards around the clock and at his house, as did Peter Robinson.

“But for Assembly members and MPs this was almost something that you lived with.”

Dissident republicans left a bomb outside the office on the Shore Road in 2003. Others have received many threats and partial bombs.

“Even after the Good Friday Agreement politicians in Northern Ireland have been very much targeted and have had to live with it. Typically they often had security at their offices and houses, bullet proof windows, panic alarms and even personal protection weapons.

“Two MPs killed in five years in England is horrendous but for 30 years in NI MPs lived with this as a daily threat.”

He noted that UUP MP Robert Bradford was killed in 1981 killed during a surgery in Finaghy, along with his bodyguard. And that UUP assembly member Edgar Graham  was shot dead in 1983 outside Queen’s University.

Fellow DUP member councillor David Calvert was shot and badly wounded in the late 1980s. And in the early 1970s SDLP senator Paddy Wilson and his girlfriend were “brutally murdered” by loyalists, he added.

But today, he believes that social media has “intensified and heightened” hatred towards MPs “especially women” and can also be used to gather intelligence on their movements.

“They whip up an extraordinary amount of hatred and threats and I think these social media companies have got to stop this ability for people to go online anonymously and say whatever they like.”