Ivan Cooper

Ivan Cooper was a Northern Irish politician and civil-rights activist who emerged as a leading organiser of the Derry civil-rights movement in the late 1960s. He was elected as an independent Stormont MP in 1969 and became a founding member of the Social Democratic and Labour Party in 1970. Cooper helped organise the January 30, 1972 anti-internment march in Derry that became known as Bloody Sunday, and later served as a minister in Northern Ireland’s 1974 power-sharing executive. His cross-community activism was especially notable because he came from a Protestant background.