Tommy Roberts
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This article is part of SpinWatch's Northern Ireland Portal. |
Tommy Roberts was a journalist with the Belfast Telegraph and then from 1962 press adviser to the Unionist Government in Northern Ireland.
According to David Miller:
- The Unionist Prime Minister Basil Brooke had created a Cabinet Publicity Committee in 1943 and the Information Service as a separate entity came into existence in 1955. But, it was not until the mid sixties that 'modern' ideas about marketing and image entered Northern Ireland politics under the impetus of Finance Minister Terence O'Neill. In 1962 Ex Belfast Telegraph journalist Tommy Roberts was appointed as Public Relations officer at the Ulster Office in London by O'Neill, in the face of Cabinet Office objections. His job was to remedy the 'bad industrial press' which O'Neill thought that Northern Ireland was getting.[1] In 1963 O'Neill became Prime Minister and Roberts, while remaining based in London, operated informally as his press secretary on his almost annual visits to the US .[2][3]
