Alan Campbell (Preacher)

Alan Campbell is a Northern Ireland-based preacher, a former member of Ian Paisley's Free Presbyterian Church, he later set up his own religious grouping which believes that the people of Ulster are descended from a lost tribe of Israel. He is the author of a number of anti-Catholic pamphlets.

According to journalist Henry McDonald, Campbell has been an associate of the late John McKeague and of Clifford Peebles.

1996 Apprentice Boys' March

In August 1996, Campbell was chaplain of the Seawright Branch of the Apprentice Boys, named after George Seawright, which traveled from Sandy Row in Belfast to Derry but was not able to march the City's walls., The Observer reported: " 'When the loyalist declared their ceasefire, I felt let down and betrayed,' Mr Campbell admitted. 'Had all those men died in vain?' He described the IRA ceasefire as a Trojan horse. 'They give people a little bit of peace to enjoy and then threaten to take it away. It's a very clever form of intimidation. In a war only one side can win. We are the majority. We have to win.'"

Good Friday Agreement protests

Campbell was one of a group of loyalists protesting outside Ulster Unionist Party Headquarters during a meeting on Stormont talks in April 1998.

In the days after the Good Friday Agreement, Campbell addressed an Apprentice Boys Rally in London, the Belfast Newsletter reported:

He urged the crowd to use what influence they had to campaign for a no vote in the referendum, saying loyalists should never accept power sharing or cross -border organisations.

"I have news for Mr Trimble and the other leaders. He can get as many standing ovations as he likes today, but we will bring it (the agreement) down," he said.

He continued: "You can't depend on Trimble. He is to Ulster what De Klerk was to South Africa. He is the traitor of all traitors."

In the subsequent referendum, Campbell campaigned for a no vote on the Rathcoole Estate.

In June 1999, the News Letter reported that Campbell had been the subject of a death threat:

Detectives confirmed to the News Letter yesterday that a .22 percussion cap bullet was retrieved from a letter sent to Belfast man Alan Campbell, who works as an RE teacher at Newtownabbey Community High School.

A group calling itself the Nationalist Defence Force issued a statement, using a recognised codeword, to the News Letter yesterday claiming responsibility for the attack.

The News Letter described Campbell as follows:

A respected RE teacher whose school GCSE syllabus demands he teach "sensitivity towards the beliefs of others," he ran into trouble recently for allegedly publishing hardline loyalist propaganda on the Internet.

The material was said to incite sectarian hatred and has been passed by a Sunday newspaper to the Department of Education.

in February 2001, the Sunday Mirror reported that Campbell had been visiting loyalist Clifford Peebles in Maghaberry prison. The paper also accused Campbell of links to white supremacist groups:

Campbell, who has been a fringe figure in loyalism for 30 years, has been a pal of Peebles for many years but avoided the limelight for most of that time.

It was his sinister website that made public what the seemingly respectable Campbell really was.

He used his website to spout anti-Catholic views, promote extreme loyalism and his Israel Identity beliefs.

One site section, called Rome Watch, was dedicated to listing stories from around the world of priests and nuns found guilty of various sexual offences.

He claimed Rome was conducting a "Holy War" against Protestantism and attacked Prime Minister Tony Blair because of wife Cheri's religion.

The Sunday Life reported two weeks later on the material in cassette recordings of Campbell's sermons:

Campbell claims that Ulster Protestants and the whites of South Africa are lost tribes of Israel, given their own homelands by God.

"Both little Ulster and South Africa were planted, or colonised, in the early 1600s by people of Israelitish descent and of strong, Protestant, Calvinistic faith.

"Both nations - and Ulster is a nation, an ethnic unit - felt they were fulfilling a special role in God's plan, of evangelising the heathen and standing firm for the gospel and the truth," he says.

And he blasts David Trimble, and other unionists, for meeting Nelson Mandela in South Africa, in 1997.

Harryville Protests

According to the Sunday Life Campbell 'took part in the loyalist Harryville Church protests in Ballymena where he was accused of stirring up anti-Catholic bigotry'.

Malachi O'Doherty wrote in August 2002:

I am assumed to be a Catholic because I am a Taig. I have even been described from an evangelical pulpit as a Romanist. Pastor Alan Campbell gave a sermon about the protest at Harryville and mentioned that he had seen me there. He cited my safe passage as clear evidence that the crowd was well behaved. He appears to believe that any loyalist who could resist the temptation to thump me on sight clearly deserved some credit for that. He described me as "that Romanist who writes for the Belfast Telegraph".

Flag protests

The Sunday Life reported in January 2013:

A RACIST Belfast pastor who says on YouTube that black Christians should worship "in their own little Negro Churches" was among the notable figures at the Union flag protests at the City Hall.

Controversial preacher Alan Campbell, who has been a fringe figure in loyalism for decades, was among around 1,000 loyalist protestors who gathered in the city centre last weekend.

The 63-year-old British Israelite was giving out little red, white and blue tracks titled "Protestant Arrows" promoting his Open Bible Ministries and his website.

Church Closure

The Sunday Life reported in December 2013, that Campbell's church had closed:

Speaking to Sunday Life about the collapse of his church, Campbell said he had been seriously ill earlier this year and had almost died as the result of renal failure.

It was while he was in hospital that his ministry, which holds meetings on the Cregagh Road in east Belfast and other venues, fell apart amid claims about missing cash. Campbell's Open Bible Ministries website is now suspended but before it closed a message appeared from the church secretary saying: "As a result of dwindling meeting attendances and financial challenges, the members of Open Bible Ministries have taken a decision to close the work down."

There were suggestions that the closure was linked to missing money:

Fellowship members have also claimed that an associate of Campbell's with a "seedy background" gained access to the fellowship cheque book and helped himself to more than £20,000 in funds in one year.