Gerry Fitt, who has died aged 79, was the first leader of Northern Ireland's Social Democratic and Labour party. Lord Fitt of Bell'sHill - he was ennobled in 1983 - was an old-fashioned,working-class socialist who became increasingly disenchanted with the narrow nationalism that his party adopted, quitting in 1979.

He was a staunch critic of IRA violence, and was himself subjected to physical attack, once famously defending himself in his underwear brandishing a legally held gun. He was eventually forced to give up his house in Belfast and move permanently to a small flat in Westminster with his wife Ann and their five children.