Aileen Quinton

Aileen Quinton
Quinton speaking in 2025
Born	March 1958 (age 67) County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland
Alma mater	Queen's University Belfast
Known for	Victims rights' activism
Political party	Advance UK (since 2025)
Other political affiliations	Brexit Party (2019-2020)
Mother	Alberta Quinton

Aileen Janet Quinton (born March 1958)^[1] is a Northern Irish unionist and victims' rights advocate. Her mother, Alberta Quinton, was a victim of the Enniskillen bombing attack in 1987.^[2][3] She joined the Brexit Party in 2019 but is now a member of Advance UK.^[4][5]

Quinton was born in March 1958 to an Ulster Scots family in County Fermanagh. Her father was George Wilson Quinton, who worked as the registrar of marriages in Lisnaskea,^[6] and her mother Alberta (née Coulter) Quinton served in the Women's Royal Air Force (WRAF) as a nurse during World War II. The family were members of the Protestant Church of Ireland.

After leaving secondary school, Quinton studied at Queen's University Belfast from 1977 until 1984, where she gained a Master of Science in both pure mathematics and computer science.^[7]

She later moved to London, where she worked in risk management for the Metropolitan Police for over 30 years.^[8]

Her mother, Alberta, was one of 12 people killed by the Provisional Irish Republican Army at the Enniskillen bombing on 8 November 1987.^[9][10]

Since 1987, Quinton has worked with the families of victims and campaigned for those responsible to be held to account.^[11] She has helped to make a quilt as a memorial.^[12]

In 2005, she, along with the Democratic Unionist Party, protested against Good Friday Agreement laws which, they argued, gave 'amnesty to fugitives'.^[13]

Quinton was one of 150 victims and their relatives who sought to bring a class action in US courts against Muammar Gaddafi and his Libyan regime that had supplied the plastic explosive Semtex to the IRA.^[8]

She has criticised the actions of Tony Blair and George W. Bush. In 2014, she sat with the NI Affairs Committee, investigating why Northern Irish victims were excluded by a compensation deal between the U.S. and Libya.^[14][8]

In 2024, she told BBC Radio Ulster that the refusal of Sinn Féin and Pat Cullen to condemn the IRA was 'horrible'.^[15]

Quinton volunteered for Leave.EU during the 2016 referendum on European Union membership.

She was selected as the eighth candidate on the electoral list for the Brexit Party in London at the 2019 European Parliament elections.^[16] The party came third with 400,257 votes (17.9%), returning two MEPs - Ben Habib and Lance Forman.^[17]

In 2020, she criticised the peerage of Brexit Party MEP Claire Fox, who had refused to condemn the IRA, as a sign that the government's "contempt for innocent victims is getting more brazen".^[18]

Quinton is staunchly opposed to the Northern Ireland Protocol. She has worked in this regard with Ben Habib, and the leader of the Traditional Unionist Voice, Jim Allister.^[19][20] She has shown support for the Ulster Unionist Party and the TUV.

In August 2025, Quinton joined the college of Ben Habib's far-right party Advance UK. She published an article in the News Letter, calling the party 'transformative'.^[5]

According to Suzanne Breen of the Belfast Telegraph, Advance UK has over 600 members in Northern Ireland, and is planning to register and contest elections there. Councillor David Clarke, a member if the TUV is aligned with the party.

Quinton is dyslexic, and was diagnosed with ASD and ADD in her forties. She has advocated for protecting neurodiverse young people from transgenderism.^[21]

She has volunteered with the Lives Project since 2017, a charity which helps to support victims of Northern Ireland related terrorism.