Charles McGleenan

Charles McGleenan (1894 – 1974 fl.1966) was a farmer and a Republican politician in Northern Ireland.
McGleenan was a volunteer in the Irish Republican Army during the Irish War of Independence. He was interned in Newbridge Prison, but successfully escaped. He subsequently worked as a farmer of apples.
At the 1935 general election, McGleenan stood in Armagh as an Independent Republican, winning 32.4% of the vote. He joined the Anti-Partition League of Ireland (APL) when it was founded in 1945.
In May 1950, the APL conference voted down a motion calling for abstentionism from the Parliament of Northern Ireland. McGleenan had been a supporter of the motion, and when a local convention selected him as their candidate for the South Armagh by-election, 1950, this was in clear opposition to party policy. Despite this, the executive did not intervene, and McGleenan was able to easily defeat an Irish Labour Party candidate.
McGleenan did not take his seat, but did join with the Nationalist Party MPs Cahir Healy, Joe Connellan and Edward McCullagh in lobbying for admission to the Dáil, as elected representatives of territory it claimed. A motion from Con Lehane proposing this was rejected; later in the year, a more modest proposal of McGleenan's to gain a right of audience in the Dáil or the Seanad Éireann was put by Seán MacBride, but was also lost.
McGleenan held his seat in an uncontested election in 1953, but stood down at the 1958 general election. At the 1966 general election, McGleenan stood again in Armagh, on this occasion taking 28% of the vote.