Sir Charles Norman Lockhart Stronge, 8th Baronet, MC, PC, JP (23 July 1894 – 21 January 1981) was a senior Ulster Unionist Party politician in Northern Ireland.

[2] Educated at Eton, during the First World War (1914–18) he joined the British Army and was commissioned as a second lieutenant into the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers.

[11] He was elected as an Ulster Unionist Party member of the House of Commons of Northern Ireland for Mid Armagh in the byelection of 29 September 1938,[12][13] and held the seat until his retirement in 1969.

[22] He held this post at the time when J. M. Andrews was deposed as Prime Minister of Northern Ireland and replaced by Sir Basil Brooke due to backbench pressure from Ulster Unionist MPs.

On 16 January 1956 Stronge wrote to resign his post as Speaker temporarily so that legislation could be passed to validate his actions and indemnify him from the consequences of acting while disqualified.

[2][41] The couple had four children: After Stronge's retirement from politics in 1969, he farmed the family's several thousand acre estate at Tynan Abbey.

[43] Sir Norman Stronge (aged 86) and his son, James (aged 48), were killed while watching television in the library of their home,[42] Tynan Abbey, on the evening of 21 January 1981, by members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), armed with machine guns, who used grenades to break down the locked heavy doors to the home.

[44] On seeing the explosions at the house (and a flare Stronge lit in an attempt to alert the authorities), the Royal Ulster Constabulary and British Army troops arrived at the scene and established a road-block at the gate lodge.

An RUC officer said afterwards that they at first mistook the IRA men, wearing black berets and "combat gear", for members of the British Army's Special Air Service (SAS).

The sword and cap of the Lord Lieutenant of Tyrone (Major John Hamilton-Stubber) were placed on his coffin in lieu of his own, which had been destroyed with his other possessions in the fire.

It stated:[46]I was deeply shocked to learn of the tragic death of your father and brother; Prince Philip joins me in sending you and your sister all our deepest sympathy on your dreadful loss.

On the coffin were the cap and sword of Major John Hamilton-Stubber, Lord Lieutenant for County Tyrone, for all Sir Norman's possessions were destroyed in the fire which gutted the Abbey.

Sir Norman's daughters Daphne and Evie were accompanied by their husbands, and his grandson Mr James Kingan was also present.

The two coffins were laid in the family plot, where Lady Stronge, Sir Norman's wife and mother of James, was buried a year previously.

[47]The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Humphrey Atkins, was informed by friends of the Stronge family that he would not be welcome at the funeral because of government policy on Irish border security.

[51] Stronge was described at the time of his death by Social Democratic and Labour Party politician Austin Currie as having been "even at 86 years of age … still incomparably more of a man than the cowardly dregs of humanity who ended his life in this barbaric way".

McLaughlin was the first Speaker elected from Sinn Féin whose leader, Gerry Adams, had said regarding the Stronge murders: "The only complaint I have heard from nationalists or anti-unionists is that he was not shot 40 years ago.