An ordained minister of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, he was Grand Master of the Orange Order during much of the Troubles and served as the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) Member of Parliament (MP) for Belfast South from 1982 to 2005.
[3] Smyth's appointment as head of the Orange Order was seen at the time as a working-class revolt against its middle-class leadership.
[4] Smyth was selected to fill the vacancy caused by the murder of Robert Bradford, MP for South Belfast.
Smyth was on the parliamentary advisory board of Western Goals (UK), which held a well-attended fringe meeting at the Conservative Party conference in October 1988 on the subject of "International Terrorism – how the West can fight back".
Smyth ran for the leadership of the UUP in 1995 after James Molyneaux stood down but lost to David Trimble.
[9] He was unsuccessfully challenged for the UUP nomination in Belfast South by Michael McGimpsey[10] before the 2001 general election, and went on to hold the seat.
In 2003, he, along with David Burnside and Jeffrey Donaldson, resigned the party whip[11] due to disagreements over the British Irish Declaration of 2003.