Sir Wilfrid Bliss Spender KCB CBE DSO MC (6 October 1876 – 21 December 1960) was a British Army officer, colonial administrator and civil servant who helped re-organise the Ulster Volunteers (UVF) into the Ulster Special Constabulary and was responsible for laying the foundations for the civil service of Northern Ireland.
His wife, Lady Spender (née Alice Lilian Dean; 1880-1966), was a member of the UVF Nursing Corps and worked in the Ulster Division Comforts Fund during World War I.
[4] He organized, and partly financed, a national petition against proposed Home Rule in Ireland, and helped establish the Junior Imperial League.
While disputing being forced to leave the army, feeling his services were required in Ulster, Spender sought legal advice from Sir Edward Carson.
In December 1913, amid widespread suspicions that sympathy for the Unionist cause might make army officers reluctant to move against the Ulster Volunteers, the CIGS Sir John French recommended that Spender be cashiered (stripped of his commission - a social disgrace that disqualified the person from any further Crown employment) "pour décourager les autres", but this did not happen.
Spender strongly opposed accepting a proposed six-county option for the partition of Ireland, and on these grounds, he declined an invitation from Carson to contest an Ulster constituency at Westminster.
About the same time, he gave some support to moves to launch a national party in England — "to promote Reform, the Union and Defence" — and considered seeking nomination for parliament in a constituency in Devon or Cornwall.
He opposed any discrimination on religious grounds in the civil service, but was unable to prevent Unionist members of the Northern Ireland parliament dominating the selection boards for other ranks.
[citation needed] Sir Wilfrid retired in 1944 and returned to England in 1955, he died of heart failure on 21 December 1960 at the East Hill Hotel, his home at Liss, Hampshire.