Researching Alan Chambers

On June 19, 2013, Chambers repudiated the organization's mission in a nearly hour-long talk at the organization's 38th annual meeting. He co-founded Speak. Love. with two other former Exodus leaders later that year.

Born to a family of steel workers, Alan left school and home at sixteen and joined the Royal Marines. Nine months later he completed training and spent the next seventeen years in a front line Commando unit. Alan recalls visiting 50 countries by the time he was 30 years old.

Chambers led the first British team to walk unsupported to the Geographic North Pole from Canada. After 70 days on the ice, he and Charlie Paton raised the Union Jack at the North Pole at 23:16 hours on 16 May 2000.

Chambers was also instrumental in planning and executing the first Winter crossing of Iceland on skis. Dragging sledges each weighing, Chambers and his team completed the journey in 47 days.

Aged 32, Chambers was awarded the MBE by Her Majesty the Queen for Determined Leadership in Constant Adversity.

Chambers is a popular motivational and corporate away day speaker on topics including Leading at the Edge, Maintaining Team High Performance, Delivering the Impossible, Managing Adversity, Leadership and Resilience and Setbacks and Doing More with Less.

Born in England, he was an exporter, importer and merchant by career. He was first elected to Parliament at the Nanaimo riding in the 1935 general election after an earlier unsuccessful attempt to win a seat there in 1935. After serving one term in the House of Commons, Chambers was defeated by George Pearkes of the Progressive Conservatives in the 1945 election.

Chambers became the European chief of the Department of Veterans Affairs after World War II where he worked for the remainder of his career.

He died in 1981.

Chambers was elected to North Down Borough Council in a by-election on 17 April 1991 as an Independent, representing the Ballyholme and Groomsport electoral area. He was re-elected in several subsequent elections, topping the poll in the elections of 1993, 1997 and 2001, and elected as the second candidate in 2005 and 2011. He served as Mayor of North Down for the 2000-2001 term. Following the abolition of North Down council, Chambers was elected to the successor council of North Down and Ards at the 2014 elections, topping the poll in the Bangor East and Donaghadee area.

Chambers contested the 1995 Westminster by-election in North Down, finishing fourth with 8% of the vote.

At the 1996 Northern Ireland Forum elections, Chambers headed his own Independent Chambers list. However, the list was unsuccessful, polling 567 votes (0.08%) across Northern Ireland, with Chambers receiving the majority of these in North Down, representing 1% of the total vote in that constituency. He contested North Down as an independent at each subsequent Assembly election, receiving 3.7% of first preferences in 1998, 3.5% in 2003, 3.7% in 2007 and 6.3% in 2011.

In December 2015, Chambers joined the UUP and was elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly at the 2016 election. He currently represents the UUP on the Health Committee in the Assembly and is the party spokesperson on Health. He also served for two years as a member of the NI Policing Board.