Carron, John (1908–98), MP, was born 28 January 1908 in Tiravally, parish of Kinawley, Co. Fermanagh, second son of John Carron (1863–1935), farmer and carter, and Brigid Carron (née McGovern) of Ballinamore. After a local national school education he was apprenticed to a spirit grocer in Lisnaskea, Co. Fermanagh (1920). He was a founder member of the Fermanagh Nationalist Registration Association, convened in Enniskillen (January 1928) with the object of mobilising the demoralised nationalist electorate in the county. The organisation was soon employed as a model for the rest of Northern Ireland by the nationalist party under Joseph Devlin (qv). Active in Fermanagh county council by the early 1930s, he promoted nationalist projects with limited success for some years. In 1936 he purchased a public house in Lisnaskea and became a trustee on the town fairs and markets committee. Between 1939 and the early 1950s he purchased and refurbished tenement accommodation in the town in a philanthropic endeavour to house those (mainly catholic) families without suitable living space: Shareholder Row was renamed St Patrick's Terrace in the 1960s. In recognition of this and other work for disadvantaged catholics he was awarded the Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice medal in 1962 by Pope John XXIII. In November 1945 he helped found the Anti-Partition League (APL), chairing the Lisnaskea branch from May 1946. In 1949 he unsuccessfully stood for election as APL candidate against Sir Basil Brooke (qv), NI prime minister, in Fermanagh South. During the early 1950s he was elected chairman of the Enniskillen fisheries board. Finally elected as nationalist MP in 1965, he was considered to have an innovative and flexible cast of mind by Paddy Devlin (qv), who some years later tried to woo him into the SDLP. Securing access to Fermanagh county council records as MP in 1965, he found documentary evidence that the council, under the heading of the so-called Clogher fund, had systematically since the 1920s bought up land, property, and businesses along the border for secret resale at a discount to selected protestants from the Republic. Together with proof of irregularities in the distribution of public housing, this scandal led to the creation of the housing executive (1970). During the brief opposition alliance at Stormont (1969) he served as spokesman for community relations, indicative of his steadfast interest in redressing interdenominational distrust. He returned to local politics after the demise of Stormont in 1972. Publication (1990, 1992) of his nostalgic reminiscences of life in Lisnaskea before the second world war bear witness to a conciliatory and tenderly observant temperament. He died at the Erne hospital on 7 October 1998.
He married (1929) Mary Anne Maguire (d. 1992); they had no children.