Brian Faulkner
The Lord Faulkner of Downpatrick | |
---|---|
Chief Executive of Northern Ireland | |
In office 1 January 1974 – 28 May 1974 | |
Monarch | Elizabeth II |
Deputy | Gerry Fitt |
Preceded by | Office created |
Succeeded by | Office abolished |
6thPrime Minister of Northern Ireland | |
In office 23 March 1971 – 30 March 1972 | |
Monarch | Elizabeth II |
Governor | The Lord Grey of Naunton |
Preceded by | James Chichester-Clark |
Succeeded by | Office abolished |
9thLeader of the Ulster Unionist Party | |
In office 31 March 1971 – 22 January 1974 | |
Preceded by | James Chichester-Clark |
Succeeded by | Harry West |
Minister of Home Affairs | |
In office 23 March 1971 – 30 March 1972 | |
Prime Minister | Himself |
Preceded by | James Chichester-Clark |
Succeeded by | Office abolished |
In office 15 December 1959 – 29 April 1963 | |
Prime Minister | The Viscount Brookeborough Terence O'Neill |
Preceded by | George Hanna |
Succeeded by | Walter Topping |
Minister of Development | |
In office 3 May 1969 – 25 March 1971 | |
Prime Minister | James Chichester-Clark |
Preceded by | William Long |
Succeeded by | Roy Bradford |
Minister of Commerce | |
In office 25 March 1963 – 24 January 1969 | |
Prime Minister | Terence O'Neill |
Preceded by | Jack Andrews |
Succeeded by | Roy Bradford |
Leader of the House of Commons | |
In office 1965 – 7 October 1966 | |
Prime Minister | Terence O'Neill |
Preceded by | Ivan Neill |
Succeeded by | James Chichester-Clark |
Member of the House of Lords Lord Temporal | |
In office 7 February 1977 – 3 March 1977 Life Peerage | |
Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly forSouth Down | |
In office 28 June 1973 – 28 May 1974 | |
Preceded by | New constituency |
Succeeded by | Constituency abolished |
Member of the Northern Ireland Parliament forEast Down | |
In office 19 February 1949 – 30 March 1972 | |
Preceded by | Alexander Gordon |
Succeeded by | Office abolished |
Personal details | |
Born | Arthur Brian Deane Faulkner 18 February 1921 Helen's Bay,Ireland |
Died | 3 March 1977 Saintfield,Northern Ireland | (aged 56)
Nationality | British |
Political party | UUP(until 1974) UPNI(1974–1977) |
Spouse | Lucy Forsythe |
Children | 3 |
Education | St Columba's College |
Alma mater | Queen's University Belfast(dropped out) |
Arthur Brian Deane Faulkner, Baron Faulkner of Downpatrick,PC(18 February 1921 – 3 March 1977), was the sixth and lastPrime Minister of Northern Ireland,from March 1971 until his resignation in March 1972. He was also thechief executiveof the short-livedNorthern Ireland Executiveduring the first half of 1974.
Faulkner was also the leader of theUlster Unionist Party(UUP) from 1971 to 1974.
Early life[edit]
Faulkner was born inHelen's Bay,County Down,Ireland,some 2 months before the creation ofNorthern Ireland.The elder of two sons of James and Nora Faulkner. His younger brother wasColonelSir Dennis Faulkner,CBE VRD UD DL.James Faulkner owned the Belfast Collar Company which traded under the name Faulat. At that time, Faulat was the largest single purpose shirt manufacturer in the world, employing some 3,000 people. He was educated initially at Elm Park preparatory school,Killylea,County Armagh,but at 14 was sent to theChurch of Ireland-affiliatedSt Columba's CollegeatRathfarnhamin Dublin, although Faulkner wasPresbyterian.Faulkner chose St Columba's, preferring to stay in Ireland rather than go to school in England. His best friend at the school wasMichael Yeats,son ofW. B. Yeats.He was the only Prime Minister of Northern Ireland to have been educated in theIrish Free Stateand one of only two to have been educated inIreland.[1]
Faulkner entered theQueen's University of Belfastin 1939 to study law, but, with the advent ofWorld War II,he quit his studies to work full-time in the family shirt-making business.
Early political career[edit]
Faulkner became involved inunionistpolitics, the first of his family to do so, and was elected to theParliament of Northern Irelandas theUlster Unionist PartyMember of Parliament (MP) for the constituency ofEast Downin 1949. His vociferous traditional unionist approach to politics ensured him a prominent backbench position. He was, at the time, the youngest ever MP in the Northern Irish Parliament.[2]He was also the first Chairman of theUlster Young Unionist Councilin 1949.
In 1956 Faulkner was offered and accepted the job of Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Finance, or Government Chief Whip.
Ministerial office[edit]
In 1959, he became Minister of Home Affairs and his handling of security for most of theIrish Republican Army'sBorder Campaignof 1956–62 bolstered his reputation in the eyes of the right wing of Ulster unionism.[citation needed]
WhenTerence O'Neillbecame Prime Minister in 1963 he appointed Faulkner, his chief rival for the job, asMinister of Commerce.Faulkner resigned in 1969 over the technicalities of how and when to bring in the local government reforms which the BritishLabourgovernment was pushing for. This was a factor in the resignation of Terence O'Neill,[citation needed]who resigned as Prime Minister in the aftermath of his failure to achieve a good enough result in the1969 Northern Ireland general election.
In the ensuing leadership contest, Faulkner lost out again when O'Neill gave his casting vote to his cousin,James Chichester-Clark.In 1970, Faulkner became theFather of the House.
Faulkner came back into government asMinister of Developmentunder Chichester-Clark and in a sharp turn-around, began the implementation of the political reforms that were the main cause of his resignation from O'Neill's cabinet.
Chichester-Clark himself resigned in 1971; the political and security situation and the more intensive British interest proving difficult.
Prime Minister[edit]
Promising beginnings[edit]
In March 1971 Faulkner was elected leader of the Ulster Unionist Party and thus became Prime Minister. In his initial innovative approach to government, he gave a non-unionist,David Bleakley,a formerNorthern Ireland Labour PartyMP, a position in his cabinet asMinister for Community Relations.In June 1971, he proposed three new powerful committees at Stormont which would give the opposition salaried chairmanships of two of them.
Initial troubles[edit]
However, this initiative (radical at the time) was soon overtaken by events. The shooting of two Catholic youths inDerryby British soldiers prompted theSDLP,the largest Nationalist party and main opposition to boycott the Stormont parliament. The political climate deteriorated further when, in response to the worsening security situation, and in a move without precedent in the United Kingdom in modern times, Faulknerintroduced internmenton 9 August 1971.[3]This was a disaster; instead of lessening the violence, it caused the situation to worsen.
David Bleakley resigned in September 1971 over internment and Faulkner appointed DrG. B. Newe,a prominent Catholic, as Minister of State in the Cabinet Office. Faulkner's administration staggered on through the rest of 1971, insisting that security was the paramount issue.
In January 1972, an incident occurred during aNorthern Ireland Civil Rights Associationmarch in Derry, during whichparatroopersshot and killed thirteen unarmed civilians. A fourteenth civilian was to die later. What history has come to know asBloody Sundaywas, in essence, the end of Faulkner's government. In March 1972, Faulkner refused to maintain a government without security powers which the British government underEdward Heathdecided to take back. The Stormont parliament was subsequently prorogued (initially for a period of one year) and following the appointment of aSecretary of State for Northern Ireland,William Whitelaw,direct rulewas introduced.
Chief Executive[edit]
In June 1973, elections were held to a new devolved parliament, theNorthern Ireland Assembly.The elections split the UUP. Faulkner became chief executive in a power-sharing executive with the SDLP and the centre-groundAlliance Party,a political alliance cemented at the Sunningdale Conference that year. However, the prominence in theSunningdale Agreementof the cross-borderCouncil of Irelandsuggested that Faulkner had strayed too far ahead of his party. A section of the party had previously broken away to form theVanguard Progressive Unionist Party,which contested the elections in opposition to the UUP.
The power-sharing Executive which he led lasted only six months and was brought down by aloyalistUlster Workers Council Strikein May 1974. Loyalist paramilitary organisations were prominent in intimidating utility workers and blockading roads. The strike had the tacit support of many unionists. In 1974, Faulkner lost the leadership of the UUP to anti-Sunningdale elements led byHarry West.He subsequently resigned from the Ulster Unionist Party and formed theUnionist Party of Northern Ireland.
The UPNI fared badly in theConvention electionsof 1975, winning only five out of the 78 seats contested. Whereas Faulkner had topped the poll inSouth Downin 1973 with over 16,000 votes, he polled just 6,035 votes in 1975 and finished seventh, winning the final seat.[4]In 1976 Faulkner announced that he was quitting active politics. He was elevated to theHouse of Lordsin theNew Year's Honourslist of 1977, being createdBaron Faulkner of Downpatrick,ofDownpatrickin theCounty of Downon 7 February 1977.[5]
Personal life[edit]
Faulkner marriedLucy Forsythe,a graduate ofTrinity College Dublin,in 1951. They met through their common interests in politics and hunting. She was equally suited to a political partnership having had a career in journalism with theBelfast Telegraphand was secretary to the Northern Ireland Prime Minister, SirBasil Brooke,when they met. Together they had three children: a daughter and two sons. They took up residence at Highlands, not far from the village of Seaforde. One of his sons, Michael, has written a memoir,The Blue Cabin(2006) about his move to the family's former holiday house on the island of Islandmore onStrangford Lough.
Brian Faulkner was a member of theApprentice Boys of Derrybut was expelled from the group in 1971.[6]
Faulkner considered himself to be both Irish and British, writing "the Northern Ireland citizen is Irish and British; it is a question of complement, not of conflict" and reacted to theRepublic of Ireland Actby remarking "They have no right to the title Ireland, a name of which we are just as proud as they".[7]
Death[edit]
Lord Faulkner, a keen huntsman, died on 3 March 1977 at the age of 56 following aridingaccident whilsthuntingwith the County Down Staghounds at the Ballyagherty/Station Road junction nearSaintfield,County Down.Faulkner had been riding at full gallop along a narrow country road when his horse slipped. Faulkner was thrown off and killed instantly. He was laid to rest at Magherahamlet Presbyterian Church near Spa in County Down where he had been a regular member of the congregation. Lord Faulkner had retired from active politics and was pursuing his interests in industry at the time of his death. He had recently become a European consultant for theGoodyear Tire and Rubber Company,a company which he proved instrumental in attracting to Northern Ireland during his tenure as Minister of Commerce. His twenty-four-day life peerage was thus the shortest-lived[8]until the death ofLord Heywood of Whitehallin 2018 just nine days after ennoblement, although there have been hereditary peerages, such as that ofLord Leighton,which have been shorter still.
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^John Andrews was educated at RBAI; the others were educated in Scotland, England, and France.
- ^"Ulster Biography".Archived fromthe originalon 2 March 2007.Retrieved9 February2007.
- ^"1971: NI activates internment law".BBC News.9 August 1971.Archivedfrom the original on 9 July 2018.Retrieved5 June2009.
- ^Whyte, Nicholas."South Down 1973–85".ark.ac.uk.Archivedfrom the original on 25 October 2018.Retrieved26 February2008.
- ^"No. 47146".The London Gazette.10 February 1977. p. 1879.
- ^[1]Archived1 May 2009 at theWayback Machine"Who are the Apprentice Boys" -BBC News
- ^Walker, Brian (10 December 2008)."British or Irish – who do you think you are?".Belfast Telegraph.Belfast.Archived fromthe originalon 3 September 2013.Retrieved11 May2021.
- ^"Peerage records".Leigh Rayment's peerage pages.Archived from the original on 22 February 2014.
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:CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
Further reading[edit]
- The Lord Faulkner,Memoirs of a Statesman,Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1978 (An autobiography published posthumously)
- David Bleakley,Faulkner,Mowbrays, London, 1974
- Andrew Boyd,Brian Faulkner and the Crisis of Ulster Unionism,Anvil Books, Tralee, Ireland, 1972.
- The Honourable Michael Faulkner,The Blue Cabin,Blackstaff Press, Belfast, 2006.
- Mark Carruthers,Brian Faulkner 'Soft Hardliner': an assessment of political leadership in a divided society,unpublished MSc thesis Queen's University Belfast (QUB), 1989.
- James P. Condren,Brian Faulkner – Ulster Unionist: The long road to the premiership,PhD thesis, University of Ulster, 2005.
- 1921 births
- 1977 deaths
- Alumni of Queen's University Belfast
- Deaths by horse-riding accident in Ireland
- Downpatrick
- Leaders of the Ulster Unionist Party
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