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Birth of John Bruton, Fine Gael Politician & 10th Taoiseach of Ireland

John Gerard Bruton, Irish Fine Gael politician who serves as Taoiseach from 1994 to 1997 and Leader of Fine Gael from 1990 to 2001, is born to a wealthy, Catholic farming family in Dunboyne, County Meath, on May 18, 1947. He plays a crucial role in advancing the process that leads to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

Bruton is educated at Clongowes Wood College and then goes on to study economics at University College Dublin (UCD), where he receives an honours Bachelor of Arts degree and qualifies as a barrister from King’s Inns, but never goes on to practice law. He joins the Fine Gael party in 1965 and is narrowly elected to Dáil Éireann in the 1969 Irish general election, as a Fine Gael TD for Meath. At the age of 22, he is one of the youngest ever members of the Dáil at the time. He serves as a parliamentary secretary in the government of Liam Cosgrave (1973–77).

Following Fine Gael’s defeat at the 1977 Irish general election, the new leader, Garret FitzGerald, appoints Bruton to the front bench as Spokesperson on Agriculture. He is later promoted as Spokesperson for Finance. He plays a prominent role in Fine Gael’s campaign in the 1981 Irish general election, which results in another coalition with the Labour Party, with FitzGerald as Taoiseach. He receives a personal vote in Meath of nearly 23%, and at the age of only 34 is appointed Minister for Finance, the most senior position in the cabinet. In light of overwhelming economic realities, the government abandons its election promises to cut taxes. The government collapses unexpectedly on the night of January 27, 1982, when Bruton’s budget, that was to impose an unpopular value-added tax (VAT) on children’s shoes, is defeated in the Dáil.

The minority Fianna Fáil government which follows only lasts until November 1982, when Fine Gael once again returns to power in a coalition government with the Labour Party. However, when the new government is formed, Bruton is moved from Finance to become Minister for Industry and Energy. After a reconfiguration of government departments in 1983, he becomes Minister for Industry, Trade, Commerce and Tourism. In a cabinet reshuffle in February 1986, he is appointed again as Minister for Finance. Although he is Minister for Finance, he never presents his budget. The Labour Party withdraws from the government due to a disagreement over his budget proposals leading to the collapse of the government and another election.

Following the 1987 Irish general election, Fine Gael suffers a heavy defeat. Garret FitzGerald resigns as leader immediately, and a leadership contest ensues between Alan Dukes, Peter Barry and Bruton himself, with Dukes being the ultimate victor. Dukes’s term as leader is lackluster and unpopular. The party’s disastrous performance in the 1990 Irish presidential election, in which the party finishes in a humiliating and then unprecedented third in a national election, proves to be the final straw for the party and Dukes is forced to resign as leader shortly thereafter. Bruton, who is the deputy leader of Fine Gael at the time, is unopposed in the ensuing leadership election.

Bruton’s election is seen as offering Fine Gael a chance to rebuild under a far more politically experienced leader. However, his perceived right-wing persona and his rural background are used against him by critics and particularly by the media. However, to the surprise of critics and of conservatives, in his first policy initiative he calls for a referendum on a Constitutional amendment permitting the enactment of legislation allowing for divorce in Ireland.

By the 1992 Irish general election, the anti-Fianna Fáil mood in the country produces a major swing to the opposition, but that support goes to the Labour Party, not Bruton’s Fine Gael, which actually loses a further 10 seats. Even then, it initially appears that Fine Gael is in a position to form a government. However, negotiations stall in part from Labour’s refusal to be part of a coalition which would include the libertarian Progressive Democrats, as well as Bruton’s unwillingness to take Democratic Left into a prospective coalition. The Labour Party breaks off talks with Fine Gael and opts to enter a new coalition with Fianna Fáil.

In late 1994, the government of Fianna Fáil’s Albert Reynolds collapses. Bruton is able to persuade Labour to end its coalition with Fianna Fáil and enter a new coalition government with Fine Gael and Democratic Left. He faces charges of hypocrisy for agreeing to enter government with Democratic Left, as Fine Gael campaigned in the 1992 Irish general election on a promise not to enter government with the party. Nevertheless, on December 15, 1994, aged 47, he becomes the then youngest ever Taoiseach. This is the first time in the history of the state that a new government is installed without a general election being held.

Bruton’s politics are markedly different from most Irish leaders. Whereas most leaders had come from or identified with the independence movement Sinn Féin (in its 1917–22 phase), Bruton identifies more with the more moderate Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) tradition that Sinn Féin had eclipsed at the 1918 Irish general election.

Continued developments in the Northern Ireland peace process and Bruton’s attitude to Anglo-Irish relations come to define his tenure as Taoiseach. In February 1995, he launches the Anglo-Irish “Framework Document” with the British prime minister John Major. It foreshadows the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which, among other things, establishes an elected, power-sharing executive authority to be run by these onetime adversaries, ending 30 years of bloodletting that had claimed more than 3,000 lives. However, he takes a strongly critical position on the British Government‘s reluctance to engage with Sinn Féin during the Irish Republican Army‘s 1994–1997 ceasefire. He also establishes a working relationship with Gerry Adams of Sinn Féin; however, both are mutually distrustful of each other.

Bruton presides over a successful Irish Presidency of the European Union in 1996, and helps finalise the Stability and Growth Pact, which establishes macroeconomic parameters for countries participating in the single European currency, the euro. He is the fifth Irish leader to address a joint session of the United States Congress on September 11, 1996. He presides over the first official visit by a member of the British royal family since 1912, by Charles, Prince of Wales.

The coalition remains in force to contest the 1997 Irish general elections, which are indecisive, and Bruton serves as acting taoiseach until the Dáil convenes in late June and elects a Fianna Fáil–Progressive Democrats government. He retires from Irish politics in 2004 and serves as the European Union Ambassador to the United States (2004–09).

Bruton dies at the age of 76 on February 6, 2024, at the Mater Private Hospital in Dublin, following a long bout with cancer. A state funeral is held on February 10 at St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s Church in Dunboyne.


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The Warrenpoint Ambush

The Warrenpoint ambush, also known as the Narrow Water ambush, the Warrenpoint massacre or the Narrow Water massacre, is a guerrilla attack by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) on August 27, 1979. The IRA’s South Armagh Brigade ambushes a British Army convoy with two large roadside bombs on the A2 road at Narrow Water Castle, just outside Warrenpoint, County Down, Northern Ireland.

The road and castle are on the northern bank of the Newry River, which marks the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The Republic’s side of the river, the Cooley Peninsula in County Louth, is an ideal spot from which to launch an ambush. It is thickly wooded, which gives cover to the ambushers, and the river border prevents British forces from giving chase.

On the afternoon of August 27, a British Army convoy of one Land Rover and two four-ton lorries carrying soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, Parachute Regiment is driving from Ballykinlar Barracks to Newry. The British Army is aware of the dangers of using the stretch of road along the Newry River and often declares it out of bounds. However, they sometimes use it to avoid setting a pattern. At 4:40 p.m., as the convoy is driving past Narrow Water Castle, an 800-pound fertiliser bomb, hidden among bales of straw on a parked flatbed trailer, is detonated by remote control by IRA members watching from across the border in County Louth. The explosion catches the last lorry in the convoy, hurling it onto its side and instantly killing six paratroopers, whose bodies are scattered across the road. There are only two survivors amongst the soldiers traveling in the lorry, both of whom receive serious injuries. The lorry’s driver, Anthony Wood (19), is one of those killed. All that remains of his body is his pelvis, welded to the seat by the fierce heat of the blast.

According to the soldiers, immediately after the blast they are targeted by rifle fire from the woods on the Cooley Peninsula on the other side of the border, with this view supported by two part-time firefighters assisting the wounded. Shortly afterwards, the two IRA members arrested by the Garda Síochána and suspected of being behind the ambush, are found to have traces of gunsmoke residue on their hands and on the motorbike they are riding. The IRA’s first statement on the incident, however, denies that any shots had been fired at the troops, and according to Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) researchers, the soldiers might have mistaken the sound of ammunition cooking off for enemy gunfire. Nevertheless, at the official inquiry the soldiers declare on oath that they had been fired on.

The surviving paratroopers radio for urgent assistance, and reinforcements are dispatched to the scene by road. A rapid reaction unit is sent by Gazelle helicopter, consisting of Lieutenant Colonel David Blair, commanding officer of the Queen’s Own Highlanders, his signaler Lance Corporal Victor MacLeod, and army medics. Another helicopter, a Wessex, lands to pick up the wounded. Colonel Blair assumes command once at the site.

William Hudson, a 29-year-old from London, is killed by the British Army and his cousin Barry Hudson, a 25-year-old native of Dingle, is wounded when shots are fired across the Newry River into the Republic of Ireland about 3 km from the village of Omeath, County Louth.

The pair are partners in ‘Hudson Amusements’ and had been operating their amusements in Omeath for the duration of the Omeath Gala. When the first explosion is heard across the Lough, the pair go down to the shore to see what is unfolding. The pair makes their way to Narrow Water on the southern side of the border to get a better view of what is happening on the northern side. Barry Hudson is shot in the arm and as he falls to the ground he sees his cousin, who is the son of a coachman at Buckingham Palace, fall to the ground, shot in the head. He dies almost immediately.

The IRA had been studying how the British Army behaves after a bombing and correctly predicts that they would set up an incident command point (ICP) at the stone gateway on the other side of the road. At 5:12 p.m., thirty-two minutes after the first explosion, another 800-pound bomb hidden in milk pails explodes at the gateway, destroying it and hurling lumps of granite through the air. It detonates as the Wessex helicopter is taking off carrying wounded soldiers. The helicopter is damaged by the blast but does not crash.

The second explosion kills twelve soldiers, ten from the Parachute Regiment and the two from the Queen’s Own Highlanders. Lieutenant Colonel Blair is the second Lieutenant Colonel to be killed in the Troubles up until then, following Lieutenant Colonel Corden-Lloyd of the 2nd Battalion Royal Green Jackets in 1978. Only one of Colonel Blair’s epaulettes remains to identify him as his body had been vaporised in the blast. The epaulette is taken from the scene by Brigadier David Thorne to a security briefing with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to “illustrate the human factor” of the attack. Mike Jackson, then a major in the Parachute Regiment, is at the scene soon after the second explosion and later describes seeing human remains scattered over the road, in the water and hanging from the trees. He is asked to identify the face of his friend, Major Peter Fursman, still recognisable after it had been ripped from his head by the explosion and recovered from the water by divers from the Royal Engineers.

Press photographer Peter Molloy, who arrives at the scene after the first explosion, comes close to being shot by an angry paratrooper who sees him taking photographs of the dead and dying instead of offering to help the wounded. The soldier is tackled by his comrades. Molloy says, “I was shouted at and called all sorts of things, but I understood why. I had trespassed on the worst day of these fellas’ lives and taken pictures of it.”

The Warrenpoint ambush is a victory for the IRA. It is the deadliest attack on the British Army during the Troubles and the Parachute Regiment’s biggest loss since World War II, with sixteen paratroopers killed. General Sir James Glover, Commander of British forces in Northern Ireland, later says it was “arguably the most successful and certainly one of the best planned IRA attacks of the whole campaign.” The ambush happens on the same day that Lord Mountbatten, a prominent member of the British royal family, is killed by an IRA bomb aboard his boat at Mullaghmore, County Sligo, along with three others.

Republicans portray the attack as retaliation for Bloody Sunday in 1972 when the Parachute Regiment shot dead 13 unarmed civilians during a protest march in Derry. Graffiti appears in republican areas declaring “13 gone and not forgotten, we got 18 and Mountbatten.” The day after the Mountbatten and Warrenpoint attacks, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) retaliates by shooting dead a Catholic man, John Patrick Hardy (43), at his home in Belfast‘s New Lodge estate. Hardy is targeted in the mistaken belief that he is an IRA member.

Very shortly after the ambush, IRA volunteers Brendan Burns and Joe Brennan are arrested by the Gardaí. They are stopped while riding a motorbike on a road opposite Narrow Water Castle. They are later released on bail due to lack of evidence. Burns dies in 1988 when a bomb he is handling explodes prematurely. In 1998, former IRA member Eamon Collins claims that Burns had been one of those who carried out the Warrenpoint ambush. No one has ever been criminally charged.

According to Toby Harnden, the attack “drove a wedge” between the Army and the RUC. Lieutenant General Sir Timothy Creasey, General Officer Commanding Northern Ireland, suggests to Margaret Thatcher that internment should be brought back and that liaison with the Gardaí should be left in the hands of the military. Sir Kenneth Newman, the RUC Chief Constable, claims instead that the British Army practice since 1975 of supplying their garrisons in south County Armagh by helicopter gives too much freedom of movement to the IRA. One result is the appointment of Sir Maurice Oldfield to a new position of Co-ordinator of Security Intelligence in Northern Ireland. His role is to co-ordinate intelligence between the military, MI5 and the RUC. Another is the expansion of the RUC by 1,000 members. Tim Pat Coogan asserts that the deaths of the 18 soldiers hastens the move to Ulsterisation.

Lieutenant Colonel Blair is remembered on a memorial at Radley College, Oxfordshire.