Currie becomes a key figure in Northern Ireland’s civil rights movement. On June 20, 1968, he famously occupies a council house in Caledon, County Tyrone, in protest of housing discrimination that favors Protestants over Catholic families. This act of civil disobedience helps catalyze the first major civil rights marches in Northern Ireland, including the August 24, 1968, Dungannon march, and highlights systemic inequalities in housing and public services.
At age 24, Currie was elected as a Nationalist PartyMP for East Tyrone in the Parliament of Northern Ireland in 1964, becoming one of its youngest members. He retains this seat in subsequent elections until the suspension of the Parliament in 1972. In 1970, he co-founds the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) with figures like John Hume and Gerry Fitt, promoting constitutional nationalism, social democracy, and cross-community cooperation. He serves as SDLP Chief Whip and briefly as Minister for Housing, Local Government, and Planning in the short-lived 1974 Northern Ireland Executive, which collapses amid unionist opposition and a strike by the Ulster Workers’ Council. Despite numerous attacks on his home and assaults on his family during the Troubles, he maintains a commitment to non-violent politics and cross-community dialogue.
After relocating to County Kildare due to the threats and violence in Northern Ireland, Currie joins the Fine Gael party in 1989. He is elected as Teachta Dála (TD) for Dublin West, serving from 1989 to 2002. In 1990, he runs for the Irish presidency, receiving approximately 17% of first-preference votes and being eliminated in the first count, leading to Mary Robinson winning as Ireland’s first female president. From 1994 to 1997, he is appointed Minister of State responsible for Children’s Rights, becoming the first Irish government minister with dedicated responsibilities for children.
Currie marries Annita Lynch in 1968, with whom he has five children, including Emer Currie, who is elected to the Dáil in the same constituency in 2024. He endures multiple threats and attacks during the Troubles, reflecting his dedication to confronting sectarian violence and discrimination. He continues to campaign for civil rights and justice for victims of the Troubles even after retiring from electoral politics in 2002. He publishes an autobiography, All Hell Will Break Loose, in 2004, detailing his political life and experiences.
Currie dies on November 9, 2021, at his residence in Derrymullen, County Kildare, at the age of 82. He is buried at St. Malachy Church Graveyard in Dungannon, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. He is remembered as a courageous advocate for civil rights, a co-founder of the SDLP, and a pioneering politician in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
The Treaty’s Article 12 provides for the commission if Northern Ireland chooses to secede. Its role is to review the provisional border set by the 1920 Act, recommend adjustments based on political majorities in border areas and produce a final, legally binding boundary between the Free State and Northern Ireland.
The commission is to be jointly nominated by the United Kingdom, the Irish Free State, and Northern Ireland governments. When Northern Ireland refuses to cooperate, the British government appoints a Belfast Unionist newspaper editor, Joseph R. Fisher, to represent Northern interests.
The commission’s 1924–25 report recommends relatively small territorial transfers in both directions, contrary to nationalist expectations. The findings are leaked in 1925, causing protests from both unionists and nationalists. To avoid further disputes, the three governments agree to suppress the report and instead confirm the existing 1920 border on December 3, 1925, with the border fixed in law.
Lloyd George’s proposal reflects a pragmatic British approach: using a neutral commission to manage the sensitive issue of partition and prevent further conflict. While the commission’s recommendations are not implemented, the process helps formalize the border that remains in place until the 1960s, shaping the political and sectarian divide in Ireland for decades.
The protest is a direct response to the Caledon Protest just two months earlier, when Member of the Parliament of Northern IrelandAustin Currie “squats” in a house allocated by the Dungannon Rural District Council to a single, childless Protestant woman employed by a Unionistpolitician. The house has been given ahead of older married Catholic families with children, highlighting systemic housing discrimination. NICRA’s broader goals include ending gerrymandering, securing a universal franchise, and repealing discriminatory laws.
Around 2,000 people participate in the march, including men, women, and children, carrying banners and holding signs. The march is modeled on civil rights marches in the United States, using nonviolent direct action such as marches and sit‑ins. The atmosphere is initially described as a “holiday” by some participants, with a festive mood until police intervention.
As the march approaches Dungannon’s Market Square, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) orders a ban on entry and a meeting there. Behind the RUC line are 1,500 loyalists armed with cudgels and staves. The anti-civil rights countermarch has been organized by the Ulster Protestant Volunteers (UPV) with the help of the Rev. Ian Paisley. Confronted with this massive force, the civil rights marchers merely sit down and listen to a number of speeches, while Paisley and his followers sing sectarian songs and shout abuse from behind the RUC barricades. Police separate the two groups, preventing direct confrontation. On this day, the civil rights marchers escape harm but very soon all that would change.
Paisley rapidly makes a name for himself among hard-line loyalist groups. He later helps form a loyalist paramilitary group, the Ulster Defense Association (UDA). In the near future, his followers use their cudgels and staves in the streets of the six counties in an attempt to physically beat back the rising tide of the civil rights movement. The cycle of violence in the six counties rapidly spins out of control, and Paisley is one of the individuals driving the surge of violence.
While the march is peaceful and well‑attended, it does not immediately lead to policy changes. It, however, is a pivotal moment in the Northern Ireland civil rights movement, raising national attention to housing discrimination and galvanising further protests, including a later demonstration at DerryGuildhall.
This event is remembered as a symbol of early, nonviolent resistance in Northern Ireland’s struggle for civil and political equality.
(Pictured: The first civil rights procession from Coalisland to Dungannon on August 24, 1968. Photo credit: Belfast Telegraph)
The train is returning from Belfast, where King George V has just opened the first Parliament of Northern Ireland on June 22. It is part of a heavy security escort for the King, including the 10th Royal Hussars (machine gun troop) and their horses, who have been stationed at the Curragh in County Meath. Three special trains have been arranged to bring them back to Dublin, but the third is attacked.
The IRA plants a mine or detonates a bomb that partially derails the train a mile north of Adavoyle Station, between Newry and Dundalk. The derailment causes ten carriages to be thrown across an embankment, killing and injuring many soldiers and horses.
At least three British soldiers are killed (including a sergeant and a private) and twenty are wounded, some of whom later die from their injuries. The train guard, Frank Gallagher, is killed and two other railway officials are seriously injured. Reports vary about the number of horses killed. Some say over 40 horses are killed while others claim as many as 100. Many horses are shot to prevent them from being captured or causing further casualties. Soldiers reportedly weep for their dead horses, as they had served together in World War I. A local farmer and a train guard are also shot dead in the aftermath.
The attack causes an outcry in Britain, highlighting the IRA’s ability to strike high-profile military convoys. The incident underscores the vulnerability of British forces returning from political events in Ireland and is one of several such attacks during the War of Independence.
The Adavoyle ambush is remembered as a symbolic and brutal act in the conflict, combining military casualties with the killing of animals that have been comrades in war. It also illustrates the IRA’s use of railways as a strategic target during the campaign.
Today, the Adavoyle railway station is in ruins, though the Belfast-Dublin line still passes the site.
Currie becomes an active member in the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA). He later speaks about the effect of partition on Catholics in Northern Ireland: “Partition was used to try to cut us off from the rest of the Irish nation. Unionists did their best to stamp out our nationalism and, the educational system, to the extent it could organise it, was oriented to Britain and we were not even allowed to use names such as Séamus or Seán. When my brothers’ godparents went to register their birth, they were told no such names as Séamus or Seán existed in Northern Ireland and were asked for the English equivalent.”
Currie contests the 1979 United Kingdom general election and 1986 by-election in the Fermanagh and South Tyrone seat, but is unsuccessful on both attempts. He also is elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly in 1982 for the same seat. That Assembly, which is an attempt by the Government of the United Kingdom to reintroduce devolved power-sharing, collapses in 1986 without executive ministerial functions ever being transferred to it from the UK Secretary of State for Northern Ireland as no political agreement can be reached on power-sharing between the parties owing to nationalists abstentionism over the constituency boundaries used to elect members, and unionist opposition to the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985.
Following his decision to quit Northern Ireland politics, and relocate his family to County Kildare, Currie becomes actively involved in politics in the Republic of Ireland. Partly due to his long-standing doubts about the commitment of politicians in the Republic to the plight of northern nationalists, he join the Fine Gael party in 1989. He is elected as a Fine Gael TD for Dublin West at the 1989 Irish general election.
In 1990, Fine Gael selects Currie as their candidate for the 1990 Irish presidential election, running against Tánaiste and Fianna Fáil TD, Brian Lenihan Sr, and Senator Mary Robinson for the Labour Party. The 1990 election is the first contested election for the Irish Presidency in 17 years. Currie receives 267,902 first-preference votes (approximately 17%) and is eliminated on the first count. The distribution of his votes sees Mary Robinson elected as Ireland’s first female president on the second count, beating Lenihan by more than 86,000 votes.
In his 2004 autobiography All Hell will Break Loose, Currie writes about his experience of running in the presidential election, and the prejudice he faced as a nationalist from Ulster in southern politics: “What annoyed, indeed angered me most was the suggestion that because I came from the North, I was not a real Irishman … what I called the partitionist mentality … [during the election campaign] the [then Fianna Fáil] Minister for Justice [Ray Burke] said Fine Gael leader Alan Dukes ‘had to go to Tyrone to find a candidate for the presidency’ … it was hard to take, particularly from so-called republicans.”
Following his defeat in the presidential election, Currie holds his Dáil seat in Dublin West at the 1992 and 1997 Irish general elections. Following the formation of the so-called Rainbow Coalition between Fine Gael, Labour and Democratic Left, on December 20, 1994, newly appointed TaoiseachJohn Bruton appoints him as a Minister of State with responsibility for Children’s Rights at the Departments of Health, Education and Justice, becoming the first ever minister in an Irish Government with dedicated responsibility for children. He holds this post until the appointment of a new Irish Government on June 26, 1997, following the 1997 Irish general election.
At the 2002 Irish general election Currie contests the new constituency of Dublin Mid-West, and fails to be elected. He immediately announces his retirement from electoral politics. He continues to speak and campaign for civil rights across the island of Ireland and for causes he believes in, such as justice for the families of the Disappeared during the Troubles. He and his wife and family are personal friends of the family of one of the Disappeared, Columba McVeigh, from Donaghmore, County Tyrone. His daughter Emer Currie is elected in his former constituency of Dublin West at the 2024 Irish general election.
Following the deaths of Seamus Mallon and John Hume in January and August 2020 respectively, Currie becomes the last surviving founder of the SDLP.
Currie dies on November 9, 2021, at the age of 82 at his residence in Derrymullen, County Kildare. Following an initial funeral mass in Allentown, County Kildare, his remains are transferred to his original family home in Edendork, near Dungannon, County Tyrone, where a second funeral mass was celebrated at St. Malachy’s Church, Edendork. He is buried alongside his parents in the cemetery adjoining the church.
Twaddell’s death precipitates a clamp-down on the IRA in Northern Ireland and 350 IRA members are interned. Seamus Woods, who is interned on HMS Argenta during the clampdown, is charged with his murder. Woods, who had joined the Irish National Army, is trying to control irregular elements within the IRA. By agreement with the government of Northern Ireland, two officers of the Irish National Army are given permission to travel to the trial. General J. J. “Ginger” O’Connell and Commandant Charles McAlister give evidence and Woods is found not guilty. A total of 724 people are interned in Northern Ireland up to the end of 1924.
Twaddell was buried at Drumcree Church cemetery, Portadown, County Armagh, Northern Ireland, where his headstone says that he was “foully murdered in Belfast.”
MacNeill is one of five children born to Archibald McNeill, a Roman Catholic working-class baker, sailor and merchant, and his wife, Rosetta McNeill (née McAuley), also a Catholic. He is raised in Glenarm, an area which “still retained some Irish-language traditions.” His niece is nationalist and teacher, Máirín Beaumont.
MacNeill marries Agnes Moore on April 19, 1898. The couple has eight children, four sons and four daughters (though the 1911 census entry for MacNeill notes eleven children, seven of whom are still alive).
The Gaelic League is from the start strictly non-political, but in 1915, a proposal is put forward to abandon that policy and become a semi-political organisation. MacNeill strongly supports this and rallies to his side a majority of delegates at the 1915 Oireachtas. Douglas Hyde, a non-political Protestant, who had co-founded the League and been its president for 22 years, resigns immediately afterward.
Through the Gaelic League, MacNeill meets members of Sinn Féin, the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), and other nationalists and republicans. One such colleague, The O’Rahilly, runs the league’s newspaper An Claidheamh Soluis, and in October 1913 asks MacNeill to write an editorial for it on a subject broader than Irish language issues. He submits a piece called “The North Began,” encouraging the formation of a nationalist volunteer force committed to Irish Home Rule, much as the unionists had done earlier in the year with the Ulster Volunteers to thwart Home Rule in Ireland. In July 1915, he comments on the threat that the unarmed nationalists in Ulster might face: “…a demented…English driven Orange Army would be let loose upon the helpless Catholic people of Ulster, who would be driven out of the province or massacred where they stood.”
Bulmer Hobson, a member of the IRB, approaches MacNeill about bringing the idea to fruition, and, through a series of meetings, MacNeill becomes chair of the council that forms the Irish Volunteers, later becoming its chief of staff. Unlike the IRB, he is opposed to the idea of an armed rebellion, except in resisting any suppression of the Volunteers, seeing little hope of success in open battle against the British army.
The Irish Volunteers have been infiltrated by the Irish Republican Brotherhood, which plan on using the organisation to stage an armed rebellion, to separate Ireland from the United Kingdom and establishing an Irish Republic. The entry of the UK into World War I is, in their view, a perfect opportunity to do that. With the cooperation of James Connolly and the Irish Citizen Army, a secret council of IRB officials plan a general rising at Easter 1916. On the Wednesday before Easter, they present MacNeill with a letter, allegedly stolen from high-ranking British staff in Dublin Castle, indicating that the British are going to arrest him and all the other nationalist leaders. Unbeknownst to MacNeill, the letter—called the Castle Document—is a forgery.
When MacNeill learns about the IRB’s plans, and when he is informed that Roger Casement is about to land in County Kerry with a shipment of German arms, he is reluctantly persuaded to go along with them, believing British action is now imminent and that mobilization of the Irish Volunteers will be justified as a defensive act. However, after learning that the German arms shipment has been intercepted and Casement arrested, and having confronted Patrick Pearse, who refuses to relent, MacNeill countermands the order for the Rising by sending written messages to leaders around the country, and placing a notice in the Sunday Independent cancelling the planned “manoeuvres.” This greatly reduces the number of volunteers who report for duty on the day of the Easter Rising.
Pearse, Connolly and the others agree that the uprising will go ahead anyway, but it begins one day later than originally intended to ensure that the authorities are taken by surprise. Beginning on Easter Monday, April 24, 1916, the Rising lasts less than a week. After the surrender of the rebels, MacNeill is arrested although he has taken no part in the insurrection. The rebel leader Tom Clarke, according to his wife Kathleen, warns her on the day before his execution, “I want you to see to it that our people know of his treachery to us. He must never be allowed back into the National life of this country, for so sure as he is, so sure will he act treacherously in a crisis. He is a weak man, but I know every effort will be made to whitewash him.”
In 1923, MacNeill, a committed internationalist, is also a key member of the diplomatic team that oversees Ireland’s entry to the League of Nations.
MacNeill’s family is split on the treaty issue. One son, Brian, takes the anti-Treaty side and is killed in disputed circumstances near Sligo by Free State troops during the Irish Civil War in September 1922. Two other sons, Niall and Turloch, as well as nephew Hugo MacNeill, serve as officers in the Free State Army. One of his brothers, James McNeill, is the second and penultimate Governor-General of the Irish Free State.
In 1924, the three-man Irish Boundary Commission is set up to settle the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State. MacNeill represents the Irish Free State. He is the only member of the Commission without legal training and has been described as being “pathetically out of his depth.” However, each of the Commissioners is selected out of political expediency rather than for any established competence or insight into boundary making. On November 7, 1925, a conservative British newspaper, The Morning Post, publishes a leaked map showing a part of eastern County Donegal (mainly The Laggan district) that is to be transferred to Northern Ireland, the opposite of the main aims of the commission. Perhaps embarrassed by that, especially since he said that it had declined to respect the terms of the Treaty, MacNeill resigns from the commission on November 20. Hus performance in the Boundary Commission has been deemed highly negative in a 2025 study The Root of All Evil: The Irish Boundary Commission.
On November 24, 1925, MacNeill also resign as Minister for Education, a position unrelated to his work on the commission.
On December 3, 1925, the Free State government agrees with the governments in London and Belfast to end its onerous treaty requirement to pay its share of the United Kingdom’s “imperial debt” and, in exchange, agrees that the 1920 boundary will remain as it is, overriding the commission. This angers many nationalists and MacNeill is the subject of much criticism, but in reality, he and the commission have been sidestepped by the intergovernmental debt renegotiation. In any case, despite his resignations, the intergovernmental boundary deal is approved by a Dáil vote of 71–20 on December 10, 1925, and MacNeill is listed as voting with the majority in favour. He loses his Dáil seat at the June 1927 Irish general election.
MacNeill is an important scholar of Irish history and among the first to study Early Irish law, offering both his interpretations, which at times are coloured by his nationalism, and translations into English. He is also the first to uncover the nature of succession in Irish kingship, and his theories are the foundation for modern ideas on the subject.
MacNeill is a contributor to the Royal Irish Academy‘s Clare Island Survey, recording the Irish place names of the island. His disagreements and disputes with Goddard Henry Orpen, particularly over the latter’s book Ireland under the Normans, generate controversy.
MacNeill retires from politics completely and becomes Chair of the Irish Manuscripts Commission. In his later years he devotes his life to scholarship and publishes several books on Irish history. He dies in Dublin of natural causes, aged 78, on October 15, 1945. He is buried in Kilbarrack Cemetery.
John William Nixon, MBE, a unionistpolitician and police leader in Northern Ireland, dies on May 11, 1949, at his home in Woodvale House, Ballygomartin Road, Belfast. He is allegedly responsible for several sectarian atrocities, including the McMahon killings and the Arnon Street killings. Eyewitnesses to the Arnon street killings claim they can identify the police involved and allege that their leader is District Inspector Nixon. It is widely believed that Nixon’s “murder gang” within the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) hunted down and murdered Catholics as reprisals for the killing of police.
Nixon is born on June 1, 1877, in Graddum, a townland located between the village of Kilnaleck and the hamlet of Crosskeys in County Cavan. He becomes a district inspector in the RIC, and transfers to its successor in the newly created region of Northern Ireland, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). By 1922, he is responsible for controlling access to the Roman Catholic Ardoyne and Marrowbone areas of Belfast, and works closely with the Ulster Special Constabulary (USC).
Irish nationalist writer and activist Michael Farrell alleges that during this period Nixon leads the Cromwell Club, an unofficial organisation of security officials responsible for killing several Catholic civilians. These allegations are not independently confirmed and during his lifetime Nixon successfully sues the Derry Journal and a book publisher for libel. He is appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 1923 “… for services rendered by him during the troubled period.”
In 1924, Nixon, long a member of the Orange Order, makes a political speech at an Orange lodge. This contravenes RUC regulations, and he is dismissed on the orders of Sir James Craig, the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland.
Nixon holds his seat until his death on May 11, 1949, at home in Woodvale House, Ballygomartin Road, Belfast. He denies the murder allegations against him until the end of his life.
(Pictured: Captain John William Nixon (right) with Northern Ireland Prime Minister James Craig and Colonel Spencer, attending a conference with Michael Collins at City Hall, Dublin in February 1922)
Shillington originally plans to join the Northern Ireland Civil Service, however he wants a more varied career. He joins the Royal Ulster Constabulary on February 8, 1933, as a cadet officer. He completes his training at the Newtownards depot in County Down. He is promoted to district inspector in 1935, and serves as officer in charge of D District in Belfast. In 1944, he is promoted to 1st Class District Inspector and is posted to Derry, County Londonderry.
In 1953, after nine years in Derry, Shillington is promoted to County Inspector and returns to Belfast. There, he joins the Inspector General’s Headquarters and serves in an administrative post. On January 16, 1961, he is appointed Commissioner of Belfast City.
In 1969, Shillington is appointed Deputy Inspector-General of the RUC, as second-in-command to the Inspector-General, Anthony Peacocke, who, like Shillington, had been educated at Sedbergh and Cambridge. When the Battle of the Bogside breaks out in Derry in August 1969, he requests permission to use CS gas for the first time in the United Kingdom. When that does not halt the rioting, he requests that the British Army be brought in. He telephones Peacocke on August 13 in order to persuade him of this. Peacocke, who has long denied the need for army involvement, eventually agrees, but his reputation never recovers and following the publication of the Hunt Report in October he resigns as Inspector-General.
Shortly thereafter, Sir Arthur Young is seconded from the City of London Police to be the last Inspector-General and the first Chief Constable of the RUC. James Callaghan, then Home Secretary, sends him to implement the Hunt Report. Young’s measures introduce the standard British rank system for police officers in Northern Ireland and disbands the Ulster Special Constabulary (USC). Shillington remains as Young’s deputy, and when the latter returns to the mainland in 1970 he succeeds him to become the RUC’s second Chief Constable.
Shillington marries Mary (Peggy) Bulloch in 1935. They have two sons and a daughter. He dies on August 14, 2001, at the age of 90, in a County Armagh nursing home.
In 1924, James Clark Snr. changes the family name to Chichester-Clark by deed poll, thus preventing the old Protestant Ascendancy name Chichester, his wife’s maiden name, from dying out. On his mother’s side the family are descended from the Donegall Chichesters and are the heirs of the Dawsons of Castledawson, who had originally held Moyola Park.
Chichester-Clark marries widow Moyra Haughton (née Morris) in 1959. Lady Moyola’s first husband, Capt. Thomas Haughton from Cullybackey, had been killed in the RAF Nutts Corner air crash in January 1953. She, while pregnant, is seriously injured in the crash and suffers a broken neck. He and his wife have two daughters (Tara and Fiona), in addition to Moyra’s son Michael from her previous marriage. Lady Moyola is a cousin of Colonel Sir Michael McCorkell, Lord Lieutenant of County Londonderry (1975–2000). Chichester-Clark serves as his Vice Lord-Lieutenant.
Chichester-Clark is an officer in the 1st Battalion, Irish Guards, part of 24th Infantry Brigade attached to British 1st Infantry Division, and participates briefly in the Anzio landings. He is injured on February 23, 1944, by an 88m shell as he and his Platoon Sergeant take their first look at the ground in the “gullies” to the west of the Anzio–Albano Laziale road. His company is all but wiped out, and he spends most of the war in hospital recovering from injuries, the effects of which stay with him throughout his life.
Following the war, Chichester-Clark’s military career takes him from the dull duties of the post-war occupation of Germany, to Canada as aide-de-camp to Harold Alexander, 1st Earl Alexander of Tunis, then Governor General of Canada. The popularity and competence of his senior officer makes this uneventful two-year period of his life the most remarkable element of his pre-parliamentary career. On returning from Canada, he continues in the Army for several years, refusing promotion to seniority before retiring a major in 1960.
In an uncontested by-election in 1960, Chichester-Clark takes over the South Londonderry seat in the Northern Ireland Parliament that had been held by his grandmother, Dame Dehra Parker, since 1933. As Dehra Chichester, she is an MP for the county of Londonderry until 1929 when she stands down for a first time. Chichester-Clark’s father replaces her in 1929 when the county is split, but he suddenly dies in 1933. Dehra, by then remarried, willingly returns to Northern Ireland from England, and wins the ensuing by-election.
Chichester-Clark retains the seat for the remainder of the Parliament’s existence, and so the South Londonderry area is represented by three generations of the same family for the entire period of the Northern Ireland House of Commons. Between 1929 and the last election in 1969, the family is challenged for the seat on only two occasions, the second being in 1969, when future Westminster MP Bernadette Devlin stands, attracting 39% of the vote.
Chichester-Clark makes his maiden speech on February 8, 1961, during the Queen’s speech debate.
For the remainder of Basil Brooke, 1st Viscount Brookeborough‘s premiership, Chichester-Clark remains on the back benches. It is not until 1963, when Terence O’Neill becomes Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, that he is appointed assistant whip, and a month later when William Craig is promoted to the Ministry of Home Affairs, he takes over as Government Chief Whip. Accounts of the period are that he enjoys the Whip’s office more than any other he is to subsequently hold in politics. This despite including references to anti O’Neill MP and future Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) Westminster MP, John McQuade, and the occasional “good row.” From the outset, O’Neill takes the unusual decision to allow Chichester-Clark to attend and speak at all cabinet meetings while Chief Whip. Proving a competent parliamentary party administrator, O’Neill adds Leader of the House of Commons to Chichester-Clark’s duties in October 1966, a promotion that makes him a full member of the Cabinet. He is also sworn into the Privy Council of Northern Ireland in 1966.
In 1967, O’Neill sacks his Minister of Agriculture, Harry West, for ministerial impropriety, and Chichester-Clark is appointed in his place, a position he retains for two quiet years. On April 23, 1969, he resigns from the Cabinet one day prior to a crucial Parliamentary Party meeting, claiming that he disagrees with the Prime Minister’s decision to grant universal suffrage in local government elections at that time. He states that he disagrees not with the principle of one man one vote but with the timing of the decision, having the previous day expressed doubts over the expediency of the measure in Cabinet. It has since been suggested that his resignation was in order to accelerate O’Neill’s own resignation, and to improve his own position in the jostling to succeed him.
O’Neill “finally walked away” five days later on April 28, 1969. In order to beat his only serious rival, Brian Faulkner, Chichester-Clark needs the backing of O’Neill-ite MPs elected at the 1969 Northern Ireland general election, to which end he attends a tea party in O’Neill’s honour only days after causing his resignation.
Chichester-Clark beats Faulkner in the 1969 Ulster Unionist Party leadership election by one vote on May 1, 1969, with his predecessor using his casting vote in the tied election for his distant cousin because “Faulkner had been stabbing him in the back for a lot longer.” Although Faulkner believes, until his death, that he is the victim of an upper-class conspiracy to deny him the premiership, he becomes a high profile and loyal member of Chichester-Clark’s cabinet.
Chichester-Clark’s premiership is punctuated by civil unrest that erupts after August 1969. He suffers from the effects of the Hunt Report, which recommends the disbandment of the Ulster Special Constabulary, which his Government accepts to the consternation of many Unionists.
In April 1970, Chichester-Clark’s predecessor and another Unionist MP resign their seats in the Northern Ireland House of Commons. The by-election campaigns are punctuated by major liberal speeches by senior government figures like Brian Faulkner, Jack Andrews and the Prime Minister himself. Ian Paisley‘s Protestant Unionist Party (PUP), however, takes both seats in the House of Commons. Later that same month the O’Neill-ite group, the New Ulster Movement, becomes the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, and his party begins passing votes of no confidence in him.
As the civil unrest grows, the British Government, particularly the Home Secretary, James Callaghan, becomes increasingly involved in Northern Ireland’s affairs, forcing Chichester-Clark’s hand on many issues. These include the disbanding of the “B” Specials of the Ulster Special Constabulary and, importantly, the handing over of operational control of the security forces to the British ArmyGeneral Officer Commanding Northern Ireland.
On March 9, 1971, the Provisional Irish Republican Army lures three off-duty soldiers from a pub in Belfast to a lane way outside the city, where they kill them. Chichester-Clark flies to London on March 18, 1971, to request a new security initiative from the new British prime ministerEdward Heath, who offers an extra 1,300 troops, and resists what he sees as an attempt by Chichester-Clark to gain political control over them. Chichester-Clark resigns on March 20.
On March 23, 1971, Brian Faulkner is elected UUP leader in a vote by Unionist MP’s, defeating William Craig by twenty-six votes to four. He is appointed prime minister the same day.
On July 20, 1971, Chichester-Clark is created a life peer as Baron Moyola, of Castledawson in the County of Londonderry, his title taken from the name of his family’s estate. He endorses the Good Friday Agreement in the 1998 Northern Ireland Good Friday Agreement referendum. He remains quiet about his political career in his retirement. Lady Moyola, however, says that her husband does enjoy the time – contrary to popular opinion – and that he thinks of life as an MP as akin to that of an army welfare officer.
Chichester Clark dies on May 17, 2002, at the age of 79, following a short illness. His funeral takes place at Christ Church in Castledawson on May 21. He is the last surviving Prime Minister of Northern Ireland.
