Basil Brooke [Sir; later Lord Brookborough]

Life
Northern Ireland premier 1943-63; First Viscount of Brookeborough; lived at Ashbrooke, Co. Fermanagh.

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Criticism
W. D. Flackes, The Enduring Premier: Viscount Brookeborough of Colebrook ([s.n.] 1962); Brian Barton, Brookeborough: the Making of a Prime Minister (Belfast: QUB/IIS 1988), 293pp.

See also Carlo Gebler, The Glass Curtain: Inside an Ulster Community (London: Hamish Hamilton/Abacus 1991) [incls. interview with family member anent the ‘Catholic about my own place’ speech, relating that a young family member had been threatened with kidnap by the IRA at the time].

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Quotations
Catholics about [the] place: Speech of 13 July 1933: ‘There are a great number of Protestants and Orangemen who employ Roman Catholics. I feel I can speak freely on this subject as I have not had a Roman Catholic about my own place ... I would appeal to Loyalists, therefore, wherever possible, to employ good Protestant lads and lassies ... I want you to remember one point in regard to the employment of people who are disloyal ... You are disenfranchising yourselves in that way. You people who are employers have the ball at your feet. If you don’t act properly now, before we know where we are we shall find ourselves in the monority instead of the majority.’ (Quoted in Dervla Murphy, A Place Apart, London: Routledge 1978, p.31.)

Catholic employees (not): Basil Brooke ‘had not a Roman Catholic about his place’ and thought that ‘Catholics were endeavouring to get in everywhere and were out with all their force and might to destroy the power and constitution of Ulster. He would appeal therefore, wherever possible, to employ good protestant lads and lassies.’ (Fermanagh Times, 13 July 1933; quoted in John Whyte, Interpreting Northern Ireland (OUP 1990), citing Barton, Brookeborough (1988).

Ulster regionalism [Radio broadcast, Oct. 1945]: ‘There is no disgrace in being provincial. Give me the good blood of a province that has a mind of its own for we here are lavishly endowed with both character and imaginationand the language with which to express them’. (Quoted in Frank Shovlin, The Irish Literary Periodical 1923-1958 (OUP 2003), p.66; ref., Rex Cathcart, The Most Contrary Region: The BBC in Northern Ireland 1924-1984, Blackstaff Press 1984, pp.136-67.) Shovlin comments: ‘Brooke's ‘'we’ referred, of course, to Northern Ireland’s Protestant majority. While there were some reasons to be hopeful about the prospects for a more egalitarian Northern state in the aftermath of the Second World War, there was still much to be concerned about in Stormont's policy-making.’ (Idem.)

Fair is fair: ‘I told them [the Unionist cabinet] that the Convention on Human Rights compelled us to be fair and I insisted that we must be fair to the minority, that I was not going to be responsible for discrimination. If they [...] wanted a government that would discriminate against Roman Catholics I would not take on the job.’ (Diary entry; quoted by Paul Bew in review of Graham Ellison & Jim Smyth, The Crowned Harp: Policing in Northern Ireland (Pluto Press [2000], in Times Literary Supplement, 8 Dec. 2000, p.9.)

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