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Life
1914-1990 [Terence Marne O’Neill; Baron O’Neill of the Maine); b. 10 Sept. 1914, ison of Rt. Hon. Arthur O’Neill; grew up in Ennismore Gdns., Hyde Park, London; educ. Winchester College and Eton; served in a tank regiment in WWII after Sandhurst, losing both of his brothers in the war; moved to Ahoghill, Co. Antrim, N. Ireland; elected for Bannside and served as junior minister and High Sheriff of Antrim, 11953; Min. of Home Affairs, 1956, and Min. of Finance later in that year; served as Prime Minister of Northern Ireland and leader of the Unionist Party, 25 March 1963 to 1 May 1969, succeeding Basil Brooke who resigned through illness (23 March 1963); embarked on economic modernisation faced with imminent EU membership and a deficit of economic support from Westminister; authorised the development of Craigavon, centred on Goodyear tyre factory and opposed the British Labour Party in Northern Ireland;
engaged in parleys with Sean Lemass and agreed a meeting - occasioning the first cross-border state visit of a minister of the Irish Republic, Jan. 1965; reciprocated with a visit to Dublin, Feb. 1865; undertook similar exchange visits with Jack Lynch in 1968; met NI Civil Rights Association marches and police attacks with a 5-point Reform Plan, excluding one-man-one-vote (the vote was confined to those with titles or leases on houses); called snap election and lost Stormont majority and nearly lost his own seat; resigned 18 April 1969, faced with determined Loyalist resistance to his liberalising policy led by Ian Paisley; created Baron and life peer, Jan. 1970; settled in Lymington, Hampshire; considered languid and effete by more recalcitrant elements in Unionism; author of a political autobiography (1972); d. of cancer at home, 12 June 1990; survived by his wife Katherine Jean [nee Whitaker] and their two children; the broadcaster Bamber Gascoigne is a son-in-law.
Criticism
Marc Mulholland, Terence O’Neill (UCD Press 2014), 118pp. [see review by Any Pollak in Dublin Review of Books 16 June 2014 [online].
Quotations
Autobiography (1972): ‘We have a people genuinely trying to be helpful who advocate a kind of reciprocal emasculation. No national anthem or loyal toast to offend one side; no outward signs or symbols of Nationalism to offend the other. This approach, too, I believe to be misconceived. It is rather like trying to solve the colour problem by spraying everyone a pale shade of brown.’ (Terence O’Neill, Autobiography, 1972, q.p.; cited in Dominic Murray, Worlds Apart: Segregated Schools in Northern Ireland, Appletree Press 1985, p.125.)
Christian politics: ‘We could have enriched our politics with our Christianity; but far too often we have debased our Christianity with our politics.’ (Farewell words on television; 29th April 1969; cited in Calton Younger, A State of Disunion, 1972.) Further: ‘Any leader who wants to follow a course of change can only go so far. For change is an uncomfortable thing to many people, and inevitably one builds up a barrier of resentment and resistance which can make further progress impossible.’ (Ibid., p.9.)
Explaining NI: ‘It is frightfully hard to explain to Protestants that if you give Roman Catholics a good job and a good house they will live like Protestants because they will see neighbours with cars and television sets; they will refuse to have eighteen children. But if a Roman Catholic is jobless, and lives in the most ghastly hovel he will rear eighteen children on National Assistance. If you treat Roman Catholics with due consideration and kindness they will live like Protestants in spite of the authoritative nature of their Church’. (Interview with Belfast Telegraph, 10 May 1969; quoted in Wikipedia - online.)
Eating his words : ‘I consider that Mr Lemass’s remarks in Washington, and the tailpiece to those remarks in Dublin, have wiped out all the remarks which he made in Tralee in July ... I am sorry that Mr. Lemass should eat his own words so quickly, but I think we must let the matter rest there. We have gone around in a circle, but I hope we have gone around without Northern Ireland being pictured in Britain and America as ignorant, as refusing the hand of friendship, as being unwilling to co-operate, and all the other things of which we have been previously accused.’ (The Irish Times, 8 Nov. 1963; rep. in Irish Times 19 Dec. 2009, Weekend Review, p.14; see further under Sean Lemass, supra.)
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