Faulkner, Brian

Faulkner, Brian (1921–77), Lord Faulkner of Downpatrick, Unionist politician. The son of a wealthy shirt manufacturer, he was elected to Stormont in 1949. As minister for home affairs 1959–63 he dealt effectively with the IRA border campaign Operation Harvest. He was a highly energetic minister of commerce (1963–9), attracting considerable outside business investment into Northern Ireland. He became deputy prime minister in 1966, but suffered from an ambiguous relationship with the frigid and defensive Terence O'Neill. Faulkner resigned from office in January 1969, but served as minister of development (1969–71) under O'Neill's successor James Chichester‐Clark. As Northern Ireland's last prime minister (Mar. 1971–Mar. 1972), he gained notoriety among nationalists for the introduction of internment. He was chief executive of the power‐sharing administration created under the Sunningdale agreement. Thereafter Faulkner was marginalized within Unionism, and retired from political life in 1976.

He was a highly gifted politician, who combined an innate pragmatism with (initially) a good command over hardline loyalism. He had some of the same consensual instincts as O'Neill, but possessed much deeper political roots in Ulster Unionism and a much more acute political intelligence. His career suffered because O'Neill misinterpreted his ambition as treachery and successive British governments misinterpreted his breezy pragmatism as weakness.

Alvin Jackson