Brooke, Basil Stanlake, First Viscount Brookeborough

Basil Stanlake Brooke, First Viscount Brookeborough (1888–1973), unionist politician and prime minister of Northern Ireland, was born on 9 June at Colebrooke House, County Fermanagh, the family seat. The Brooke family had been Fermanagh landowners since the Ulster plantation. Brooke was educated at Pau (France) and Winchester, joining the British army at the age of 20. During home leave in 1912 to 1913 he joined the anti–Home Rule campaign, working with the Fermanagh Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). Brooke lost his religious faith during the First World War. He left the army in 1919 and returned to Fermanagh. During the "Troubles" of 1919 to 1921 he revived the UVF as a local defense body, the nucleus of the Ulster Special Constabulary. Brooke's attitude toward Catholics and nationalists was permanently embittered by his experiences during the troubles. In 1929, Brooke became a member of the Northern Ireland Parliament for the Lisnaskea division of County Fermanagh, serving until 1965. Between 1933 and 1941 he was a competent minister for agriculture. Several speeches in 1933, calling on Protestant employers to employ only "Protestant lads and lasses," made him a particularly hated figure for Catholics and nationalists. In 1941 Brooke became minister of commerce, and was seen as the most effective member of a cabinet dominated by geriatric veterans of the Craigavon era. In 1943 he led a revolt by junior ministers that unseated J. M. Andrews and brought a new generation to power within the Unionist Party. Two of his sons died in the Second World War. Brooke's early years as premier were buoyed by the postwar economic boom, the welfare state, and British sympathy for Ulster unionism in reaction against Irish wartime neutrality. In 1952 he became Viscount Brookeborough. His term is often seen as a missed opportunity to reconcile the Catholic minority. A liberal unionist faction emerged, denounced by populist hardliners including the young Ian Paisley. Brooke was committed fully to neither liberals nor hardliners; but in the last resort, he preferred to exploit the nationalist threat, emphasized by the Republic's misconceived antipartition campaign and the Irish Republican Army's border campaign of 1956 to 1962. In the mid-1950s Northern Ireland's traditional industries resumed their decline; Brooke's amateurish governance was visibly inadequate to address the province's economic problems. The Northern Ireland Labour Party made significant progress in the 1958 and 1962 Stormont elections. When Brooke retired in 1963, he was felt to have stayed too long. His son John later became Stormont minister for home affairs. Brooke lived to see the fall of Stormont and died on 18 August 1973. He epitomized the narrowness, determination, and ultimate inadequacy of the traditional unionist elite.

SEE ALSO Declaration of a Republic and the 1949 Ireland Act; Ulster Unionist Party in Office

Bibliography

Barton, Brian. Brookeborough: The Making of a Prime Minister. 1988.

Hennessy, Thomas. A History of Northern Ireland, 1920–1996. 1997.

Patterson, Henry. Ireland since 1939. 2002.

Patrick Maume