Arthur Brian Deane Faulkner, Baron Faulkner of Downpatrick, (18 February 1921 – 3 March 1977), was the sixth and last Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, from March 1971 until his resignation in March 1972. He was also the chief executive of the short-lived Northern Ireland Executive during the first half of 1974.
Faulkner was also the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) from 1971 to 1974.
Early life
Faulkner was born in Helen's Bay, County Down, Ireland, some 2 months before the creation of Northern Ireland. The elder of two sons of James and Nora Faulkner. His younger brother was Colonel Sir Dennis Faulkner, CBE VRD UD DL. James Faulkner owned the Belfast Collar Company which traded under the name Faulat. At that time, Faulat was the largest single purpose shirt manufacturer in the world, employing some 3,000 people. He was educated initially at Elm Park preparatory school, Killylea, County Armagh, but at 14 was sent to the Church of Ireland-affiliated St Columba's College at Rathfarnham in Dublin, although Faulkner was Presbyterian. Faulkner chose St Columba's, preferring to stay in Ireland rather than go to school in England. His best friend at the school was Michael Yeats, son of W. B. Yeats. He was the only Prime Minister of Northern Ireland to have been educated in the Irish Free State and one of only two to have been educated in Ireland.
Faulkner entered the Queen's University of Belfast in 1939 to study law, but, with the advent of World War II, he quit his studies to work full-time in the family shirt-making business.
Early political career
Faulkner became involved in unionist politics, the first of his family to do so, and was elected to the Parliament of Northern Ireland as the Ulster Unionist Party Member of Parliament (MP) for the constituency of East Down in 1949. His vociferous traditional unionist approach to politics ensured him a prominent backbench position. He was, at the time, the youngest ever MP in the Northern Irish Parliament. He was also the first Chairman of the Ulster Young Unionist Council in 1949.
In 1956 Faulkner was offered and accepted the job of Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Finance, or Government Chief Whip.
Ministerial office
In 1959, he became Minister of Home Affairs and his handling of security for most of the Irish Republican Army's Border Campaign of 1956–62 bolstered his reputation in the eyes of the right wing of Ulster unionism.
When Terence O'Neill became Prime Minister in 1963 he appointed Faulkner, his chief rival for the job, as Minister of Commerce. Faulkner resigned in 1969 over the technicalities of how and when to bring in the local government reforms which the British Labour government was pushing for. This was a factor in the resignation of Terence O'Neill, who resigned as Prime Minister in the aftermath of his failure to achieve a good enough result in the 1969 Northern Ireland general election.
In the ensuing leadership contest, Faulkner lost out again when O'Neill gave his casting vote to his cousin, James Chichester-Clark. In 1970, Faulkner became the Father of the House.
Faulkner came back into government as Minister of Development under Chichester-Clark and in a sharp turn-around, began the implementation of the political reforms that were the main cause of his resignation from O'Neill's cabinet.
Chichester-Clark himself resigned in 1971; the political and security situation and the more intensive British interest proving difficult.
Prime Minister
Promising beginnings
Faulkner was elected leader of the Ulster Unionist Party and Prime Minister. In his initial innovative approach to government, he gave a non-unionist, David Bleakley, a former Northern Ireland Labour Party MP, a position in his cabinet as Minister for Community Relations. In June 1971, he proposed three new powerful committees at Stormont which would give the opposition salaried chairmanships of two of them.
Initial troubles
However, this initiative (radical at the time) was overtaken by events. The shooting of two Catholic youths in Derry by British soldiers prompted the SDLP, the largest Nationalist party and main opposition to boycott the Stormont parliament. The political climate deteriorated further when, in response to the worsening security situation, Faulkner introduced internment on 9 August 1971. This was a disaster; instead of lessening the violence, it caused the situation to worsen.