LITMIR.BIZ

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this ever-present danger, the Special Powers Act authorised the government to ‘take all steps and issue all such orders as may be necessary for preserving the peace and maintaining order’.34 But Northern Ireland fell short of Schmitt’s stipulation that the state should have a monopoly on the political. While the German jurist wanted interest groups excluded from the political sphere, Stormont – the seat of the Northern Ireland government from 1932 onwards – received an endless stream of delegations.35 Schmitt’s beliefs brought him into the service of the Nazis; the unionist people’s beliefs brought them into conflict with the Third Reich.36 Indeed, Brooke was prepared to accept reunification as the price for the South entering the Second World War. He instead had to make a much greater sacrifice to defend the empire: two of his sons were killed.37

      POST-WAR APPEASEMENT

      On the night of 15–16 April 1941, the Luftwaffe dropped incendiaries, bombs and landmines on Belfast. In Brian Moore’s novel The Emperor of Ice Cream, Freddy Hargreaves cheers on the destruction of the city: ‘Blow up … Stormont Castle and Lord Carson’s statue and the Houses of bloody Parliament.’38 These buildings survived the Belfast blitz, but the government of John Andrews was dealt a major blow. The smooth succession of the sixty-nine-year-old Andrews to the premiership after Sir James Craig’s death in November 1940 betrayed the Unionist leadership’s growing complacency. The German bombers had attacked the least prepared city in the United Kingdom and inflicted the highest casualty rate – over 900 people were killed – for any single night’s raid outside London. Belfast’s working-class districts were the worst hit, revealing the city’s hidden poverty and the need for urgent social reform.39 From 1941 onwards, increasing labour unrest provided a constant reminder of the government’s unpopularity and incompetence. A rebellion of junior ministers and Unionist backbenchers finally deposed Andrews in April 1943. Brooke, the only Unionist leader who was having a ‘good war’, was installed as the new Prime Minister.40

      Although he harboured doubts about the expense of post-war reconstruction and had pushed for a stronger approach to industrial relations, Brooke recognised that Northern Ireland would have to change.41 The civil service was eager to start work on reform. Some officials had taken a part-time course in social studies at Queen’s University Belfast in 1941–2 and afterwards had kept together as a reading group. The circle’s sacred text was the Beveridge Report.42 Drawing upon the experience of three decades in social administration, Sir William Beveridge brought together and expanded existing welfare schemes into a comprehensive system of national insurance. He also recommended the creation of a national health service and an end to mass unemployment. Surveys found that nine out of every ten people in the United Kingdom backed Beveridge’s crusade to slay the giants of poverty, ignorance, want, squalor, idleness, and disease.43 A return to the failed laissez-faire order of the 1930s was out of the question; a better new world had to be built.

      The Beveridge Report reasoned that: ‘A revolutionary moment in the world’s history is a time for revolutions.’44 Brooke might appear to have been an odd revolutionary: he was fifty-seven years old when the 1945 Northern Ireland general election was held and had been involved in politics for over a quarter of a century. However, the welfare states of post-war Europe were all built by men from similar backgrounds. Clement Attlee, the British Prime Minister, and Konrad Adenauer, West Germany’s first Chancellor, were even older and more seasoned than Brooke. The exhausted populations of Western Europe desired social and economic reform, but they also wanted political stability. Brooke and his generation of statesmen provided a living link to the old Europe that had perished in 1914. After the ideological conflict between communism and fascism during the inter-war years, they offered the voters pragmatic, consensus politics. Like Germany’s Christian Democrats, Brooke piloted a middle course between the extremes of laissez-faire and socialism.45 Although there was substantial support within the party for low taxation and limited public spending, Brooke stood firm. ‘The backbone of Unionism is the Unionist Labour Party,’ he reminded a rally in 1947. ‘Are those men going to be satisfied if we reject the social services and other benefits we have had by going step by step with Britain?’46

      Unionist opponents of the welfare state objected not only to the high rates of taxation demanded by the system, but also to the beneficiaries of the redistribution of resources. The welfare state was universal: Catholics as well as Protestants would receive benefits. ‘These people who are protected under our laws are turning around and biting the hand that feeds them,’ one MP indignantly remarked.47 Brooke reacted to this criticism. To allay fears that the welfare state would attract Southern migrants, eligibility for benefits was made dependent upon the fulfilment of a five-year residence requirement. Such tactical manoeuvring, however, did not head off the growing rebellion over the apparent concessions being made to the minority. The confrontation between the leadership and the dissidents came over the issue of education. The Brooke government was proposing to increase capital grants to Catholic schools, yet was refusing to ensure that local authorities were represented on their management committees.48 The internal discussions on the legislation involved a February 1951 meeting of the party at which the wider unease with ‘appeasement’ was voiced. Brooke recalled that he had recently been forced by the Orange Order to defend the new Northern Ireland Housing Trust (NIHT). This public body had the power to build and to manage housing estates – allocating tenancies without any regard to religion. The Prime Minister explained that he had ‘finished by saying that if they … thought we were not handling the Socialist government right and wanted a government which would discriminate against Roman Catholics they could do so [but] I would not take on the job’.49 Brooke pointed to the European Convention on Human Rights: minorities would now be better protected. The post- war trend towards internationalism would expose Stormont to much greater scrutiny. When Unionists thought of the defence of Northern Ireland, they had to think about Strasbourg and New York as well as the borderlands of Fermanagh and Tyrone.

      The Unionist leadership was not merely seeking to present a positive image of Northern Ireland. Brooke and his liberal allies believed that the welfare state could serve as the foundation for a rapprochement with the Catholic community. Given that social and economic conditions were far superior to those in the South, the assumption grew that the minority population was starting to accept partition. By softening Stormont’s sectarianism, liberal Unionists hoped to aid this process. The dominant position of Protestants in Northern Ireland would be left untouched by this strategy. Catholics would receive a fairer share of public appointments, but the important posts would still be reserved for Protestants.50 Nevertheless, key features of the regime that had developed during the inter-war years would have been dismantled. Home Affairs Minister Brian Maginess, the most prominent moderniser, recommended the repeal of the Special Powers Act.51

      The Brooke government’s liberal policies towards the minority made many Protestants uneasy. The complexities of the leadership’s stance had proved too sophisticated; the simplicity of the claim made by its critics that this was appeasement had won the argument. The rebellion over this issue proved much more difficult to contain than the earlier one over building the welfare state. With Northern Ireland threatened by a reinvigorated Irish nationalism and the election of the Labour government in Britain, Brooke had been able to emphasise the need for unity. In the intervening years, the danger to the state’s continued existence had receded. Following the South’s unilateral decision to leave the Commonwealth, Westminster had made reunification conditional upon the consent of Stormont. After this crisis, a more prudent government had taken office in Dublin and the Conservatives had returned to power in London. Protestants felt free to vote against official Unionist candidates without weakening partition. Eight Independent Unionists contested the 1953 parliamentary election on an anti-appeasement platform. Maginess’ less partisan approach to law-and-order matters came under the fiercest attack. During the celebrations to mark Elizabeth II’s coronation, the Home Affairs Minister and the police had clamped down on provocative displays of the Union flag. The Independents portrayed this sensible desire to keep the peace as a capitulation to Republicanism. Their campaign helped to reduce the official Unionist vote by about 37,000 in contested constituencies. At the beginning of 1954, the Independents pressed home their advantage by organising a massive loyalist meeting. This gathering passed a symbolic vote of no confidence in the government and its appeasement policies. Showing his customary pragmatism, the Prime Minister, who had been made Viscount Brookeborough in 1952, opted

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