Prime Minister
He beat Faulkner in the Ulster Unionist Party leadership election, 1969 by one vote on 1 May 1969, with his predecessor using his casting vote in the tied election for his distant cousin because "Faulkner had been stabbing him in the back for a lot longer". Although Faulkner believed, until his death, that he had been the victim of an upper-class conspiracy to deny him the premiership, he became a high profile and loyal member of Chichester-Clark's cabinet.
His premiership was punctuated by the civil unrest that erupted after August 1969. He suffered from the effects of the Hunt Committee report, which recommended the disbandment of the Ulster Special Constabulary, which his Government accepted to the consternation of many Unionists.
In April 1970 his predecessor and another Unionist MP resigned their seats in the NI House of Commons. The by-election campaigns were punctuated by major liberal speeches by senior government figures like Brian Faulkner, Jack Andrews and the Prime Minister himself. Ian Paisley's Protestant Unionist Party, however, took both seats in the House of Commons. Later the same month the O'Neill-ite group, the New Ulster Movement, became the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, and his party began passing votes of no confidence in him.
As the civil unrest grew, the British Government, particularly the Home Secretary, James Callaghan, became increasingly involved in Northern Ireland's affairs, forcing Chichester-Clark's hand on many issues. These included the disbanding of the 'B' Specials and, importantly, the handing over of operational control of the security forces to the Army General Officer Commanding Northern Ireland.
Read more about this topic: James Chichester-Clark
Famous quotes related to prime minister:
“Vanessa wanted to be a ballerina. Dad had such hopes for her.... Corin was the academically brilliant one, and a fencer of Olympic standard. Everything was expected of them, and they fulfilled all expectations. But I was the one of whom nothing was expected. I remember a game the three of us played. Vanessa was the President of the United States, Corin was the British Prime Minister—and I was the royal dog.”
—Lynn Redgrave (b. 1943)
“If one had to worry about one’s actions in respect of other people’s ideas, one might as well be buried alive in an antheap or married to an ambitious violinist. Whether that man is the prime minister, modifying his opinions to catch votes, or a bourgeois in terror lest some harmless act should be misunderstood and outrage some petty convention, that man is an inferior man and I do not want to have anything to do with him any more than I want to eat canned salmon.”
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)