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From International Socialism (1st series), No.54, January 1973, p.26.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The Autobiography of Terence O’Neill
Hart-Davis £2.25
Lord O’Neill of the Maine says in this book that he is the nicest man in the world and that if it had not been for Catholics and Protestants he would still be the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland. He says it very badly. Reading his book is like wading through a pool of thick porridge.
Many of the 154 pages are taken up with trivia and tittle-tattle about his journeys abroad with Jean (wife) and the important people they met. Most of the rest comprises examples of his own quaint wit and wisdom. Did you know that Capt. O’Neill once wrote to Harold Wilson urging him to send the Queen Mother to Southern Rhodesia to stop UDI, but that Wilson did not get the letter because he was at a Party conference and this is the reason why there was UDI? It’s in the book.
O’Neill became Prime Minister at a time when the Orange machine in Northern Ireland was becoming redundant to the needs of monopoly capitalism. What Toryism needed was a hard-headed ‘professional politician’ who could wean the Catholic middle class with a conservative consensus while not alienating the Protestant masses to the point of rebellion. Instead, what they got was an effete Etonian snob who sucked up to the Orange Order and sucked down to the Catholic clerics and thought that to do both simultaneously was to be ‘non-sectarian’. The book is not worth reading.
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